Draft minutes of 9.00-10.30 session of APA meeting at TPAC in Lyon.

Since rrsagent was not present at our session, we do not have a complete log
at https://www.w3.org/2018/10/22-apa-irc.

See below for a IRC log dump of our session.  Also attached as a text file.

Best regards,
Gottfried 

--- Text dump of IRC log ---

09:02:21	 (Connected)
09:02:22	 (You joined the channel)
09:02:22	 The topic is: APA Teleconference; Wednesday 17 October at
1600Z.
09:02:22	 Topic set by janina on Tue Oct 16 2018 21:35:55 GMT+0200
(Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit).
09:02:56	 MatthewBrennan joined the channel.
09:03:04	circ-user-NCAIz  zakim, clear agenda
09:03:04	Zakim  agenda cleared
09:03:20	circ-user-NCAIz  TOPIC: Math prep
09:03:31	 mck joined the channel.
09:04:42	 (You are now known as Gottfried)
09:04:56	 Gottfried was circ-user-NCAlz before
09:05:00	joanie  present+ Joanmarie_Diggs
09:05:00	Gottfried  scribe: Gottfried
09:05:05	Gottfried  present +
09:05:16	Gottfried  TOPIC: MATH prep
09:06:16	Gottfried  Agenda: see
https://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/wiki/Meetings/TPAC_2018
09:06:50	 mrobinson joined the channel.
09:07:03	Roy  present+
09:07:08	 joanie asks Gottfried if it would make sense to put that in
the topic too?
09:07:28	Gottfried  Is anybody on Webex?
https://www.w3.org/2017/08/telecon-info_apa-tpac
09:07:37	 MichaelC has quit: "Leaving"
09:07:38	Gottfried  Introductions...
09:07:43	 MichaelC joined the channel.
09:08:17	Gottfried  ... Mat King
09:08:22	Gottfried  ... Matthew
09:08:27	Gottfried  ... Ian
09:08:30	Gottfried  ... Janina
09:09:05	Gottfried  ... Martin Robertson
09:09:08	Gottfried  ... Gottfried
09:09:31	Gottfried  ... Steve Lee
09:10:14	 mrobinson has quit: ""
09:10:34	Gottfried  ... Joanie Digs
09:10:56	joanie  s/Digs/Diggs/
09:12:03	Gottfried  Janina: We will have people from the Math
community joining us at 11am.
09:13:17	Gottfried  ... We want to spend this hour to prepare for
this meeting.
09:14:08	Gottfried  Joanie: Where are we and what are the next steps?
09:15:38	 mrobinson joined the channel.
09:16:21	Gottfried  ... Peter, the co-chair of the MathML community
group, disagrees to continue with MathML.
09:17:01	Gottfried  Mat: Which other technologies are being exploited
today?
09:17:32	Gottfried  Joanie: We do not have consensus on that.
09:17:49	 aboxhall joined the channel.
09:18:19	 clapierre joined the channel.
09:18:20	Gottfried  Discussion on whether MathPlayer is still alive
and being developed.
09:18:29	clapierre  +1
09:19:00	Gottfried  Joanie: VoiceOver was supposed to support MathML:
09:19:26	Gottfried  ... I want the ORCA screen reader to support it,
but i am not a Math person.
09:19:31	clapierre  q+
09:19:31	 Zakim sees clapierre on the speaker queue
09:19:58	Gottfried  ... Charles Lapiere introducing himself - joined
late
09:20:02	joanie  s/ORCA/Orca/
09:20:04	Roy  ack cl
09:20:05	 Zakim sees no one on the speaker queue
09:20:25	Gottfried  Charles: I can give you some background on the
Math discussion.
09:21:08	Gottfried  ... Peter was pushing MathML, but got pushback.
09:21:24	Gottfried  ... MathML is based on XML.
09:21:52	Gottfried  ... Peter tried to get support for MathML into
the browsers.
09:22:18	Gottfried  ... Peter has now decided to turn around and
explit other technologies to get math working on the web.
09:23:04	Gottfried  ... Workshop "MathSummit" in the past summer.
Thoughts about Math being brailled and spoken.
09:23:13	Gottfried  ... Using ARIA, made some hacks.
09:24:13	Gottfried  Joanie: We have some things that would use ARIA
without making hacks. We just need to change ARIA a bit.
09:24:17	 MatthewBrennan has quit: Ping timeout: 180 seconds.
09:25:48	Gottfried  Janina: Math specifics: equations, graphs,
angles, shapes. Part of it is SVG, and part of it is a natural fit for ARIA.
09:26:05	Gottfried  ... Symbols are in Unicode, so we need to nest
and group.
09:26:24	 Irfan joined the channel.
09:26:36	Irfan  present+
09:26:48	Gottfried  Charles: There is presentational MathML and
content MathML. Most of the work happens in presentational MathML - millions
of works from publishers.
09:27:14	Gottfried  ... Content MathML is about structuring and
meaning of the symbols.
09:28:27	Gottfried  ... Publishers are now stripping MathML off their
books, and replacing it by images, even without text descriptions.
09:28:36	Gottfried  ... Rumors that the MathML wg might get reborn.
09:28:45	Gottfried  ... Neil could be leading this wg.
09:29:27	Gottfried  ... I had a discussion with him on Friday.
09:29:57	Gottfried  q?
09:29:58	 Zakim sees no one on the speaker queue
09:30:39	Gottfried  ... Rendering of MathML is good in general.  But
publishers have some performance issues.
09:31:04	Gottfried  Mat: Publishers are required to produce
accessible books.
09:31:54	Gottfried  Charles: Some publishers are putting alt text on
images, using Benetech MathML cloud.  MathJax will take the MathML and
create alt-text for it.
09:32:25	Gottfried  ... We have an accessible math test book with
various techniques.  All will go into epubtest.org
09:33:43	Gottfried  ... Goal: SVG image, MathML hidden off screen.
MathJax could be employed by JavaScript.  AT can get MathML if wanted.
09:35:53	Gottfried  Ian: From my limited experience, MathML is a bit
like SVG.  With simple things, works well.  But gets complicated with more
complex things.  Not much tooling around.
09:36:22	Gottfried  Irfan: When hiding alt-text, what do braille
users do?
09:36:32	 MatthewBrennan joined the channel.
09:36:52	Gottfried  Charles: It is all in the hidden MathML that is
visible to AT for using MathJax or browser support.
09:37:12	Gottfried  ... Caveat is that you lose low-vision support
for highlighting.
09:37:25	Gottfried  ... But currently not much supported by AT
anyway.
09:37:51	Gottfried  ... Better support would be: Math rendered
onscreen, and have semantics embedded in it.
09:38:05	Gottfried  Janina: That's like reinventing MathML for
structure.
09:38:14	Gottfried  ... That's why Neil wants to re-start MathML wg
09:39:18	Gottfried  Charles: There is a minority saying that MathML
is dead.
09:40:34	Gottfried  Janina: There is not necessarily just one
approach.
09:40:38	joanie  q+
09:40:38	 Zakim sees joanie on the speaker queue
09:40:44	Gottfried  q+ ask on MathJax
09:40:45	 Zakim sees joanie, ask on the speaker queue
09:41:22	Gottfried  ... Some people are looking at corner cases (just
1%) where MathML would not work.
09:41:34	Gottfried  ... Neil wants to focus on the 99% where it
works.
09:41:51	Gottfried  ... In the end, we may also target the corner
cases.
09:42:02	Gottfried  ... Neil really wants to get the MathML wg going
again.
09:42:35	joanie  q?
09:42:36	 Zakim sees joanie, ask on the speaker queue
09:42:37	joanie  ack me
09:42:37	 Zakim sees ask on the speaker queue
09:42:40	Gottfried  ... Neil says we will still need SVG support and
other technologies that Peter wants to use.
09:44:26	Gottfried  Joanie: What do we agree on? (1) We want a
consistent user experience. (2) Speak it correctly, and braille it
correctly. A screen reader does not necessarily have to understand the math
semantics.
09:45:05	Gottfried  Charles: We cannot add all the different
semantics.
09:45:34	Gottfried  Joanie: Does the tf have consensus on what
approach to take?
09:46:17	Gottfried  Janina: We agree on a good user experience.
09:46:47	Gottfried  ... But problem is not just screen reader users.
We have to think wider, including digital publishing. I guess it would push
it toward authoring.
09:47:00	Gottfried  q+ to mention AMAC's abandoning of MathML
09:47:00	 Zakim sees ask, Gottfried on the speaker queue
09:47:03	 IanPouncey1 joined the channel.
09:47:56	Gottfried  Charles: There are data visualization groups
working on this too.
09:48:17	Gottfried  Janina: We need to slice the problem space, and
get one piece accessible, then next, and so on.
09:48:42	joanie  We already (hopefully) agree: The goal is to get a
consistent user experience independent of what host language is used to
render content.
09:49:22	joanie  Question 1: Do ATs need to know the underlying
semantics to provide support, or do we want to put $THINGS into place so
that ATs magically do the right thing automatically?
09:49:45	 IanPouncey has quit: Ping timeout: 180 seconds.
09:50:08	Gottfried  Janina: if we put it on AT, then every AT will do
it differently -> no consistency.
09:50:42	Gottfried  Mat: For ARIA we said, there would be no
normative requirements on AT.
09:52:56	Gottfried  ... There could be another layer feeding AT.
09:54:35	Gottfried  Joanie: Ideally, we have MathML rendering
everything.  Peter has this SVG thing with choices.  To get this totally
accessible, you need a CSS-hidden HTML table, etc.
09:55:13	Gottfried  Mat: For a given user, and a given technology,
regardless of coding...
09:55:51	Gottfried  Gottfried: A "consistent user experience" does
not mean it is the same for every user.  Personalization is important.
09:55:56	joanie  New Version: We already (hopefully) agree: For a
given user of a given AT, there should be a consistent user experience
independent of what host language is used to render content.
09:56:02	joanie  q?
09:56:03	 Zakim sees ask, Gottfried on the speaker queue
09:56:14	joanie  ack ask
09:56:14	Zakim  ask, you wanted to comment on MathJax
09:56:16	 Zakim sees Gottfried on the speaker queue
09:56:23	joanie  ack Gottfried
09:56:24	Zakim  Gottfried, you wanted to mention AMAC's abandoning of
MathML
09:56:24	 Zakim sees no one on the speaker queue
09:56:31	Gottfried  ack me
09:56:31	 Zakim sees no one on the speaker queue
09:56:42	Gottfried  Gottfried: What is MathJax?
09:56:56	 IanPouncey1 is now known as IanPouncey.
09:57:11	Gottfried  Charles: MathJax takes MathML, renders it, and
allows AT to navigate in it.
09:57:56	Gottfried  ... There is a speech rule engine with a
dictionary.
09:58:06	Gottfried  Ian: It is like a polyfill for MathML.
10:00:20	Gottfried  Gottfried: AMAC has abandoned MathML production.
Temporary alternatives: Enhanced Tagged PDF (ETPDF) files, Long Description
Microsoft Word Doc (DOCLD) files, and EPUB files.
10:00:44	Gottfried  ... Does the Math community group have producers
of alternative learning materials with them?
10:01:04	Gottfried  Charles: Many people work with Latex.
10:01:33	Gottfried  Gottfried: I could contact AMAC and ask for their
support on this.
10:02:15	Gottfried  Ian: Is high school text rendering the user case
for us, or academic rendering?
10:03:12	Gottfried  Ian: Maybe it is fine to start things with the
consistent rendering?
10:04:56	Gottfried  Joanie: Goal is to find out what the next steps
are. We need to find out if these things need to be squeezed into ARIA 1.2.
10:05:10	IanPouncey  To clarify, is the best approach to achieve
adoption to have consistent rendering of basic math but lacking ability to
describe high level math, or is it more important to focus on describing
high level math possibly at the cost of consistent rendering (at least
initially).
10:05:57	Gottfried  Janina: Knowledge-domain accessibility.
10:07:43	Gottfried  Joanie: Role description could help to let SRs
"magically" speak the right things.
10:08:05	Gottfried  ... Role description is a case where we need a
braille strang in addition to the spoken strang.
10:09:12	Gottfried  Charlie: Benetech is doing a Math editor.  Need
braille input.
10:09:15	joanie  https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues/771
10:09:28	joanie  Consider addition of a property for input controls
to provide untranslated Unicode braille key input events
10:10:09	Gottfried  Joanie: Should ARIA wg in their own meetings try
to tackle this?
10:10:32	Gottfried  ... With the Math community group, we need to
figure out what the next steps are?
10:11:32	Gottfried  Janina: Use metadata to declare things, and
preload stuff.
10:12:53	Gottfried  Mat: We need to define the most important
problems.
10:13:43	Gottfried  ... Problem of consistent user experience.
10:13:54	Gottfried  Joanie: The user should not have to know what the
underlying markup is.
10:14:59	Gottfried  ... SVG is ideal for rendering according to the
author's intentions.
10:16:43	Gottfried  Joanie: SVG elements have to be exposed to AT.
10:16:52	 clapierre has quit: "Leaving."
10:17:38	joanie  New Version: We already (hopefully) agree: For a
given user of a given AT, there should be a consistent user experience
independent of what host language is used to render content.
10:17:38	 clapierre joined the channel.
10:17:41	joanie  Question 1: Do ATs need to know the underlying
semantics to provide support, or do we want to put $THINGS into place so
that ATs magically do the right thing automatically?
10:18:45	Gottfried  Janina: Almost okay with that. Needs to be
compelling.
10:19:27	Gottfried  Gottfried: Should add "personalized user
experience".
10:20:07	Gottfried  Ian: "Consistent, given your choice of user
experience"
10:20:53	joanie  New Version: We already (hopefully) agree: For a
given user of a given AT, there should be a consistent, compelling, and
robust user experience ***independent of what host language is used to
render content.***
10:20:56	Gottfried  Mat: NVDA users vary in their settings.  That's
personalization.
10:21:37	Gottfried  ... This is different from the personalization
semantics in the personalization wg.
10:22:44	Gottfried  Janina: "Compelling" means that as a reader you
can discuss this with your classmates.
10:23:01	joanie  INFORMAL: It should not suck regardless of the
markup
10:23:08	 jamesn joined the channel.
10:23:17	joanie  Question 1: Do ATs need to know the underlying
semantics to provide support, or do we want to put $THINGS into place so
that ATs magically do the right thing automatically?
10:23:40	Gottfried  Joanie: We need to split work up so each
individual group can go off an do their work.
10:24:57	Gottfried  Mat: As an AT developer, you are not going to
develop support for half a dozen math description formats.
10:25:37	Gottfried  Joanie: Like "btn" (AT knows it is "button").
10:26:45	Gottfried  Janina: We are not done when we get math done.
We still have chemistry, linguistics, inter-linear content.  We need to do
knowledge domain.
10:26:45	 MichaelC just noticed rrsagent is not in channel, minutes
not logged
10:26:58	Gottfried  Joanie: AT do not need to know knowledge domain
semantics.
10:27:16	Gottfried  Janina: Somebody with knowledge domain expertise
needs to create these mappings.
10:27:36	Gottfried  Mat: Accessibility tree strictly becomes a
rendering engine.
10:28:01	Gottfried  Ian: Will this be available in browsers, so that
AT can support it?
10:28:25	Gottfried  Joanie: Implementing support for ARIA roles is
easy.
10:28:51	Gottfried  ... And it is easy to expose these roles in the
a11y tree.
10:29:31	Gottfried  Ian: Then we are back to the MathJax approach,
i.e. somebody is doing this for the browser.
10:30:35	Gottfried  Mat: How can the semantics be expressed in an
a11y tree?
10:30:41	Gottfried  Joanie: Already by MathML.
10:34:11	Gottfried  Gottfried: We do not want AT to be required to
understand the math semantics, and we do not want to prevent AT from
understanding the semantics (important for cog a11y).
10:34:39	Gottfried  Mat: Is ARIA going to be explode into something
really big?
10:34:51	 joanie says "role all the things!"
10:34:56	Gottfried  Janina: Yes, you can map stuff easily.
10:35:46	clapierre  rrsagent, draft minutes
10:36:01	Gottfried  Joanie: ARIA is a hammer and a screw-driver and a
wretch.
10:36:29	 RRSAgent joined the channel.
10:36:29	RRSAgent  logging to https://www.w3.org/2018/10/22-apa-irc
10:36:39	Roy  rrsagent, draft minutes
10:36:39	RRSAgent  I have made the request to generate
https://www.w3.org/2018/10/22-apa-minutes.html Roy
10:36:59	Roy  rrsagent, make log public
10:36:59	RRSAgent  I have made the request, Roy
10:37:53	Roy  scribe: Gottfried
10:38:00	 nigel has quit: Client closed connection.
10:38:02	Roy  TOPIC: Math prep
10:38:29	 Roy has quit: "This computer has gone to sleep"
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10:44:30	Gottfried  zakim, who is here?
10:44:30	Zakim  Present: janina, Joanmarie_Diggs, MichaelC, Irfan,
Becka11y, IanPouncey, Roy
10:44:32	Zakim  On IRC I see clapierre, RRSAgent, jamesn, IanPouncey,
Irfan, aboxhall, mrobinson, MichaelC, Gottfried, janina, Zakim, slightlyoff,
MichielBijl, trackbot, joanie, ShaneM