RE: Accessibility at the W3C Workshop on Web Games - feedback and questions

The relevant Web Assembly proposal appears to be the document at
https://github.com/WebAssembly/webidl-bindings/blob/master/proposals/webidl-bindings/Explainer.md

which is intended to optimize performance of calls between Web Assembly code and APIs specified in WebIDL – if I’m reading it correctly.

From: Joshue O Connor <joconnor@w3.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2019 8:46 AM
To: Matthew Tylee Atkinson <matkinson@paciellogroup.com>; public-apa@w3.org
Subject: Re: Accessibility at the W3C Workshop on Web Games - feedback and questions


Hi Matthew,

I finally got to parse your extensive write up of the Games conference. I found it really, really useful. I recommend others read also and there are a wealth of useful links there. [1]

Firstly, your older paper in 'Level Description Languages' (LDL) and accessible map creation (from the user perspective) is brilliant :-)

Overall, there are some take away's from me that were really helpful (and I learned a lot!).

Firstly, the Luke Wagner deck on WebAssembly (WASM) and proposals for improved WebIDL/JavaScript bindings, performance and memory management gave me some much needed insight into potential advantages of this runtime environment for accessibility, due to its ability to access to accessibility (and other) APIS. The proposal mentioned means potentially without a big performance hit, memory leaks and the current clunky need to instantiate binding expressions in memory etc ( at least that's my reading of it). The current binding proposals discussed in the deck are really interesting, as they aim to address current performance issues with JavaScript - so worth a read alround. [2] [3]

Some of the challenges we have in APA is understanding (for gaming and XR):

  *   How can we know which runtime environment, rendering or VM machine environment - when used as a platform for gaming or XR applications, provides the best architecture for accessibility and is sympatico with existing AT?
  *   Which has the best potential for semantic support and communication with platform and browser APIs?

I have a question regarding glTF [4]

You mention glTF, and I'm not totally sure how that fits into the stack? It doesn't seem to be a full browser runtime environment like WebAssembly, but enables the loading of 3D scenes and models. So my question is around your references to the benefits of 'machine-readable applications' and how this could be good for accessibility? Do glTF files have inherent support for object description or other meta-data can provide an accessibility architecture when loaded? I just don't know much about this.



Any finally, ..any more info you have on 'semantic-scene graph' modelling would be really helpful *grin.



Great work Matthew, thanks.



Josh


[1] http://matatk.agrip.org.uk/articles/w3c-workshop-on-web-games/<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmatatk.agrip.org.uk%2Farticles%2Fw3c-workshop-on-web-games%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C089fd960f23849c2427f08d720b5788c%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C0%7C637013836097609473&sdata=x2dZBCCR8HPpV%2Fhewuiy2qmj6LTAprFxf0Dfobox1q4%3D&reserved=0>
[2] Luke Wagner deck WASM - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10ynaGMBAdiCLVyoyBDSNsNhtpQT9qm_QWO6VBI2LCGA/edit#slide=id.p<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fpresentation%2Fd%2F10ynaGMBAdiCLVyoyBDSNsNhtpQT9qm_QWO6VBI2LCGA%2Fedit%23slide%3Did.p&data=02%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C089fd960f23849c2427f08d720b5788c%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C0%7C637013836097619470&sdata=GU1oPfcdzpxVMNki6XiY0kpEewkk%2Ffuw%2Fw3CQi4r3bA%3D&reserved=0>
[3] https://github.com/webassembly/proposals<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fwebassembly%2Fproposals&data=02%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C089fd960f23849c2427f08d720b5788c%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C0%7C637013836097619470&sdata=NLE5ekKRrI8wAqQTdmEkvOt%2FfJlRslahA1oGJnGo5V4%3D&reserved=0>
[4] https://www.khronos.org/gltf/<https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.khronos.org%2Fgltf%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cjjwhite%40ets.org%7C089fd960f23849c2427f08d720b5788c%7C0ba6e9b760b34fae92f37e6ddd9e9b65%7C0%7C0%7C637013836097629462&sdata=NAt8H81jLu%2BDlwef9pw06Gl%2FfeC0EY%2FqSCpXTeETk8I%3D&reserved=0>



--

Emerging Web Technology Specialist/A11y (WAI/W3C)





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