APA position statement to the W3C Workshop on Permissions

Please find a proposal draft.

Title: APA position statement to the W3C Workshop on Permissions

From: The chairs and members of the Accessibility Platform Architectures
Working Group (APA). In our cross-W3C scope, we work to ensure that all W3C
published specifications provide support for accessibility to people with
disabilities (PwD). Among our members are PwDs including people who are
blind, vision impaired, deaf, hearing impaired, and cognitive and learning
disabilities. (https://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/)

User permissions, to us, embraces many digital activities that concern us
deeply, such as the usability of authorization (AuthZ) and authentication
(AuthN) interfaces and the need for accomodations such as assistive
technology. PwDs have always strongly objected to automated disclosure of
their disability status on the web. This information is deemed highly
personal and irrelevant in most online situations. Furthermore, having
experienced various forms of discrimination in the physical world, PwDs
yearn for an equal opportunity in the virtual world of the web.

We offer two examples:

CAPTCHA: While many treat CAPTCHA as an irritating speed bump on the
internet highway,  CAPTCHA can literally prevent a PwD from accessing a
resource. For example, asking users who are blind, visually impaired or
dyslexic to identify textual characters in a distorted graphic is asking
them to perform a task they are intrinsically least able to accomplish.
Similarly, asking users who are deaf, hard of hearing, or living with
auditory processing disorder to identify and transcribe in writing the
content of an audio CAPTCHA is asking them to perform a task they’re
intrinsically least likely to accomplish. (see <https://www.w3.org
/TR/turingtest/>). We see a way out in relatively new Webauthn and FIDO
authN schemes.

User Preferences: For many, user preferences such as dark mode are helpful
features that make consuming internet content more comfortable. They don't
mind revealing these preferences, as preferring "dark mode" doesn't say
anything about the person requesting the enhancement. For PwDs, user
preferences are not nice-to-have; they are essential. That said, they are
too revealing. Yet disclosing disability-related accommodation needs can
serve as a powerful vector to getting such accomodation support. Consider
that a person who is blind, using a screen reader, does not need those
light or dark mode, and a deaf person does not need a volume control; yet
neither of these people may wish to share the fact that they are disabled.
We see a way out in relatively new privacy-preserving verifiable
credentials.

The two examples above are brought to highlight the contradiction at the
heart of many PwD's digital experience. On the one hand, PwDs require
accommodations to access the experience, and would love for these
accommodations to accompany them to every app, web page and voice
assistant. On the other hand, PwDs do not want accommodations or their use
of assistive technology to reveal their disability, or to define them.

APA is excited to find in the growing maturity of recent novel APIs and
innovations such as Verifiable Credentials, Digital Identifiers and
Webauthn the potential to find solutions to these challenges. We see the
following as offering very real improvements to the lives of PwD:
-- The ability to prove we are human, without being forced into tasks we
are least able to accomplish (see <https://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/>)
-- The ability to login to a federated environment without a password, and
perform multi-factor authentication with sufficient time to complete the
task
-- The ability to selectively disclose needs for accomodation without
revealing any personally identifiable or correlateable information
-- The ability to digitally enable another person to perform certain
actions on one's behalf
-- The ability to get a Terms of Service that can be comprehended
especially, but not exclusively, in the face of cognitive accessibility
issues
-- The ability for a user agent to mediate on-the-fly and render services
in ways that are more appropriate for people with specific accessibility
needs.
-- The ability to progressively trust commercial, medical, and legal
providers, and enable the sharing of more information as a relationship
develops, or to cut off access should a relationship need to end. (see <
https://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/task-forces/research-questions/wiki/Some_use_cases_for_verifiable_credentials
>)

We look forward to bringing our experience in cross-W3C specification
review to considering the side variety of Web APIs that will be discussed
in this workshop. We are eager to engage with the gathered experts from
every discipline and ensure that all these diverse professionals are
hearing the voices of PwDs.



- Lionel
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Lionel Wolberger
COO, UserWay Inc.
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