RE: Review of draft WoT WG Charter needed

Thanks for getting back to us.  These are my personal responses, but we will be discussing the charter again next week and I can put this on the agenda to finalize.

I think part of the "initial configuration" part is onboarding, which is a Wot charter work item currently under discussion (meaning we haven't decided whether or not to include it yet).  However, currently this is focused on security.  I think what you'd want for accessibility, in addition to secure pairing, is the ability to add additional metadata to devices, e.g. adding annotations to the information about a device that could then be used to automate accessibility services.  This is related the larger question of lifecycle and specifically registration of device metadata (WoT Thing Descriptions) with discovery services.

I'll have to think about it... but certainly my opinion is that we should consider including secure onboarding *at least*, AND make it as accessible as possible. 

As for Matter, I've been investigating it and even built and paired some beta Matter devices with my Home Assistant instance and experimented with them.  The initial configuration experience right now uses a pairing app on a phone which *could* be made accessible, IMO.  You could even have a custom "pairing" device (Matter uses Bluetooth to perform pairing).  I was thinking of doing something similar for WoT but more general, possibly "wrapping" the pairing of Matter devices as a special case.  Matter doesn't currently handle the "metadata annotation" extension I mentioned above either, though.  There *are* things like timeouts in the Matter pairing approach which might be too short for some users, though...

We haven't explicitly mentioned Matter in the new charter but have tried to word things to allow us to add it if we can find people interested in working on it (always a problem).  I think fault tolerance is an interesting point but will have to think about it more.  Better fault recovery would generally improve usability, too. 

In general though I don't think Matter is the magic solution to IoT.  It will certainly be an improvement for *new* devices, though.

It would be good to create issues on the github site for the other points you raise and possibly comment on this PR: https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/pull/77 and the "Onboarding" work item in the details document (the PR just expands upon it): https://w3c.github.io/wot-charter-drafts/wot-wg-2023-details.html#onboarding-workitem 

Regarding the current text in the charter: the real decision we have to make is whether to keep the current text or remove it and consider our interactions covered by the general "horizontal review" practices.  So we need clear answers on two points:
1. Do we need to/should we mention collaboration with APA at all?  In other words: Should our collaboration go beyond wide review?
2. If the answer to 1 is "yes", then does the current text properly describe the scope of the collaboration?

My reading of your comments below is "1: Yes and 2: Yes" but would explicit confirmation would be useful.  By the way, PR #50 has already been merged.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Janina Sajka <janina@rednote.net> 
Sent: March 10, 2023 1:16 PM
To: Mccool, Michael <michael.mccool@intel.com>
Cc: Matthew Tylee Atkinson <matkinson@paciellogroup.com>; group-apa-chairs@w3.org; cooper@w3.org; team-wot@w3.org; W3C WAI Accessible Platform Architectures <public-apa@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Review of draft WoT WG Charter needed

Dear Michael, All:

My apologies for the slow response. On the other hand APA has conducted a top to bottom review. More on that below.

To your specific question regarding the new WoT Charter we see no particular need for additional language in the draft currently on github. However, if additional language would help WoT keep accessibility usefully focussed and prioritized, we're happy to indicate our preference for github PR #50:

https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/pull/50


Our opinion is that this additional language only makes explicit what has been a useful working relationship between our groups. We have no objection to making this work and our relationship more explicit. If it helps WoT recharter, let's absolutely go with this language.

for specifics of that. One possible item may be our item #2 below.

Now to the details ...

1.) s you'll recall from our joint meeting ahead of TPAC last, we're
very concerned that WoT standards support installation and configuration of devices better. Critically, we'd like better support for fault tolerance. The log of our conversation is here:

https://www.w3.org/2022/09/06-wot-minutes.html#t12


2.) To this end we've recently looked at Matter because it seemed it
could be the solution, or part of the solution. We'd like your views on the role of Matter and Thread, especially as it relates to our concerns for initial configuration support and for fault tolerance. Our last logged discussion on this topic is logged here:

https://www.w3.org/2023/03/01-apa-minutes.html#t05


We'd like to understand better WoT (and W3C's) relation to the Matter/Thread specifications, but also whether you believe they might factor in addressing our configuration/tolerance concerns.

Should this question perhaps be more clearly visible in the new Charter?

3.) Beyond the above, we have the following comments in general on
accessibility in WoT specifications:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-apa/2023Jan/0000.html


I will be happy to file any or all of this via github issues, but wanted to check with you before doing so. I suspect not all of this is germane to rechartering WoT, so that's another reason to communicate these questions and conclusions with you first via email.

Best,

Janina


Matthew Atkinson writes:
> Hi Michael, Michael, WoT,
> 
> Thanks for getting in touch, and sorry for the slow reply. We have been discussing your charter, and some questions we may have for you about our future work together, in our recent calls (we have some academics who work in this area in our group, and have been checking a couple of things with them first, to ensure we were on the right lines). We definitely want to work closely with your group in future. We'll place a more official comment to that effect on the GitHub thread very soon.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> 
> Matthew
> --
> Matthew Tylee Atkinson (he/him)
> --
> Principal Accessibility Engineer
> TPG Interactive
> https://www.tpgi.com

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> On 08/03/2023, 11:43, "Mccool, Michael" <michael.mccool@intel.com <mailto:michael.mccool@intel.com>> wrote:
> 
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> CAUTION: This email originated outside Vispero. Do not click links, open attachments or forward unless you recognize the sender.
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> 
> Michael,
> In case you overlooked the following, we would like someone from APA to review our discussion of collaboration in the draft WoT charter. Comments on the github issue would be best so our entire group can see them. 
> Thanks,
> Michael McCool
> 
> 
> From: Mccool, Michael 
> Sent: March 2, 2023 11:11 AM
> To: group-apa-chairs@w3.org <mailto:group-apa-chairs@w3.org>
> Cc: team-wot@w3.org <mailto:team-wot@w3.org>
> Subject: RE: Review of draft WoT WG Charter needed 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I should have included a link the issue where this is being discussed: 
> https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45 <https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45> <https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45> <https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45&gt;> 
> Responding directly on this issue would be convenient. 
> Michael 
> 
> 
> From: Mccool, Michael 
> Sent: March 2, 2023 10:58 AM
> To: group-apa-chairs@w3.org <mailto:group-apa-chairs@w3.org> <mailto:group-apa-chairs@w3.org <mailto:group-apa-chairs@w3.org>>
> Cc: team-wot@w3.org <mailto:team-wot@w3.org> <mailto:team-wot@w3.org <mailto:team-wot@w3.org>>
> Subject: Review of draft WoT WG Charter needed 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hello, 
> The Web of Things Working Group is working on drafting our next charter. As part of this we want to define the intent of collaboration with APA. Can you please review the text at https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45 <https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45> <https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45> <https://github.com/w3c/wot-charter-drafts/issues/45&gt;> and let us know if it is appropriate or requires changes? 
> If you would rather have me create a github issue for this please point me at an appropriate repo. 
> Thanks, 
> Michael McCool 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 

Janina Sajka (she/her/hers)
Accessibility Consultant https://linkedin.com/in/jsajka


The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Co-Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures http://www.w3.org/wai/apa


Linux Foundation Fellow
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/board-of-directors-2/

Received on Friday, 10 March 2023 18:09:18 UTC