Re: CSS Accessibility Task Force commissioned

I've had a little more time to thing about the concerns I raised at TPAC. 

I do see value in tracking occasional accessibility review of the various CSS deliverables, so I am optimistic about this task force, but will outline my concerns below.

1. Use GitHub, Avoid Email Proliferation

As mentioned in the TPAC meeting, I'd prefer any accessibility concerns with CSS be raised as individual GitHub issues against each relevant spec, rather than more email discussion on a new list. Conference calls should also be rare. My recollection is that the CSS WG members and the proposers of this CSS Accessibility Task Force agreed to that stipulation for this task force.


2. An Editor's draft of a CSS-AAM spec is premature. I'm not convinced it should exist at all.

The SVG-AAM and HTML-AAM documents provide mappings between elements defined in each specification, and the way those elements are exposed to platform accessibility API. For the most part, these mappings are not defined by the Working Group, but by the platform developers. These mappings are subject to change, and therefore the HTML-AAM and SVG-AAM should be informative living documents, rather than Rec Track static documents. I've previously raised this problem to the ARIA Working Group.

As CSS does not define any elements, I see little to no value in a CSS-AAM (CSS to Accessibility API Mapping) document. Mappings would be defined by the language the CSS was styling, not by CSS itself. There are a number of accessibility implications to various CSS features (for example, layout/navigation order implications and generated content) but I'm confident that each of these can be addressed by small informative or normative additions to each of the relevant CSS specs.

It also worries me that there would be a draft spec created before any task force members had decided what should go in this document. Right now it's just a blank copy of the Core-AAM from ARIA. Adding this document to a repo at this early stage feels like unnecessary bureaucracy and overhead rather than progress.

James



> On Sep 30, 2016, at 8:26 AM, Michael Cooper <cooper@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> At last week's joint meeting between APA, ARIA, and CSS at TPAC I took an action to set up some infrastructure for the CSS Accessibility Task Force:
> https://www.w3.org/2016/09/20-css-minutes
> 
> This is now done. Key resources:
> Home page, mainly as a place to link to everything else - https://www.w3.org/WAI/APA/task-forces/css-a11y/
> GitHub repository for spec development, wiki, and issue tracking - https://github.com/w3c/css-aam
> Mailing list - public-css-a11y@w3.org (archives at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-css-a11y/)
> Editors' draft of CSS-AAM - https://w3c.github.io/css-aam/
> List of task force participants - https://www.w3.org/2000/09/dbwg/details?group=94039&public=1
> Some of the above may evolve as work progresses, particularly specific GitHub repositories or deliverables, but for now the above repository is where the task force can track issues. Participants in the task force are automatically subscribed to the mailing list.
> 
> I added people to the task force who I could pick out of the minutes of last week's meeting. If you'd like to participate in the task force and don't see your name in the participants list above, just let me know and I'll add you.
> 
> Next steps will be for the WG chairs to pick facilitators for the task force, editors for initial deliverables, and then for it to begin work. Activity around that will take place on the public-css-a11y mailing list to start; this message to the groups is just to let everyone know it's up and running.
> 
> Michael