RE: Front-matter

Hi Alastair,

I appreciate your investigation very much. I understand your explanation.

With the following, I mean to be helpful, not critical.

I respectfully (truly!) object to what I perceive to be exclusionary-by-implication statements.

Examples

  *   "That does not apply to the coga-usable doc, for which there is a good argument to make it super-clear."
     *   Which W3C docs don't need to be super-clear?
  *   "The intended audience for this document is people who write documents with this kind of front-matter & format."
     *   People who write documents with this kind of front-matter & format include people with cognitive disabilities.
  *   "The gap-analysis (as chartered) is aimed at spec-writers and, regardless of ability/disability, reading & writing specs is something they are used to."
     *   I appreciate the sentiment. Yet, given the context of the other statements, this too appears to imply that reading & writing specs is something people with cognitive disabilities aren't capable of, so aren't used to.

For the COGA Task Force's response to what we perceive to be the W3C's pushback to making the Web accessible to people with cognitive disabilities, we need champions. I have always perceived you as one. My perception from your statements is you are espousing the party line rather than challenging it. In my opinion, we need to challenge / help the W3C change its systems and traditions to be inclusive of its members with cognitive disabilities.

John

John Rochford<http://bit.ly/profile-rj>
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center
Director, INDEX Program
Faculty, Family Medicine & Community Health
www.DisabilityInfo.org
LinkedIn<https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-rochford/>

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From: Alastair Campbell [mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 6, 2018 5:54 PM
To: 'COGA TF' <public-cognitive-a11y-tf@w3.org>
Subject: Front-matter

Hi Everyone,

I was going to investigate the 'front-matter', regarding the easy-read overview being worked on and what flexibility there is.

Looking into it [1], the "status" section is very formulaic, practically hard-coded.

There are less rules for the "Abstract", except that there has to be one (called Abstract). There are some very strong conventions around what it says (see any of the "Technical Report" docs [2], the clue is in the name).

What I spectacularly failed to say on the call was:
The intended audience for this document is people who write documents with this kind of front-matter & format.

The gap-analysis (as chartered) is aimed at spec-writers and, regardless of ability/disability, reading & writing specs is something they are used to. Not following the format would make it less usable for that purpose/role/audience. For example, "examples of people and their Web problems" is not accurate enough for this purpose & audience.

That does not apply to the coga-usable doc, for which there is a good argument to make it super-clear, and perhaps avoid the 'stuff' that has to be added to a TR doc. That could be done by publishing it in the WAI area like the techniques & understanding docs for WCAG.

Having said that, there are certainly improvements to make in the gap-analysis abstract, and there is no objection to an easy-read overview in the introduction.

For example, with the coga-usable document separated, it should be tweaked to reflect that. Combing the current and easy-read version, I would suggest something like:
-------------------
This document focuses on the state of accessibility for people with learning and cognitive disabilities when using the Web. It builds on the Cognitive Accessibility User Research [coga-user-research] and Cognitive Accessibility Issue Papers [coga-issue-papers].

This document provides:
*       a summary of issues and techniques,
*       unmet user needs,
*       suggested ways technologies may meet these needs in the future.

This document is produced by the Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force (COGA TF), a joint task force of the Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG) and the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) of the Web Accessibility Initiative.

For more general advice on supporting people with learning and cognitive disabilities see "Making content usable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities" [coga-usable].
-------------------

Does that make sense?

-Alastair

1] https://www.w3.org/pubrules/doc/rules/?profile=WD

2] https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/CR-css-cascade-3-20180828/

3] https://rawgit.com/w3c/coga/master/gap-analysis/index.html#abstract