Circling back about the Collaboration Tools Accessibility FPWD

Hello,

I am writing about the draft of Collaboration Tools Accessibility User Requirements<https://w3c.github.io/ctaur/>.

As we agreed in the Thursday COGA meeting, I reviewed emails and minutes from previous meetings about the collaboration First Publish Working Draft (FPWD) that APA is preparing to publish.

I then followed up with the APA chairs to better understand the situation.

My key takeaways:

  *   APA offered an opportunity to comment before FPWD in August with a one month deadline so we are past the initial requested timeframe. A miscommunication occurred about whether that timeline was revised or not.
  *   No meeting is currently scheduled with any tool vendors nor are any currently being planned.
  *   APA can publish the FPWD and the RQTF can incorporate comments from COGA in January and February and republish the working draft shortly after that.

The advantage of allowing the FPWD to go forward is that it provides additional time for COGA to provide detailed review and comments.

We discussed this some in the COGA Planning call today. Lisa, Janina and I agreed that adding an Editor’s Note might help. The editor’s note would:

·       clearly state that the FPWD draft does not include information about cognitive and learning disabilities, and

·       point to a wiki page with content from previous work the COGA taskforce has done
This addition would make the status clearer to a reader who is not familiar with the draft process at W3C.

I do not see any disadvantage of APA publishing the FPWD, particularly with the editor’s note.

The AG chairs do not support objecting to the FPWD as a working group. If you have already responded to the CfC and these clarifications change your position, please update your response so APA has an accurate tally.

I am happy to answer any questions.

Kind regards,

Rachael


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Rachael Bradley Montgomery, PhD
Digital Accessibility Architect
Library of Congress
Email: rmontgomery@loc.gov<mailto:rmontgomery@loc.gov>