List of relevant technologies (Was: Re: Bring the group back to life - Call for consensus by 24 July 2020)

Hi Matthew,

See comments inline on the list of relevant technologies

------ Original message ------
From: "Matthew Atkinson" <matkinson@paciellogroup.com>
Date: 30/07/2020 23:07:11

>Hi all,
>
>Thanks Francois for making the accessibility-related charter update; it looks great to me. I have now been officially accepted into the group from a W3C perspective, so I can act as a liaison with the Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) group if needed.
>
>It was good to hear about your backgrounds, Noël, Tom and Vincent, and from Francois with the latest update on progress since the workshop. Here's a bit more about me: I am an accessibility consultant with The Paciello Group (primarily helping clients make their web and mobile apps accessible). Before that, I was a researcher in academia and worked on digital accessibility projects [1]. I have worked on some game accessibility projects in the ancient past [2] and have recently found a bit of time to start playing games again [3]. Whilst I don't have a games industry background, I would be happy to help in any way I can :-).
>
>In order to keep the momentum going, I have two questions...
>
>1. Is there anything small we could work on right away? I know that discoverability is a major concern, and am catching up with the schema proposal Noël made [4]. Is there anything else that we could get started on? One thing I was wondering: do we have a recorded list of all of the things that other W3C groups (and external organisations) are working on that are relevant to this group? Here are a couple that spring to mind from work going on in APA:
>
>    * XR Accessibility User Requirements: https://www.w3.org/TR/xaur/ - just published and a really clear and helpful overview.
>
>    * Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies (FAST): https://w3c.github.io/apa/fast/
>
>    There is a page on this group's wiki about features we are tracking [5] but it was last edited in 2012; would it be helpful to go through that list and update it (or put the list somewhere else)?
I don't have particular inputs on topics that should get prioritized. 
That's what I hope the CG can help figure out.

A few comments regarding the list of technologies that are relevant to 
games, I would see 3 different things that the CG could be doing:

1. Collecting and documenting specific hurdles and gaps, e.g. the Web 
Audio API limitations that Simon mentions in another email in this 
thread. This could be done through the Wiki or as Markdown in a GitHub 
repo. I would keep it as simple as possible to avoid having to spend too 
much time addressing editorial issues. This would allow to identify 
needs on technologies of interest, and run discussions with the groups 
responsible for them.

2. Preparing a roadmap of technologies that are relevant for games. I 
had prepared such a roadmap before the workshop [7]. That document needs 
to be updated. For instance, it does not mention the XR Accessibility 
User Requirements document you mention. My experience with these types 
of documents is that it is best (although possibly counterintuitive) 
*not to* tell a story, but rather to keep the structure minimal and 
mention technologies separately. This makes the result slightly less 
pleasant to read, but makes maintenance far easier, and the main 
difficulty with these documents is to keep them up-to-date! If that 
seems useful - and provided I get some help! -, I'm happy to refresh and 
maintain the Games on the Web roadmap within the CG. I'm also happy to 
hand over editorship to someone else if there is interest :)

3. Preparing a vision document. As opposed to the roadmap, here the goal 
is to tell a story. I would be more cautious about investing time on 
that in the CG. These documents tend to require a lot of time and tend 
to become obsolete fast as they are difficult to maintain. However, they 
can also be very useful to converge on a common perspective.

In other words, I would do 1 and 2, and would leave 3 on the side for 
now.

In any case, the Wiki pages need to be refreshed, indeed!


>
>
>2. Francois mentioned the forum Noël set up [6] - is that the place where we should be having all discussions (i.e. not this list)? If so I'll move my question above to that forum.

I expect some back and forth between the forum and the list while the 
group gets up to speed, but that is indeed the idea.

Thanks,
Francois.



>
>
>I just started re-playing Duet... I would love a slo-mo mode as my coordination isn't the best, but the bits I can play are a lot of fun, and the idea is really compelling. Some of my faves are Descent (6DoF robo-shooter from the '90s), Half-Life, Deus Ex, Braid, Beneath a Steel Sky, A Dark Room and many Amiga ones :-).
>
>best regards,
>
>
>Matthew
>
>[1] http://matatk.agrip.org.uk/research/
>[2] I'm working on getting this working again on modern platforms, so there's nothing to show at the moment, but years ago a friend and I made a version of Quake with enhanced audio cues, and I've also worked on a proof-of-concept "Level Description Language" that allows people to describe in text, rather than visually design, maps. I am hoping to have a release for Windows 10 and the latest macOS soon: https://github.com/matatk/agrip
>[3] Here's a talk about my experiences of gaming with a vision impairment: http://matatk.agrip.org.uk/talks/2019/game-accessibility-low-vision/ (I recommend 'story mode' so you get the details).
>[4] https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/2565
>[5] https://www.w3.org/community/games/wiki/Features
>[6] https://www.html5gamedevs.com/forum/40-web-gaming-platform/

[7] https://w3c.github.io/web-roadmaps/games/

>
>--
>Matthew Tylee Atkinson
>--
>Senior Accessibility Engineer
>The Paciello Group
>https://www.paciellogroup.com
>A Vispero Company
>https://vispero.com
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Received on Friday, 31 July 2020 10:07:22 UTC