Re: RESOLUTION to modify text alternative change proposal and reject WAI CG's consensus recommendation

Dear Laura:

Laura Carlson writes:
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> At the April 7, 2010 HTML5 Accessibility Task Force face to face
> meeting [1] a resolution [2] was made concerning the change proposal
> [3] that I drafted for HTML Issue 31 missing-alt [4].
> 
As others responding to this thread have correctly noted, we used the
resolution mechanism provided by W3C IRC tools ot help track our work.
Several times during the F2F we reiterated the important point that what
we actually meant was candidate resolutions for the TF's consideration
per our consensus policy:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/consensus-procedures

I must frankly confess that I am rather miffed by what I see as the
suggestion that we violated our own published consensus procedures. We
did no such thing. The IRC behavior we wanted to use and the consensus
decision term just happen to be the same word. To therefore equate them
as the same thing would be offensive were it intended, and simply wrong and
confused if unintended.

You go on further to refer to our candidate resolution on Alt, saying:

> 
> By this resolution this HTML5 accessibility task force is rejecting
> the June 10, 2009 Web Accessibility Initiative Coordination Group (WAI
> CG) consensus recommendation [5] on the subject.
> 
No. This is also incorrect. In fact, we adopted Laura's change proposal
implementing the WAI Ad Hoc's guidance regarding alt.

The one change we made, the one change that raises all this
consternation, deserves to be discussed thoroughly before the Task Force
votes on the candidate resolution that the Face to Face meeting is
forwarding to the TF.

However, I would invite you to join me in re-reading minutes from the Ad
Hoc's meetings. If you do that, I think you will find the change we made
was never discussed. I don't recall we ever discussed the relative
merits of conformance checkers emitting "error" vs. "warning" messages.
That was not our focus in the Ad Hoc. We, rather glibly, said "error" in
what could easily be understood as a generic sense.

The fact is that there are compelling arguments both ways on this topic.
We discussed these at some length in the Face to Face. And, because many
people who participate in the TF were unable to attend the F2F, we will
discuss them again, on list and on teleconference, before we bring the
F2F's candidate resolution to a vote.

Janina

Received on Friday, 9 April 2010 15:03:23 UTC