Re: Meeting with SVG, XHTML, WAI people to move forward on ARIA as a cross cutting technology

Hi Mark,

The bigger issue is simply this. The web has moved to RIAs. JavaScript use
is close to 60% of all web pages. CSS, if it has not already, will have
passed it. We have a solution with ARIA that causes people with
disabilities to be able to access this new web. The users don't care if
aria properties have a colon, a hyphen, or an underscore - just that it
works. ARIA works today.The purpose of the meeting was to get some of the
leaders, who want ARIA to move forward, to get together and discuss how we
can make it easier for incorporation into HTML, SVG, and XHTML - then take
the points of agreement and understanding and share them with our
respective groups we belong to. It was minuted (I was typing furiously so
and if the group were any bigger my hands would given out) and posted. I
had an action item from PF to do this which I fulfilled. The meeting was
tense a times but at the end of the day it was very constructive and
eveyone's heart is in the right place. We also hashed out that there were
some legacy browser issues that we had to deal with and SVG features that
were problematic making it difficult to use colon or hypen respectively.
These are in the minutes.

I agree there are some problems with the parameters set by the W3C, and
that there is a vision issue, but perhaps the intent was to force
discussions like this to get them worked out. Having the small teams get
together does not hurt. I am a bit nervous about starting a task force
though as we could be out again another year - we can't wait that long and
we are very close. Seems like shooting a mouse with a bazooka.

I have scheduled a follow up to discuss role because we did not get to it.
Want to come?

Rich


Rich Schwerdtfeger
Distinguished Engineer, SWG Accessibility Architect/Strategist
Chair, IBM Accessibility Architecture Review  Board
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/schwer


                                                                           
             "Mark Birbeck"                                                
             <mark.birbeck@for                                             
             msPlayer.com>                                              To 
             Sent by:                  Richard                             
             mark.birbeck@x-po         Schwerdtfeger/Austin/IBM@IBMUS      
             rt.net                                                     cc 
                                       "HTMLWG WG" <public-html@w3.org>,   
                                       "XHTML2 WG" <public-xhtml2@w3.org>  
             10/17/2007 04:55                                      Subject 
             PM                        Re: Meeting with SVG, XHTML, WAI    
                                       people to move forward on ARIA as a 
                                       cross cutting technology            
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




Rich,

>  Sorry, I meant xhtml 2 working goup. There is no "xhtml working group."
BTW if you click the
> link to XHTML on the W3C web site it goes the the XHTML 2 working group.

It was Anne who was making the distinction between the "XHTML WG" and
the "XHTML 2 WG", not me; I used the term "XHTML WG" and he rather
astutely pointed out that there was no such thing.


> I have to say I think you are going a bit overboard.

There isn't much I can say to that...I don't think I am. :)


> We have bigger problems here than the semantics of the subject line.

You surely don't think that this about the semantics of the subject
line, Richard. This is about many things, but that is not one of them.

The subject line was mentioned because it was phrased to imply that a
meeting had taken place which involved an exchange of views from
various 'communities'. That is not what happened, and I didn't want
people to be misled into thinking it had.

As to having "bigger problems", we definitely agree there. :) I'm
having trouble seeing how this will be resolved in any useful way
though, given the parameters that have been set by the W3C. This is as
much about having a clear 'vision' as it is about producing a
technical solution.

Regards,

Mark

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