Re: My final attempt on explanation (was RE: [DRAFT] Heartbeat poll - update 2)

On Aug 3, 2009, at 8:13 PM, L. David Baron wrote:
> On Monday 2009-08-03 19:51 -0700, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>> John's point is that the W3C has a group specifically tasked to
>> make accessibility recommendations and their consensus differs
>> from what the editor placed in the HTML draft.  Their "small group"
>> far outnumbers everyone who has advocated the deprecation of summary.
>
> Has that group weighed in in this debate, in response to the
> evidence presented?  Or is it just that an out-of-date (i.e., not
> updated in response to newer evidence) recommendation of that group
> is being cited?

I don't know -- it isn't a relevant question.  The group exists

    http://www.w3.org/WAI/

and seems to be open for your input.

> In general, I think one of the worst features of the W3C process is
> that it tends to escalate any debate involving multiple groups into
> a coordination issue, by encouraging to encourage the two groups to
> come to consensus separately on the same issue (leading to different
> results) and then resolve the already-hardened positions as a final
> (and by that point much more difficult) step.

That is the nature of any decision-making body that is so large
it requires specialization into groups.

> Instead, discussions should involve all relevant participants as
> early as possible.  If we want to have a chance at resolving this we
> should find a place to discuss it together, rather than asking one
> of the WAI groups to come up with a group response.

It isn't possible to have a discussion about everything in
every group.  The people who are most impacted by accessibility
decisions are, like everyone else, subject to limited time and
capacity for endless discussion.  As such, they have a place
for people to discuss WAI together, already, and it is pointless
to complain that they don't discuss it somewhere else.

....Roy

Received on Tuesday, 4 August 2009 03:25:07 UTC