Joint task force on ARIA user agent implementation

The Protocols and Formats WG is setting up a task force to work on ARIA
implementation, which is primarily but not exclusively about how user
agents should map ARIA features to Accessibility APIs. We want this task
force to be a joint task force with the HTML WG. This is because of the
overlaps in the work and because some people in both Working Groups are
already working to some extent on this. HTML needs information about
accessibility API mapping, and ARIA and HTML should be "compatible" in
how they do that. We had some discussion of the overlap in a breakout
session of the HTML WG during TPAC last year:
http://www.w3.org/2008/10/24-role-minutes.

A work statement is available at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-ua-task-force. We discussed this a bit on
last Thursday's HTML call
(http://www.w3.org/2009/02/05-html-wg-minutes), as we want the HTML WG
to approve that there would be a joint task force and get some of the
members involved. There was some concern about time commitment and we've
revised the participation expectation to 6 to 8 hours per month, or one
or two hours per week on average. Also we expect that for most people
this won't be new work, but will be a mechanism to coordinate existing
work. We think the task force is likely to be operational for a few months.

Cynthia Shelly, who is a member of both the HTML WG and the Protocols
and Formats WG, will be the initial facilitator of the task force, once
it is approved. She will work on organizing the deliverables and asking
people to participate. If you are interested to participate yourself,
please reply to this message, on or off list.

Michael
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Michael Cooper
Web Accessibility Specialist
World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative
E-mail cooper@w3.org <mailto:cooper@w3.org>
Information Page <http://www.w3.org/People/cooper/>