Re: Accessibility Task Force

On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 15:05 -0400, Michael Cooper wrote:
> The PFWG has no issues with the HTML patent policy, and I don't expect
> most of the individual members of PF would have a problem joining the
> HTML WG under its policy.
> 
> The issue for us is not the patent policy. It is the need for a
> channel where we can work together to engineer accessibility features
> in HTML. The group-to-group communication has been difficult to
> manage, and there has been a lot of confusion about who represents
> whom. We believe a joint task force would provide a way to address
> that. If the task force becomes just an HTML task force, even if PFWG
> participants join it, we would still have the group-to-group
> communication uncertainties.

I'm not sure why you think there would be group-to-group communication
uncertainties there. The 8 points enumerated in [1] would still apply.
It could still be a joint task force. The main difference is that WAI PF
folks would need to join the HTML WG as well. Without it, there is no
way for us to enforce point 3.

> My understanding is that there is a lot of precedent for joint task
> forces at W3C. I have been involved in many of them and the question
> of the patent policy has never come up. There must be ways this was
> made acceptable to the participants. I certainly don't want this task
> force to create patent policy concerns, but I also don't think that
> patent policy concerns should be a reason to break a key feature of
> the task force, that it be joint.

It depends on the level of contributions between the Groups. For
example, XML Query and XSL had a joint task force for several years and
we resolved the Patent Policy issue by making the documents a joint
deliverables, ie the documents were listed in both charters. I don't
think that WAI PF is willing to change its charter to add HTML 5 in its
scope here.

Philippe

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Sep/0415.html

>

Received on Thursday, 10 September 2009 19:24:38 UTC