Fwd: My Retirement Letter

This was sent (publicly) to the Accessibility Guidelines (AG) Working 
Group, by someone who has been involved for a great many years. To some 
extent Wayne's email is AG specific, but I also think it contains some 
messages that are relevant to the work we are trying to do here in ID CG.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:  My Retirement Letter
Resent-Date:  Tue, 14 Jul 2020 01:48:39 +0000
Resent-From:  w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Date:  Mon, 13 Jul 2020 18:47:41 -0700
From:  Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>
To:  GLWAI Guidelines WG org <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>, W3C WAI ig 
<w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, Tom Jewett <tom@knowbility.org>, Judy Brewer 
<jbrewer@w3.org>



Dear Friends,

I am retired from AG. I’m 72 and I am gardening, teaching my 
grandchildren on Zoom and studying mathematics. It’s fun, and I strongly 
recommend giving yourself time to enjoy your time on earth.

This letter is to reflect on my time with the W3C. It has been 
wonderful, even if I got really frustrated at times. That is the nature 
of changing the world. We all have good ideas, and at the W3C many are 
brilliant. I felt honored to bask in the glow of so many luminaries. I 
was so lucky to meet people who had a lot to give and gave all of it.

I also love what you have accomplished. Incomplete, sometimes flawed, 
but always improving life for people with disabilities, the W3C work has 
done more for print disabilities than any other group in history. I can 
read almost every topic I need to read. Sometimes I hit dead ends, but 
today that is rare.

I am mildly sorry about being a pain in the --- at times. I do wish I 
could have remained diplomatic, but I am flawed.

There one thing I would like to suggest for future Wayne’s. When a 
person complains about an access issue please listen to the need. People 
with disabilities often perceive issues that support personnel and 
researchers do not know. Support personnel and researchers are experts, 
but the person with the disability knows more than any expert.

When a person with a disability says, “I cannot do activity X.” There 
really might be profound accessibility issues that have not been 
recognized at present. At that point we need to ask four questions.

  1.

       Does the issue observed problem reveal of a new accessibility 
barrier?

  2.

       Can the barrier be addressed with web technology?

  3.

       Does the structure of web accessibility guidelines enable a
     strategy that can address this issue?

  4.

       If 1 and 2 are true and 3 is false, is it ethical for the AG to
     ignore the issue because it exceeds the scope of the current
     accessibility guidelines?

I am not sure how to implement a protocol like this, but I think it is 
necessary. Silver is moving in this direction, but I think our new 
guidelines need to build in mechanisms for growth and foundational review.

WCAG 2 attempted to anticipate changes in web technology with the Robust 
Principle, but it did not make room for changes to assistive 
technologies or the need for new assistive technologies. At the writing 
of WCAG 2 there was little to no consideration of the personalization 
issue. WCAG 2 addressed transformations of one learning mode to another 
mode like text-to-speech and speech-to-text, and mouse access (visual) 
to keyboard. However, WCAG 2 did not address intra modal transformatio. 
For example, text to modified text was not addressed in an effective 
way. Real access to intra modal transformation lives outside the scope 
of WCAG 2. For example, change of color is impossible within the scope 
of WCAG 2. We just gave that up.

Sadly, the WG often questions the user need when the current technology 
or limits of the guidelines cannot slove the problem.

When a future Wayne comes along, maybe you could just say. “You have 
identified a serious problem, but we don’t know how to solve it.” That 
would be disappointing, but it would not feel dismissive.

With Love, Wayne

Received on Tuesday, 14 July 2020 07:07:08 UTC