Possibility of moving Personalization Semantics out of ARIA and into APA

Hi Personalization Semantics Task Force members.

As you may be aware, the charters of the ARIA and APA Working Groups are
each about to expire. As part of the re-chartering process, both Working
Groups need to identify their proposed deliverables. Personalization
Semantics is currently listed as a deliverable of the ARIA Working
Group, and we believe it would be a better fit for everyone as an APA
deliverable.

First and foremost are the technical aspects of implementation. In
particular:

1. ARIA does not control what content will be loaded.
2. ARIA does not impact how loaded content will be displayed.
3. ARIA information is conveyed via accessibility APIs specific to
   individual platforms through mappings specs ("AAMs").

In other words, ARIA does not impact the experience of sighted users.
This is by design. And it seems to be the opposite of what is described
in the Personalization Semantics Explainer [1]. For instance, in section
1.1 ("Why We Need Personalization"), it says the following:

  Some users need extra support. This can include:
  * Symbols and graphics that they are familiar with
  * Tooltips
  * Language they understand
  * Less features
  * Separating advertisements, so they do not confuse them with native
    content
  * Keyboard short cuts

In order to address those needs, the experience of sighted users is
necessarily impacted: Personalization by definition is to make
determinations regarding what gets included on screen, what gets
excluded, and how rendered content should appear. ARIA does not do that.

Furthermore, achieving the Personalization needs listed above does not
require the behind-the-scenes information consumed by platform-specific
assistive technologies. You should be able to achieve Personalization
Semantics support much more quickly and easily than ARIA -- and in a way
that works in all operating systems -- via browser extensions. Indeed
there is already at least one proof of concept demonstrating this.

It also seems that using ARIA-style states and properties is only one
proposed method of implementing the desired outcome. The Personalization
explainer lists HTML microdata and RDF/A as other potential
implementation techniques. Having this specification within the ARIA
working group seems to unnecessarily require an ARIA-style
implementation which may not be the best outcome for the specification.

That said, Personalization Semantics is an essential module and a key
part of WAI and needs a home. If that home is not within the ARIA
Working Group, where should it be? We do think Personalization Semantics
can benefit from the support of being housed within an existing WAI
Working Group so that those working on achieving it can focus on doing
so. That, combined with the fact that APA is considering including
normative deliverables in its upcoming charter, makes us think that APA
would be a much better fit for continuing this work.

Please let us know your thoughts on this matter. Thanks!
--Joanie and James

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/personalization-semantics-1.0/

Received on Thursday, 5 April 2018 21:59:05 UTC