Minutes of the Silver meeting of 18 May 2018

Formatted minutes: https://www.w3.org/2018/05/18-silver-minutes.html

Text of minutes:

   [1]W3C

      [1] http://www.w3.org/

                               - DRAFT -

                 Silver Community Group Teleconference

18 May 2018

Attendees

   Present
          Lauriat, JohnM, jeanne, Jennison, Charles, LuisG,
          JakeAbma, alastairc, Roy, MichaelC, kirkwood,
          jaeunjemmaku, Imelda, Jan, shari

   Regrets

   Chair
          SV_MEETING_CHAIR

   Scribe
          LuisG

Contents

     * [2]Topics
         1. [3]AccessU & GAAD Recap
         2. [4]Requirements draft
     * [5]Summary of Action Items
     * [6]Summary of Resolutions
     __________________________________________________________

AccessU & GAAD Recap

   <shari> Jan present +

   Shawn: AccessU and GAAD Recap! Who was present? Jan and Shari?

   Jan: Shari, do you want to talk and I'll fill in?

   Sharia: We only had 2 women that joined us for the
   mid-morning/lunch session. We went over everything we did at
   the design sprint; talked about conformance. Generated ideas.
   Got suggestions on how to measure and test using various
   rubrics or weighted scoring system.
   ... Talked about giving more credit to companies that...if we
   had bronze, silver, gold, platinum levels...people currently in
   AA would be grandfathered in at say "Bronze"
   ... talked about different ways to incentive companies to meet
   the new requirements and incorporate them. Maybe assign points
   if they do X requirement and a user study with people with some
   disabilities might be worth more points.

   <Charles> using that metallurgical metaphor, perhaps Silver is
   the highest rank

   Sharia: later in the afternoon some more folks joined and
   brought up problems with that approach. Definitely some
   concerns with trying to level things.
   ... Mary Jo from IBM showed up. Talked about their a11y
   statement and their work. They self identify and don't go
   through a 3rd party. Maybe give more points for people using
   3rd party evaluators, but Mary Jo concerned that IBM would be
   punished in that scenario since they do it themself.
   ... maybe consider the type of business, the size of the
   business
   ... Jan, were there others beyond size and type?

   Jan: Don't remember more than that.

   Jeanne: We had people come and got good feedback. When we were
   talking about getting 3rd party evaluation it was a fairly new
   idea.
   ... One of the things that came out in the afternoon that I
   really like is a solution to the point system. How do you work
   around someone that does a lot of work in one area, but not in
   another area. But the point system gives them credit
   unnecessarily.
   ... Maybe have areas where you have to get points in each area,
   so it would balance out the points system and give us
   protection from those gaming it.

   Jan: I think it was that last lady that came in and had
   resources to help with it. We have notes and stuff, we should
   get that sent sent to the group.

   Jeanne: We made a list of things we might want to incentivize.
   It's a pretty comprehensive list. One of things is taking
   actions to improve the culture.
   ... I thought it was pretty cool.

   Shawn: Trying to wrap my head around what the would look like.

   Jeanne: Ongoing training, executive level measurement for
   accessibility. All of your executives job measurement would be
   how accessible is their portion of the product that are actual
   measures.

   Shawn: Seems like wouldn't be as great for comformance. It's
   not really relevant, while it effects how accessible it's
   likely to be, it's not representative of how accessible it is.

   Jeanne: The beauty of the different measurements come in, you
   could have different points for different types of products.
   ... different criteria depending on the size of the company.
   Wouldn't be penalized if you're small and not doing some things
   expected of big companies.
   ... It gives you an idea of how well it will be maintained in
   the future.

   Shawn: Cool. I'm looking forward to reading the write-up of
   everything.
   ... Anything else of note around AccessU or GAAD?

   Jeanne: I did an AccessU webinar. It went okay.
   ... How did yours go, Charles?

   Charles: It was an exhausting day? For the last 3 years have
   been doing lunch and learn at my company and then at a meet up
   in the evening. I shared a shirt URL in my presentation in the
   afternoon, but don't know that anyone cared to go follow it.

   Zacom, next item

Requirements draft

   <Lauriat>
   [7]https://docs.google.com/document/d/15F4KuNXYK5q2rOgb4ktHiJQM
   QpAEL9EetARpMU3vD_A/edit

      [7] https://docs.google.com/document/d/15F4KuNXYK5q2rOgb4ktHiJQMQpAEL9EetARpMU3vD_A/edit

   Shawn: I worked on this over the last several days in spare
   time between meetings.
   ... it's the same document we had before.
   ... but I worked in a separate document, which is why it didn't
   change. I took the long form stuff and moved it into the notes.
   And turned the requirements documents more into a draft of what
   we'd send to the working group as "Hey, these are the
   requirements we want to do"
   ... I started with an abstract declaring what it is and what
   it's for since other requirement documents had it as well.
   ... From there, went into a basic introduction with wording
   that declared overall intentions. What's the point of the
   accessibility guidelines.

   <Lauriat> "People with disabilities encounter barriers to
   accessing and making use of content and functionality made
   available online. We need guidelines for how to identify these
   barriers for addressing so that people with disabilities can
   use the content and functionality."

   <Lauriat> "People need guidelines for how to create and assess
   content and functionality that they make available online."

   Shawn: Was trying to declare goals of Silver as a11y guidelines
   but have it not be just about web pages.
   ... "content and functionality" is how I phrased it
   ... still a bit aspirational for how we're trying to achieve
   those goals, and a rough version of what we did on Tuesday.
   ... removed a lot of the "mores" we can wordsmith it before
   actually submitting, but it's pretty much the same as what we
   had before

   Charles: Like the removal of "more"s
   ... can we go back a step to the intro of how you tried to
   remove "web?" i'm concerned with phrase "online" as a proxy for
   that. That means it could possibly exclude offline experiences,
   like Progressive Web Apps.

   Shawn: Wanted to be wary of...not just covering all of
   technology.

   Charles: Can't say "digital"

   Shawn: right, in one way it's too broad and one way it's too
   constraining.

   Charles: Maybe "using web technologies" and not consumed in a
   browser and would include native apps that call web services.

   Luis: I think we should avoid "web" because it will still be
   interpreted as "web pages"

   Shawn: Because we don't know the full scope of silver, it's
   difficult to describe what's included in Silver.

   Shari: What if you just put "digital" in front of content.

   Shawn: That gets into native very quickly. Like CDs are digital
   content that might never touch the internet. We might want to
   cover that but we haven't reached that decision.

   Jeanne: We don't want to say "content" because we're also
   including tools and user agents.

   Shawn: It's making use of content and functionality, but it
   includes tools used to make it and user agents displaying it.
   ... added some notes about that so we can address the need to
   add it.
   ... We have the design principles and following that, I have
   the requirements. And that's a pretty short section. Keeping it
   at Michaels' suggestion of a high level "this is what we want
   to do"

   <Lauriat> "Previous accessibility guidelines described how to
   make a set of web pages loaded with a traditional web browser
   accessible to people with disabilities. These guidelines
   provided this via strictly pass/fail tests with the goal of
   consistently reproducible conformance results."

   Shawn: starts with similarly awkardly worded paragraph

   (see paragraph above)

   <Lauriat> WCAG 2.0's requirements:
   [8]https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/NOTE-wcag2-req-20060425/

      [8] https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/NOTE-wcag2-req-20060425/

   Charles: I like the idea of comparing it to the scope of the
   previous guidelines instead of the outcomes of previous
   guidelines.

   Shawn: Trying to say "other guidelines have described things
   around a11y and we want to build on that with new requirements"
   ... not say "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines" so we can
   include ATAG, UAG, etc.
   ... even though it says specifically using a web browser, it
   still includes more

   Charles: I think it works as is

   Shawn: Now the actual requirements. Have two categories. The
   actual list is 6 points.
   ... Supporting needs of PWD, Make guidelines accessible.
   ... these six points have spoken to 11 problem statements. More
   like 10 of them. Persuading other is an overall industry thing
   and not solved by accessibility guidelines.
   ... Do we want to talk about categories first?

   Charles: I think the categories are fine.
   ... perhaps it's covered elsewhere...we should probably clearly
   articulate that there are governance requirements. We're also
   trying to solve regularity with which this guideline gets
   updated. Don't know if it fits neatly into those categories.

   Share: I think the categories are a little confusing. Why are
   4, 5, and 6 not meeting the needs of PWD
   ... If we want to keep the categories, I'd suggest we go
   "silver builds on the previous guidelines to...1) blah
   blah...by writing the guidelines using plain language...etc"
   ... doing that might make it a little more complicated than it
   needs to be. I like how it's simple and explicit in the
   beginning. Really nice job.

   Shawn: One of the things I was trying to do was make the
   requirements themselves easy to read. Other ones I looked at
   were 50 pages of clutter and little clarity

   Charles: Simpler structure makes it more concise. Removing two
   heading for the requirements list makes it simpler.

   Shawn: After the requirements, I have background which is the
   problem statements.
   ... I linked to problem statement page in the wiki...

   <Lauriat> The Problem Statements describe areas that came up in
   research for Silver that we need to focus on and address in the
   new guidelines, to provide some background for how we developed
   these requirements.

   Shawn: then the three problem statement areas in columns so
   it's not a lengthy list

   Shari: I like it

   Shawn: At the top you were saying it should start with the
   requirements. We didn't quite do that, but we have "these are
   the goals, here are the requirements to meet goals..."

   Charles: Following format of the 2.0 requirements document,
   statements like "identifying past work" are described with
   dates that occured

   Shawn: Will add a note to add dates.

   Charles: Don't know if that's required or the best ideas. Just
   noting it would be more consistent with previous requirement
   doc.

   Shawn: And I should probably link to our research page.
   ... with that, let's talk through requirements themselves. Even
   though only six, I think it covers several different points
   within the problem statements we had.
   ... The first is the longest one.

   <Lauriat> 1. Include guidelines that better supports people’s
   needs which do not have strict pass/fail tests, by developing
   alternative methods of measuring whether guidance has been
   implemented correctly.

   Charles: Only word that I would question is "correctly" maybe
   replace with sufficiently. More to meet need of people than the
   need of the guideline.
   ... don't mind the length.

   Shawn: There were two things I wanted this to cover and both
   very related.
   ... one is including "not strict pass/fail"
   ... and more "needs of people with disabilities"

   <Lauriat> Current edit: Silver will build on these previous
   guidelines to: …not have strict pass/fail tests, by developing
   alternative methods of measuring whether guidance has been
   implemented sufficiently that better supports people’s needs.

   Shawn: One of the other requirements is to write them using
   plain language. I think as a matter of translating from Shawn
   to plain language that will help.

   Next requirement.

   <Lauriat> 2. Develop a conformance model with the flexibility
   to include guidelines with ranges of helpfulness of
   implementations.

   Shawn: Needs measurability that is usable for people.
   ... If someone writes a clear label, might be clear for some,
   but not other people.
   ... The "helpfulness of implementations" needs better wording

   <kirkwood> Include guidelines which do not have strict
   pass/fail tests. Develop alternative methods of measuring
   implementation.

   Jeanne: I think we have to say "not exclusively pass/fail"
   We'll still have some, but it won't be the only methods.

   Shawn: I've updated it.

   <Lauriat> 3. Create a structure for guidelines that can better
   meet the needs of people with disabilities in future
   technologies and interactions.

   Shawn: time check is 9 minutes...moving to next requirement

   <Lauriat> Write the guidelines using Plain Language.

   <kirkwood> I like #4

   <Lauriat> 5. Make the guidelines available in different
   accessible and usable ways.

   Shawn: A lot of different people need to use the guidelines.
   They all have different backgrounds, so one size fits all
   doesn't work for that.
   ... a problem WCAG has is they see the supplementary materials
   and assume all of it is the guidelines.
   ... assume there is way too much that makes up the guidelines.
   We need other information that explains it differently that is
   a different way of reading the guidelines.

   <kirkwood> Have a clear graphic identity?

   Luis: I'm not sure what that question means.

   <Lauriat> 6. Use a process to work on Silver that can include
   more people with disabilities.

   <kirkwood> mqaning give the guidelines a clear structure and
   identity so you know you are on them

   Shawn: Ah, that makes sense

   <Lauriat> 6. Use a process to work on Silver that can include
   people with disabilities.

   Shawn: There are a lot of things that fall into that bucket.

   <kirkwood> very good requirment!

   Shawn: If everyone can think about this. Should we sent this to
   the overall community group. But here's our draft?
   ... should requirement 6 be requirement 1?
   ... will send this formally out to community groups. Letting
   them know it needs wordsmithing, simplification of structure,
   etc.
   ... then reconvene on tuesday and talk about revisiting project
   planning in light of these requirements will help.

   <Lauriat> trackbot, end meeting

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

   [End of minutes]