Dec 17/18 meeting

Sorry, but it was not easy to participate in today's meeting. I guess 
there are tricks to making it possible for those using IRC to 
participate and we should work on them.

I was worried by the meeting though. It seems to me that despite the 
hard work that has gone on recently, the final bits of the work are 
not easily dealt with and we have not yet reached final agreement. I 
guess that's typical of AU work - it involves several layers of 
embedded understanding and it is not easy to synchronise everything 
for the final result. But boy it's important - surely the tools will 
make more difference than all the other things put together, if 
they're right?

Jutta and I have been working with tools folk in the IMS context, 
Jutta and Jan in the UT context, helping them get up to s 508 
standards, us here in Oz asking them to go further to comply with our 
W3C-based laws. DCMI has a new accessibility group that is hoping to 
get accessibility metadata spread quickly around the world, depending 
on WCAG and EARL.  We have a meeting scheduled for France in Feb. But 
oops! we're losing our W3C staff person? someone who can bring all 
the W3C technical bits and pieces together? the EARL expertise? And 
with all these complicated docs outstanding we're losing Ian?

Personally, I am wondering why? and especially, why at a time when we 
need the expertise, dedication and independence of a W3C staffers to 
support WG members, and we need to be sure that all the WAI recs are 
well integrated into the other W3C recs? at a time when there is 
unfinished business that is demonstrable hard? Is there expertise 
that will be available immediately to support our work? Strikes me 
the world is already depending upon a very small number of experts. 
I am worried about the work I am engaged in and how it will fare with 
a hiatus in W3C support. Others are probably in the same boat?

Will anybody be at the meeting in France? (I have bought a ticket and 
am now worrying about this expensive investment!)

We do see the world upside down from here - or is it a bit that way?

Liddy

Received on Tuesday, 18 December 2001 07:25:40 UTC