minutes from today's call

available at http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/meetings/20000417.html

included below:

17 April 2000 ER telecon

-- Summary of action items and resolutions
LK invite T.V. Raman to face2face.
WC make changes to charter and publish for group review.
Everyone: review the new draft of the charter by Friday, 21 April.
LK and WC derive agenda from today's discussion

-- Participants
Len Kasday
Harvey Bingham
Chris Ridpath
Wendy Chisholm
William Loughborough
Michael Cooper
Regrets
Gregory Rosmaita
Status of ERT being public
WC I was out Thursday and Friday and have a few things to clean up. Will 
make the request to the Web and Comm teams today to publish ERT as a public 
working draft. Hopefully, it will then be public this week.

-- Agenda for f2f in Amsterdam
LK proposal:
Day 1
Welcome
Intro's
brief demos and discussions of aprompt, bobby, tablin, WAI reporting tool, 
WAVE Discussion of ERT Issues
Day 2 (with Authoring tools group)
Status reports and discussions with other tool developers...
what tool developers to invite?
topics?
WL Amaya invited?
WC yes, but unable to make it. Woman from allaire is coming. Gerald 
Oskoboiny. others. want to have strong
HB we have a set of tools we don't have a strength and weaknesses amongst 
the tools that might help somebody. How do the tool contradict each other. 
A cross-tool assessment. Make sure statements of the tools are up to date.
WL use the checklist to determine this.
HB help to have a pointer from developer to their results of the checklist.
WC what do people want out of the meeting? Chris, what can we
CR a-prompt we need more feedback. how reach agreement? how move on?
WL get our list included in as many commercial authoring tools as possible. 
when someone uses an authoring tool is a way to get to these tools.
WC so you're saying "strategizing" - epsecially when AU group is present.
LK since a bunch of new people and those with development experience, would 
like to push the envelope. we have tended to discuss things straightforward 
strategies. i'd like to see us put in a serious effort on complicated 
things. this should attract developers. include: schemas for describing 
accessibility, pattern recognition or AI to sense what's going on on the 
page, tool to deduce the headers
WL a "structuralizer"?
WC brainstorming sessions of more difficult items? allow ourselves to dream 
a little bit?
WL we talked about including this type of thing in an Authoring Tool.
WC demonstration of tools? good way to get feedback? or do on our own time 
before we arrive?
LK gives sense that something is real.
@@LK invite T.V. Raman to face2face.
MC demo be useful but keep it limited. review the landscape of features and 
how that compares with ERT.
WL show excerpts of code.
LK really?
HB get lost in the detail?
WL pseudocode?
LK the tools look at attribute values. ERT is sort of pseudo-code. would 
not want to see Java or Perl on official meeting time.
WC what about demoing after lunch? a break out session?
LK I like to see something concrete. discussion is more productive when 
concrete things. take a bunch of tools, those that are represented or not, 
show screen shots of each tool. there will be people who are not familiar 
with the tools.
WC interaction stimulate the ideas.
LK range of tools - a fast way to get an overview. review of what tools out 
there and demos. each demo should contain an overview.
MC want to do goal-setting. tool demos might interfere.
CR nice to see the tools but don't want to take up too much time.
WL show off in 10 minutes.
MC more of an appetite wetter.
WL a sales pitch in a sense.
WC 1 1/2 hours of demos.
/* discussion */
WC summary: Thursday: pound on ERT, Friday: strategize and demo.
MC need a structure for Thursday. need idea of what things to come out of 
the meeting with. timeframes so we make sure to cover things. should set 
goals for the group and how to achieve them.

-- Charter
WC have had not comments. not sure if I should push it forward. what do 
people thing?
WL categories things in parantheses should be the first thing after number. 
should be definition list. like to see testers include people doing this 
for policy matters. a company will ask a tester to ensure pages conform or 
person in purchasing department of U.S. govnt or hearing offiicer who has 
to determine if a site is accessible under the law.
LK the way it is written, i think it is part of the organization who is 
writing the web site. you are getting at external people.
WL some language that these people are "judges."
HB testers don't always carry the same weight.
LK "those who need to evaluate web sites: policy makers, management, 
software testers, ..." people higher up on management tree.
WC mission statement?
The mission of the Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ER WG) is:
to document techniques for creating Evaluation and Repair Tools;
to find tools that implement the techniques and where there are none, 
implement them ourselves;
to provide a discussion forum to review and collaborate on tool development;
to assess the impact of evaluation and repair tools on the accessibility of 
the Web.
LK #4 - evaluate the impact is new.
WC we have to be able to assess our impact. perhaps better to say how many 
of our techniques are implemented.
WL but to tell whether our tools are in use is different than impact on the 
accessibility of the web.
LK the wording would be: to evaluate the degree to which our tools are used.
WC techniques being implemented or tools being used by people?
LK availability of tools that include these features.
WC determining if techniques implemented is straightforward, but how many 
people use, is that possible?
LK those that are online can track accessess.
WC what is the benefit of knowing that?
LK benefit to see the accessiblity of web change because of these 
tools...we could have 1000 tools out there and every authoring tool 
included but have people not make accessible web pages.
WL as long as we don't have to assess the impact that we have on the 
accessibility of the web.
LK "to find tools that implement the techniques and where there are none, 
implement them ourselves;" in the case of WAVE, A-prompt, and Bobby. We're 
working in close collaboration, but they are not being developed by the group.
WL what do you mean by the group?
LK of the tools that are on our list, WAVE, A-prompt, and Bobby, which if 
any can we say we have implemented ourselves.
HB only way to do that is to say those paid for by w3c.
WL was WAVE developed by group or by yourself? pride of authorship issue.
MC Bobby is CAST's tool but we implement guidelines by w3c. work with ER is 
an extension. we are implementing an automatized version of that, although 
w3c guidelines.
CR same for A-prompt.
WC "ensure that comes into being"?
CR promote?
LK I can envision a project where someone in the group is managing change 
control system, a different person working on module A, someone else on 
module B...a standard software development project.
WL vivid imagination. i think this is something where chris writes 
something, then len writes something.
WC shares the vision. take Amaya. trying to get more developers on the list.
WL what about Amaya?
WC open source.
HB it is a testbed. it does not reach a level of commercial completeness.
WC that's why I also mentioned Mozilla.
HB limited participation. hard time imagining we'll have the clout.
WC "Where we can not find a tool that implements a technique from the ERT, 
we will: Participate in developing open source software such as Amaya or 
Mozilla, Develop a prototype to test that the technique is a sound 
suggestion, Provide a forum for members of the list to discuss tools in 
progress, such as A-Prompt, Bobby, WAVE, etc., Encourage developers of 
commercial tools to participate in the developer forum."
WL sort of a description from LK and HB that had to do with how this stuff 
is done when someone is manufacturing a software product or it's like 
mozilla where people put in bits and they get accepted or not. i thought 
you were organizing some such project.
LK 2nd bullet: "Develop a prototype to test that the technique is a sound 
suggestion," that's us. that's where the group does something. This 
certainly makes sense. If the group can develop a document we can develop code.
HB glad we have people willing to push code along. i raise the request that 
we expect that we feed it back to AU and UA where it is not reasonable.
WL not clear on what "develop a prototype" does. don't see evidence that 
this group could do that.
LK WAI has been delivering specifications. editors who are responsible for 
overall development. other members criticize, give feedback, rewrite 
pieces, submit proposals.. if use that model for software have 1 or more 
people responsible for code to come out and others delivering modules. not 
quite an open source framework. in other open source world, is it 
centralized? or distributed?
WL read the Cathedral and the Bazaar. it is very distributed. the 
centrality is a spot on the web. only a handful can change what is there. 
like amaya - you can put stuff there but only included if someone says ok. 
in the case of amaya - it's irene.
WC MC and CR??
CR agree with promotion, but not sure about implementation. not sure we 
should own them. aren't we more about the ideas.
WC yes, and making sure that those ideas come into being. not sure what you 
mean by "ownership?"
CR if implement ourselves then we own. if Len gave WAVE to the group then 
the group becomes the gatekeeper.
LK right, like the ERT doesn't go out until the group has consensus.
CR can see that the group has tools. someone create something, "i can't 
maintain anymore. give to the group." now the group has to maintain.
LK if we implement something ourselves it implies that we will support and 
maintain.
WC that's why suggest "prototype in the deliverables." then in mission 
statement: change "to find tools that implement the techniques and where 
there are none, implement them ourselves;" where there are none, prototype 
or participate in the development of an implementation.
MC purpose of prototype then is another way to stimulate tool developers to 
implement the techniques in their tools.
LK practical aspects: let's say we implement a prototype and there is a 
home page for that prototype. this would imply that the logo and home page 
is at the w3c site. as i do something on their time, they want to have that 
result is the logo "institute on disabilities."
WC don't think it would be a problem for it to be hosted elsewhere. 
different from w3c technical report.
want to clarify that this proposal is ok, "where there are none, prototype 
or participate in the development of an implementation."
MC more than demonstrating feasibility what the prototype does is think of 
specifics that might not occur just working at high-level of ERT. 
therefore, that's the main benefit.
LK other aspect, we could find out that something was not useful. even 
though it seems like a good idea on paper.
MC we will find that when we work on the guidelines that we get to those in 
ERT that we have not got into yet.
LK especially heuristics. a rating for a page for cognitive disabilities. 
show results to experts. could find out that it does not apply. or get 
false positives.
WL /* reads quote from Jason */ accessibility as an additive...
@@WC make changes to charter and publish for group review.
LK wording about prototypes testing the usefulness of techniques.

$Date: 2000/04/17 15:39:16 $ Wendy Chisholm
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Monday, 17 April 2000 11:41:29 UTC