Minutes from 7 August telecon

Available at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/minutes/20000807.html

07 August 2000 ER WG Telecon

Summary of Action items and resolutions
·       Action WL Start the basis of "What are the accessibility features 
of RDF"
·       Action WC: Check out ·  schematron, how can we make it more precise?
·       Action LK post links to ASSETS and CUU
·       Action WC ask JB who she knows in the area that might be able to host.
·       Action LK post link to XML 2000 to the list.

Participants
·       Len Kasday
·       William Loughborough
·       Brian Matheny
·       Harvey Bingham
·       Wendy Chisholm

Regrets
·       Chris Ridpath
·       Michael Cooper
·       Dick Brown

Agenda
Agenda Item 1
Use of RDF to specify accessibility status of pages. This continues what we 
were discussing last tuesday's joint meeting with AU.
Our action item there was to review the capabilities of RDF... at least at 
a high level... and then think of some concrete examples of what assertions 
we would want to write and what inferences we would want to extract.
Example assertions:
A particular image [specified in some way] has no ALT text.
A particular image has ALT text but it's accuracy has not been manually 
checked
A particular image has ALT text and it's been check. [this is so that tool 
doesn't keep asking you to check it]
This authority says that the following checkpoints are checked
Example inferences:
Based on assertions from a particular authority, this page is accessible.
Based on assertions from multiple authorities, this page is accessible.
This page would be accessible with the following browsers ...

Agenda Item 2
Use of classes to define parts of a document (see discussion of "Grouping 
Links" at 31 July minutes.

References for monday
We just have to skim to get general idea... you can pick and choose from...
·       RDF spec (contains built in tutorial)
There are a number of intros to RDF on that page. A few that caught our 
eye.. don't know if they are the best...
·       Lassila
·       Bray
·       Miller
·       Ianella
·       Elements within a document may be referred to without anchors by 
·      XPointers Tutorial
·       XPointer candidate rec
·       ATAG Demo of RDF statements and inferences
·       Charles and Dan's exchange about classes
·       Dan's notes Grounding link relationships and classes names in the Web

RDF
HB Decreases clutter, they're all in the HEAD element.
WL Could be like external style sheets. Clutter is just link to RDF document.
LK In CMN example, when he refers to a resource, he spells out the full URI 
each time. With namespaces you could define an abbreviation that refers to 
the URI.
If you use a particular set of names a lot you can use those as the default 
names. As far as the end user is concerned this is all transparent.
WL I've started a new web site called rdf.pair.com/intro.html I would like 
some help on quotes and references. "Sipping from a firehose."
LK A quote on the page says that the difference from previous technologies 
is that previously centralized and now decentralized.
WL A zillion accessibility standards, who do you trust? How do you check 
that you are not being spammed by a porn site? The naked lady site put 
every word in the dictionary in their meta info, the search engine doesn't 
know the difference. Need digital signatures.
LK Let's come up with a bunch of RDF statements that we would like to see 
put on the Web then decide what to do with them. The machinery for doing 
stuff with this is being experimented with. Several inference engines 
available none are Recommendation.
We can RDF statements that identify who said what. A machine searching out 
the info could determine who asserts it.
Who said it?
Basis of what being said. In U.S.: WCAG, 508, Microsoft, ATT, etc.
Statement itself - we have AERT.
WL Before you go into doing that, look at the dublin core. They have 15 
recognized things.
LK /* looking at the dublin core */ title, creator, subject, date, type, 
format, identifier, source, language, relation, coverage, etc.
HB Some of those can be multiple.
LK Many of these have obvious uses.
WL Rather than reinvent the wheel, let's see what they mean by that. As you 
get into it, then you can say, "this comes under that" We'll have to be 
immersed in this since the tools will use it.
LK looking at just "title, creator, and subject" how would we use these? 
I'm an evaluation tool, I don't look at the page, but what other 
authorities have said about a page, then I draw a conclusion about the 
page. Let's come up with examples of how these are used.
WL Has no alt-tags, alt contains the word ".gif".
LK How actually use.
WC Need for page level and element level.
LK A page where AFB has approved the alt-text, a deafness organization has 
approved the captions in the movie, etc. Some statements will apply to 
multiple elements.
WL We have lots of good ideas for how to use. But, XML is just 3 letters. 
There is time to digest this.
LK I agree, but I'm trying to get some concrete examples for how to use 
this stuff and what we're going to do about it. Are we going to define RDF 
predicates that people can use?
HB In the latest Dublin Core they have added qualifiers (refinements) to 
their elements. "for relation" "has part, is references by, format of, etc."
LK When I look at the Dublin Core elements, they instantly make sense when 
I want to apply to a book or article, I am having trouble seeing how they 
apply to what we're doing. I"m not saying they don't apply, but I don't 
comprehend it yet.
WL We have a lot of studying to do.
LK Maybe we haven't assimilated the information well enough, but I 
personally do not see how to apply.
WC Relationship.
HB Digital Talking Book using some, still in flux. Mostly SMIL.
LK In the expanded aspect, do these touch on internal aspects of a book? 
chapters?
HB If a book has a narrator, who narrator specific chapters, commentary.
WL There will be concordances for War and Peace just as with Bible. You 
better have a way to sift through it.
LK If an authority publishes a review of a web site or part of it, The 
Dublin Core provides us with the way to publish the commentary. Creator, 
Contributor. Commentator. You could have cross evaluation project to 
evaluate web pages. This describes the commentary itself.
WL This whole vein is that a lot of the meta stuff appears within a 
document, e.g., creator, date, etc. But it doesn't have to be. E.g. you can 
comment on the Bible without having written it.
LK Does the Dublin Core have special terms for works that are reviews of 
other works.
HB Don't believe so, no. "Is referenced by" and "references"
LK Are there various types of references?
WL You can create that on your own.
HB /* reads about references from dublin core */
LK Say there is a history book that uses HB's as a secondary source 
material. Or I could review HB's book and reference it. At this point in 
time, the dublin core does not distinguish between these references. I'm 
reviewing or making use of.
HB There are further text to use.
LK A web site is a review, we have used the dublin core on the site 
(contributors, date written, what referencing) it's referencing guidelines, 
the document it is reviewing, etc. Then the insides of the web page is 
making statements about the site. Like WL mentioned you can mention info 
about each alt-tag. RDF does have a way to assign numbers. We would have to 
define something new. But we could define something on a scale: poor, 
somewhat poor, good, very good, etc.
WL There was a public relations debacle that happened with PICS. PICS tends 
to be what we're looking for for evaluations.
LK Did they get into Dublin Core stuff?
HB It predated the Dublin Core.
LK For statements about individual elements, is it straightforward for 
every checkpoint to be obviously converted to an RDF statement.
WL WCAG checkpoints?
LK Looking at AERT.
WC Schematron. Would be interesting to look at it and fill in what's 
missing, e.g., is the alt-text accurate.
LK Looking at AERT, auditory descriptions...
WL When put it in, leave an audit trail that it is present.
LK Let's say, here is a page, it has a link to a real audio file. I want to 
say, "there is a text description for this audio file." I've prepared it, 
listened to the file, etc. I want to convert this to an RDF statement. 
"has-audio-description" "name of the file" "yes/no"
HB I can't believe the Daisy folks felt they needed 43 additions to the 
Dublin Core.
WL Somebody is saying the same thing you have said. They probably have not 
heard back yet.
LK What are those?
HB format generator, multimedia type, front page, page normal, etc etc.
LK Language is in the original set.
HB This might be a translation from the original.
LK Of that list, which most offends?
HB They all deal with document itself, no chunking.
LK We have consensus that there are useful things in the Dublin Core. 
Schematron is an initial cut at specific RDF statements. Question is: what 
additional statements do we need?
LK Here is an HTML document, here is an element.
HB It has class= already.
LK We can embed the comment in the doc or put it in external.
HB Or add an attribute value pair to existing element for which our 
commentary applies. CAST's Bobby puts something in new version of document 
as a placeholding mark (with hats).
LK Are the Bobby hats intended to markup the document for machine-readable 
tracking or just to communicate with the human.
HB Right now is informative to human. Used to link to more info.
LK Your talking about inserting new tag into new document. Say you have img 
with alt-text. Are you saying you would add attribute value to image tag 
itself?
HB That's one thought.
LK Another way?
HB XML comment convention. I would discourage it's use. Way to put in 
non-visual.
LK <!-- -->? Adding meaning to comments. Don't like that.
HB Basically trying to define an audit trail. It can either be in source 
document, where it can persist over revision or in concurrent document.
LK If in concurrent document, how does it make assertions about each element.
WL It's name contains something that that's what it is.
LK Here is an RDF doc, it says that a certain image lacks alt text. E.g. 
you can think of various ways to point to an image. XPointer "It's the 3rd 
child of 5th descendent" but what happens if someone asserts some material 
in the page. Then you break that relationship.
WL The revised document doesn't check out again.
WC Unless editor keeps track of things being inserted.
LK Fine if the editor is keeping track, what if external? There would have 
to be a diff between versions.
WC For image, could look at src.
LK There are heuristics. Sending diff to RDF to correct itself...
WL The way it was organized in the first place will dictate that. If 
originally done by machine, can be done again.
LK What kinds of standards would we have to define? Ideally want a diff 
tool that works on the DOM.
Action WL Start the basis of "What are the accessibility features of RDF"
Action WC: Check out schematron, how can we make it more precise?

Next f2f?
WL I could try to arrange something in San Fran in November.
LK Piggyback off of ASSETS and CUU? DC in November.
Action LK post links to ASSETS and CUU
WC Who do we know in DC who could host?
WL Government organizations. NIDDR, US Mint, GSA, etc.
LK Just a room?
WC room, A/V, breakfast, lunch.
HB AOL is in the area.
Action WC ask JB who she knows in the area that might be able to host.
HB Also XML 2000 in DC in early December.
WC I am presenting there.
Action LK post link to XML 2000 to the list.

--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
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