Notes from Aug. 12 Teleconference.

WCAG WG teleconference
August 12, 1999
4:00  5:15 PM EDT
Longfellow Bridge 1-617-252-1038

Attendees:
JW - Jason White
IJ - Ian Jacob
CL - Chuck Letourneau
WC - Wendy Chisholm
GV - Gregg Vanderheiden
CMN - Charles McCathieNevile

Regrets: 
William Loughborough
Chuck Hitchcock

1.      List of questions for Rob Neff. 

WC: July 22 call  Rob has been teaching a lot of courses and getting feedback
from students.  If he could have a standard list of questions he could ask to
categorize.  He is working with people with a wide range of experience in HTML
and page design.  Wendy remembers that Charles asks for questions at the end of
his presentations, and we asked Rob to do something similar. 
JW: Charles was developing a sort of FAQ from his presentations.
WC: what information do we want to know about the people that will help us get
an idea of who is reading the guidelines… sort of user testing… collect
information about the audience.
JW: thinks EO would be interested in this sort of thing.  WCAG is a technical
ref, a standard; Has heard that the WCAG will be taken into the Australian
legal system for review.  Thinks we can formulate some questions, but EO should
have even more questions.  Each group could formulate questions of particular
interest. But is concerned of how the responses are handled.
WC: Should this go to coordination group?
JW: also keep in mind that this information will be coming in from informal
sources.
GV: we should think about (for WCAG 2) that there be a clear reference to a
user-friendly version. (Should one exist).  Maybe there should be a
user-friendly EO version.
WC: WAI home page should collect all such information.
JW: notes that the EO isn’t mentioned in the recommendation and perhaps it
should be, to point them to the substantiating documentation.  Then people may
refer to the supporting information rather than gripe about the
Guidelines/Techniques/Errata.  
GV: as long as we remind them that the WCAG is the “authoritative” version.

What doesn’t work?
What does work?
What tools are people using to design/mark up pages?
What level of knowledge of HTML do they have?
What level of knowledge of CSS do they have?
What level of multimedia authoring skill?
What level of scripting knowledge?

IJ: recent hits on Guidelines: 812.  113 hits for techniques document, thus
many more hits on guidelines.
JW: thinks it should still be EO’s task to take the answers and do something.
Resolution: JW, CL and GV will take this topic to the Coordination Group to see
how it fits with EO.

2.      Proposed text for addressing Checkpoint 3.3

IJ: read this proposed wording.
JW: thinks this is a really good idea.
IJ: this is tricky since it may seem to wipe out about 20 checkpoints, but it
clearly explains the intent of our work in the first place.
JW: from a legal standpoint, however, is somewhat concerned that if there is no
clear criterion for what support by a user agent really means, and leaving it
up to the content provider gives them a wide latitude in claiming that they
don’t need to comply with a particular checkpoint.  Creates an enormous domain
for avoiding compliance.   Would be happy to see some additional language that
clarifies how W3C can test or verify UA compliance.
IJ: is not comfortable with W3C having to do that (resource wise and legally
difficult).
JW: not suggesting that, but hoping that a definition could point out one or
more criteria that page authors can make a decision as to whether the feature
is supported.
CMN: legal standards vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
JW: if one is attempting to show that one has reasonably applied the
guidelines, the proposed wording leaves open to wide interpretation of the
application.
WC: it really means we must provide the users with the best information as
possible.
IJ: agrees that his wording might nullify some checkpoints.  E.g. if you can’t
use <q> then what can you do?
WC: wouldn’t agree with 3.4 being in the list.
JW: thinks that some can be applied in limited circumstances (and should be
used), but not in all cases.  Thinks that if a checkpoint can be partially
implemented then it should be.
IJ: agrees that we could add some wording about use in specific circumstances
where it does work and aids accessibility.  Will Jason write the proposed
wording, or should I.
ACTION ITEM: re Partial support. Wendy and Ian will review the checkpoints for
meeting the new conditions.  Ian and Jason will review the wording.
IJ: if we integrate this into the errata page, do we also mention the work of
the group to figure out how to determine if enough support is there to do (or
not do) something.
WC: say we can’t say, and point to the Browser support page.
WC: read the existing definition of “Until user agent”.  Is Jason asking to
make it stronger?
JW: essentially, yes.
CMN:  One class where we can clearly state that since user agents, don’t, the
author must or something will be inaccessible.  The other class of problems
where we are telling people that it doesn’t work, so don’t worry.  We must be
very careful that we are not lead to killing guidelines because of “market”
pressure.
WC: some things are easy to relegate to the heap (temporarily), like ABBR,
while some, like some parts of CSS are extremely problematic.
CMN: them we must explicitly and loudly what the problems are (e.g. Netscape
4.5 has this bug or that bug, and IE has this or that and this is why we must
do this soft of thing).
WC: and this sort of information should go into the Browse support page.
CMN: we can’t make people upgrade browsers. We can only recommend, and point
out browser problems that exist. And if you decide to continue using broken
browsers, then it is your fault.
WC: thinks EO should look at how to educate people how to upgrade browsers to
get the most accessible features.
ACTION ITEM: for CMN - EO should look at how to educate people how to upgrade
browsers to get the most accessible features.

3.      Browser support page.

ACTION : Ian to pursue browser support with Microsoft and Opera.
And others with information to post to the list.
CMN: is in vague contact with the Mozilla editor.
JW will follow up and see if anyone has any contacts.
Al Gilman is heavily involved with Lynx.
CMN: has contacts (next door) with Emacs.
WC: CAST has collected a lot of information that comes with the downloadable
version of Bobby.  HTML Compendium.  Wendy will send the information out to the
list.

4.      Next meeting: 

August 26.  Will have UA people on the call to discuss dependencies (MAP,
grouping links, etc.)

We still need to talk about the cognitive issues.

ACTION ITEM: WC to link the matrix to the GL page.

JW: would like to start developing a list of features for the next version.
IJ: would love to establish a requirements list for the next version.  Include
some of the work of Eric Hansen.
WC: and user testing, and so on.

WC: should we be doing calls weekly?
CL: not until September.
JW: not  until new charter starts.
WC: most on the call think a version 2 is necessary.


Next meeting: August 26, 1999 - 4:00 - 5:00 PM.

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Received on Friday, 13 August 1999 10:19:27 UTC