Agenda

The next meeting will be held on Thursday, 14 September at 20 hours
Coordinated Universal Time (4 PM in Boston, 10 PM? in France, 8 AM Eastern
Australia), on the W3C/MIT Longfellow bridge: +1-617-252-1038, with the
following agenda:

1. Structure of working group deliverables and their respective audiences.
The following documents have been proposed in an effort to satisfy the
needs of different communities that are interested in guidelines related
to the accessibility of web content:

a. An overview, presented in relatively non-technical terms, intended to
introduce key concepts developed in the guidelines and to explain the
nature of the requirements. This would be aimed at a broad audience.

b. A technical specification, written as clearly simply and precisely as
possible, of the requirements constituting the guidelines, which would be
applicable across a range of technologies in an attempt to generalize, in
a principled fashion, the requirements of accessible design. Audiences:
technology developers, other W3C (or external) technical working groups
concerned with accessibility; web content developers who wish to
apply the guidelines in novel situations or who are seeking elucidation of
the technology-specific checklists; policy analysts who want to understand
the technical requirements of accessible design in detail; educators
teaching principles and concepts of accessible design; authoring tool and
user agent implementors striving for a better understanding of accessible
design; others?

c. Technology-specific checklists which provide concrete, verifiable
requirements relative to specific standards and/or technologies:
(HTML/CSS, SVG, XML, SMIL, DOM/scripts, other W3C and/or non-W3C
technologies). Audiences: web content developers (with a range of
expertise but assuming some familiarity with one or more web-related
technologies), educators, authoring tool and user agent implementors (via
references in the respective guidelines in these areas); web site
evaluators (those engaged in verifying compliance with access
requirements); all of the audiences mentioned in connection with item b
(above), when examples of technology-specific implementation requirements
are needed in order to understand the requirements as expressed at a more
general level; others?

d. Techniques documents: providing detailed discussion of the
technology-specific checklists together with explanations and worked
examples. Audiences: web content developers; accessibility evaluators;
tool implementors; educators; others?

Questions:
1. Can we agree upon this or a similar structure as the basis of the
working group's deliverables? If not, what alternatives should be
considered, taking into account the various demands which the needs of
different communities impose on the nature of the guidelines? Can we be
more precise as to which audiences are relevant to which parts of the
document set, and what assumptions should be made regarding the level of
technical knowledge to be expected, and the terminology to be employed, in
each of the documents?

2. Which documents should be developed as W3C Recommendations, with
normative conformance criteria? Which should be published as W3C notes,
having an informative status but being easier to change at short notice?

3. How should we manage the documents so that readers with different needs
will be directed to the material that is best suited to their
requirements, expectations, skills and interests?

Discussion of these questions on the mailing list prior to the meeting is,
as always, encouraged.

Received on Tuesday, 12 September 2000 20:34:19 UTC