Re: 19 October 2000 minutes

Thanks gregory. I have updated the minutes with the first paragraph from 
your e-mail.
--w

At 10:48 PM 10/19/00 , you wrote:
>aloha, wendy!
>
>one slight correction -- in the minutes of the 19 october 2000 telecon, 
>available at:
><http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2000/10/19-minutes.html>
>you minuted me as stating
>
>quote
>GR in U.S., baseline is DOS or Windows 95. Discussed with RNIB, people 
>upgrade to Windows NT.
>unquote
>
>whereas what i actually said, to the best of my recollection, is that even 
>in quote developed unquote countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., for 
>blind/low vision users, at least, the baseline is still either DOS or 
>Windows 95 (or 95B, depending upon when one bought one's system)...  why 
>is the critical mass of users reluctant to upgrade?  simply because they 
>would rather wrestle with the devils they have come to know (and even 
>master) then take on unknown (and sometimes, depending upon the AT and 
>other hardware available to them, unknowable) opponents...  only those who 
>are either: (a) forced to upgrade in order to retain a job; (b) are 
>fortunate to have the resources to be able to afford the hardware and 
>software requisite to upgrade to yesterday's state-of-the-art (let alone 
>the latest-and-greatest); and (c) the adventurous, who tend either to be 
>trained experts in the field of computing or (as in my case) the mulishly 
>stubborn and overly ambitious...
>
>more succinctly stated, only those who have to, those who can afford to, 
>and those who really burn to (and who aren't put off by the possibility of 
>seriously screwing up their machine in the process) upgrade, even in those 
>english-speaking countries where cutting edge software is often first 
>released--simply because it was developed in english and the technological 
>infrastructure necessary to run that software is widely enough distributed 
>in that country...
>
>ok, that wasn't any more clearly or succinctly stated than my first 
>restatement of my telephonic comments, so i'll close for now (especially 
>since the longer the emessage grows, the more connections to the 'net i lose)
>
>gregory.
>
>At 07:20 PM 10/19/00 -0400, WAC wrote:
>>Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 19:20:20 -0400
>>To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
>>From: Wendy A Chisholm <wendy@w3.org>
>>Subject: 19 October 2000 minutes
>>
>>available at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2000/10/19-minutes.html
>>
>>19 October 2000 WCAG WG telecon
>>
>>Summary of action items
>>·       Action JW: Propose text to cover the issue about associating text 
>>equivalents with what they represent.
>>·       Action GR: Try to abstract JW's proposal.
>>·       Action WC: rework proposal for checkpoint 3.1.
>>·       Action JW: Take issue of maintaining info about assistive 
>>technology and alternative browsing to Education and Outreach via the 
>>Coordination Group.
>>·       Action CS: write up a browser profile for what authors should 
>>support.
>>
>>Participants
>>·       Claus Thøgersen
>>·       Marshall Jansen
>>·       Matt May
>>·       Jason White
>>·       Dick Brown
>>·       Loretta Guarino Reid
>>·       Cynthia Shelly
>>·       Charles McCathieNevile
>>·       Kynn Barlett
>>·       Gregg Vanderheiden
>>·       Gregory Rosmaita
>>·       William Loughborough
>>
>>Next face to face
>>Two Day Preference: Mon/Tues or Thurs/Fri. (Feb. 26-27 or March 1-2)
>>Will your group be flexible about the meeting days: If you choose 
>>Mon/Tues; would Thurs/Fri be acceptable?
>>The number of people in your group that will attend the f2f meeting __
>>Will folks in your group attend the Wednesday Plenary?
>>What other W3C groups, specifically, would your group like to meet?
>>Are there other groups with significant membership overlap with yours 
>>which should NOT be scheduled on the same days?
>>GV I teach on Monday, so I prefer Thurs/Fri.
>>About 10 - 15 people will attend.
>>Mobile, device independent authoring, other WAI groups, XHTML, XForms, 
>>Voice Browser, XLink, XPointer.
>>
>>New draft
>>WC Not out yet. It's close.
>>JW Then we'll vote on the list. I'll take a stab at finishing up proposal 
>>for checkpoint 1.1. Please raise remaining issues with checkpoint 1.1.
>>GV If you post wording and know there are things that were not addressed, 
>>please mention this.
>>WC That discussion is in the minutes from the face to face.
>>
>>Text equivalents be identified in markup
>>JW Impressions of whether people want a requirement. A separate checkpoint?
>>LGR Is the concern that it is hard to confirm that text equivalents exist?
>>JW It is hard to generate something with text equivalent, especially if a 
>>document generated for user preferences.
>>GV For example?
>>GR In UA context, the ability to embed text descriptions into clip art. 
>>You can also find copyright info. If UA has a way to extract, and AT's 
>>are being encouraged to do that for clip art they are distributing.
>>GV If no alt-text why wouldn't the tool look inside? If it's there, it 
>>can easily find.
>>GR The request is from an authoring standpoint. I think this was raised 
>>for clarification. How do people believe we should deal with this issue? 
>>Should we throw it to UA or ATAG? Gets to the heart of "web content" is 
>>it the component or document or application.
>>CT This idea of section 5 is problematic wrt UA.
>>GV If it's something like a picture you could grab the info from the data 
>>format, but if you have turned graphics off, then the UA would not know 
>>to fetch it.
>>CT I understand the issue to be: how much do we want to know about a 
>>structure.
>>JW Who wants this requirement? Each text equivalent must be marked up as 
>>per guideline 2 from the accompanying text.
>>CMN Yes, I would like to see such a proposal.
>>DB Still having troubling understanding it? Must be distinguished?
>>JW Can do in SVG or in HTML w/alt. However, this needs to be distinct in 
>>the markup.
>>CMN Example is: alt in HTML - this is an alt for this image. an example 
>>of not doing it: having a chart w/alt that says, "great britain chart" 
>>and then in the content a description. no way to associate them.
>>DB If someone has in the text that would not be explicitly linked. In 
>>HTML 4 could use longdesc.
>>GR In another application, they use captions to describe photos. The 
>>alt-text is then usually "photo" or "black and white photo."
>>CS An interesting idea, sounds like a feature to add to HTML.
>>WC I think that it is clear from 1.1
>>GR It can be interpreted to mean that if you do OCR.
>>JW Or if you generate something with descriptions with no markup, you're 
>>rendering it as text.
>>GV Two parts:
>>alternative text not distinct from text
>>marked up but not obvious
>>alt-text will be distinct from, if not always rendered and not alt. 
>>Knowing that it is there is what we need to focus on. "If alt-text 
>>provided, it must be obvious from the markup to indicate its presence."
>>Action JW: Propose text to cover the issue about associating text 
>>equivalents with what they represent.
>>Action GR: Try to abstract JW's proposal.
>>CS This does not work for all interfaces. If a voice interface, it 
>>doesn't matter if a graphic button exists somewhere.
>>CT What if you can turn it off?
>>CS That will cause problems for people with cognitive disabilities.
>>CT You can not decide for the user.
>>KB This assumption comes with the idea that there is an optimal 
>>presentation. From our work, there are different ways of presenting 
>>information. I don't need to present to a visual user if they have said, 
>>"don't play me sound" to let them know that there is sound here. I spoke 
>>with Ian about this because it sounded odd. He specifically said it has 
>>to be clear in the markup or the data model. It may be on my server - an 
>>explicit representation between this image and this text. He said that as 
>>long as in the data model, I would be covered. This does not have to be 
>>sent to the user.
>>GR That is a basic underlying principle.
>>KB Then the requirement is still odd to me.
>>CS I agree with Kynn there are other ways to get around the problem.
>>JW There are still issues.
>>CS I think we are talking about 2 issues.
>>Should things be associated
>>Informing the user of other forms of the information
>>
>>Errata to 3.1
>>CS As long as not a paragraph.
>>CMN Problem for magnifiers.
>>WC Can use Opera to magnify the alt-text of images.
>>CS Section headings are usually large fonts.
>>WC Text in images to create logos? Does anyone disagree?
>>CMN I am not convinced.
>>JW One could avoid the implication that you can interpret to mean it does 
>>not exclude every image.
>>GV If you can't do something so it will work with the browsers on your 
>>site, does 3.1 say "it doesn't matter, AA means you must use markup language."
>>JW Did we add into the Errata, Ian's proposal in 11.1? That would take 
>>care of it.
>>WC No.
>>CMN It rules out things that can be done using images that should be done 
>>in markup. Use MathML to represent math. What can't be done using markup? 
>>You don't have strong control over button appearance - how good is css support?
>>WC /* restate my proposal */
>>KB Does proposal cover WAI logo?
>>WC Yes.Let's keep checkpoint as is, but write a clarification that image 
>>ok for logo, navigation buttons, image maps.
>>GV "until widely supported" - what if 2/3 of browsers support it. Does 
>>that mean we switch? We have a question for how long it is that people 
>>are required to do things.
>>WC Since 1.0 errata, i think we can use the until user agent language 
>>because 2.0 should be out before until user agent is met.
>>JW Don't think resolve in 1.0 w/errata change, therefore "when an 
>>appropriate markup language exists" means "when supported by user agents."
>>MM: A lot of companies won't want to put SVG out for public consumption. 
>>Once it's out there it can be stolen. A lot of companies use graphical 
>>content to protect info so that things can't be perfectly copied. Would 
>>people want to adopt SVG?
>>CMN I don't think that holds. If someone puts an imperfect logo out there 
>>is making that logo available whether it is SVG, or gif, or whatever.
>>GR A legal issue.
>>CS What about the word "appropriate." What CMN finds appropriate is 
>>different than what a legal person finds appropriate.
>>KB I think most people will want to do specific things that CSS and HTML 
>>will not be acceptable solutions. MathML is not acceptable. There are 
>>things you can't do.
>>GV Will be a list or tie back to 11 - where possible to do that using xyz 
>>then you must. The word appropriate is vague. It is not from the rule but 
>>the explanatory text underneath it.
>>CMN The alternative interpretation is for cases where CSS works on 
>>Netscape and Explorer etc. then the answer is to apply 11.4 and supply 2 
>>versions. That clearly meets the guidelines as written.
>>Action WC: rework proposal for checkpoint 3.1.
>>
>>Until user agents proposal
>>CMN How do we know when user agents are sufficient. I have proposed a set 
>>of conditions.
>>·       Things have to work in 2 browsers. One browser must be free and 
>>work across MacOS, Linux, Windows, etc.
>>·       It must work with X number of assistive technologies.
>>One issue is, how will this pan out internationally. There were two 
>>approaches proposed.
>>say that X number of months after these are available and have been shown 
>>to work we expect people to use them. is it 6 months after they become 
>>available or localized to a language? we need input on that from 
>>non-english speakers. from the european blind union, i hear that there 
>>are whole countries where people who are blind use DOS. Therefore, not 
>>supporting DOS is an issue.
>>CS If designing for English, then only concerned about English tools?
>>CT Who will document what is being used in different countries? And keep 
>>it updated?
>>CS Someone launching a site in a particular area would do that research.
>>GR in U.S., baseline is DOS or Windows 95. Discussed with RNIB, people 
>>upgrade to Windows NT.
>>CMN Available technical support is a major issue.
>>DB I could not find anything in the existing guidelines where we mention 
>>that products are free. Do we really want to do that? What about the hardware?
>>CMN That's another issue.
>>CT The only thing that is free is unix things (re: AT)
>>CS The Narrator that ships with Windows 2000 is free, but Windows is not.
>>CMN Should we be requiring that if you need something free that you live 
>>on a linux system. or we require that there be one free solution per 
>>platform.. Or does everyone pay the same.
>>WC What info will help us answer this info?
>>CMN There are some things that we should just answer.
>>JW We need to do it in a neutral way to suppliers.
>>CT We need a way to collect data. Can EO help here?
>>CMN Probably. They maintain a policy page and an assistive technology and 
>>alternative browsing page. We should ask them because they have wider 
>>international contacts. The I18N is in a sense simple. There are only a 
>>few questions about how to apply the rules we decide on. Then we have to 
>>answer the same questions in different languages.
>>Action JW: Take issue of maintaining info about assistive technology and 
>>alternative browsing to Education and Outreach via the Coordination Group.
>>GR An opportunity for EO to contact disability groups to collect information.
>>CMN We could look at the components people are using and say "yes" or "no".
>>CS Like Javascript?
>>CMN Right: we require CSS Font, don't require CSS positioning, yes 
>>JavaScript, etc.
>>CS That seems a lot easier.
>>WC Create a profile.
>>CS Then people pushed to meet that reference.
>>JW That's UA.
>>CMN They don't specify technologies.
>>Action CS: write up a browser profile for what authors should support.
>>
>>$Date: 2000/10/19 23:10:58 $ Wendy Chisholm
>>
>>--
>>wendy a chisholm
>>world wide web consortium
>>web accessibility initiative
>>madison, wi usa
>>tel: +1 608 663 6346
>>/--
>
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--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
madison, wi usa
tel: +1 608 663 6346
/--

Received on Friday, 20 October 2000 09:44:11 UTC