RE: Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Task Force - DRAFT

I think the proposed work is needed and may potentially be very valuable.  I worry about the availability of the necessary knowledge/expertise in this area to bring to bear on the problem (this is a new area of study and not sure how much is known - datawise- at this time).  I think in our voting work here at NIST  this is a hot topic of interest and there may be data available (although not specifically web-content related, some of it may transfer over).. will try to find out more   Thanks and best wishes Tim Boland NIST
________________________________
From: Gian Wild <gian.wild@accessibilityoz.com.au>
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 11:32 PM
To: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Cc: WCAG (w3c-wai-gl@w3.org)
Subject: Re: Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Task Force - DRAFT

I think it's a great idea and think it should be associated with the WCAG WG. I'd also love to contribute if the teleconference was at a reasonable time in Australia.

On Thursday, September 12, 2013, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
WCAG'ers -
The Protocols and Formats WG is proposing a new task force on cognitive and learning disabilities and we've been asked if we agree that it is a good idea and whether we would like it to be a joint TF with WCAG.  The draft TF work statement is here: http://www.w3.org/2013/08/draft-cognitive-a11y-tf.html

We are interested in the opinion of the group on this matter.  The chairs feel that this work is valuable and timely in that we do need to continue to evaluate possible improvements in WCAG or in techniques to better support users with cognitive or learning disabilities, and this task force can help by focusing directly on that topic.  We expect that we will need to recruit additional members in order to have enough participation for the TF, but believe that is achievable.  This task force will operate in a substantially independent manner from WCAG and PF, but may contribute techniques that the main WG needs to review and the main WG will also need to approve the release of any publications produced by the group.

Please take a look at the work statement and share your thoughts.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

akirkpat@adobe.com
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility