Re: charter update with two year cycle

Wilco,

I see success in your future. What a welcome voice of reason, willing and
driving to a compromise - while knowing you do not have all the facts.

That type on even-handed respectful approach, is not only what lead to the
success of WCAG 1 and 2,  but was only possible because of the kind of
leadership that fostered consensus.

Honestly, I have been struggling so hard. This working group over the years
has been filled with amazing people who all worked respectfully towards a
common goal, while we all learned so much - and in reality accomplished
something amazing.

For the first time in 16 years, I feel like walking away.  This group,
which has felt like home to me, has changed, and has not been the
open-armed welcoming place, where all were *heard* and appreciated for
their own perspective and experience.

Katie Haritos-Shea
703-371-5545

On Oct 7, 2016 3:17 AM, "Wilco Fiers" <wilco.fiers@deque.com> wrote:

> I think Gregg, David and Katie have described my own concerns much better
> then I could have. Just the fact that there are a lot of people with these
> concerns mean it should be addressed. We've seen the arguments and they
> haven't been convincing either way. So we need to look for a solution.
>
> To the pro-2 year people, is there anything you can think of that can help
> address the concerns of the people who are against it?
>
> And for the people against the 2-year release, are there anything you can
> think of that would allow for faster release of success criteria, while
> keeping to a 5+ year WCAG update schedule?
>
> Let's see if we can solve this people :)
>
> Wilco
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 5:26 AM, Gregg Vanderheiden <
> gregg@raisingthefloor.org> wrote:
>
>> Good thoughts Alastair
>>
>>
>> The one thing to keep in mind though — is that a regulatory standard is
>> completely different than a technical one.    To change what technologies
>> you use only requires a decision of the technology authorizers.  To change
>> a regulation requires years of vetting, review by all of the agencies,
>> economic impact reports,  review by the white house office of management
>> and budget etc.    It is a very very long process.   Also technical
>> standards are all voluntary. Even the companies using them can use them or
>> not or parts or whatever.   Regulations are totally different.      WCAG is
>> a guideline not a regulation but if you want it to be picked up in
>> regulations you need to live with those timelines.   look at 508.   How
>> long was it between its revisions.   And even when the decision was made to
>> change it, it took more than half a decade to make the change.  The new one
>> is coming out soon (months) - and it will be a long time for the next one.
>>        Even with a will to update it more often - it will take a long time
>> to vet and get approvals for any revisions.   And each time you release a
>> new version — you reset the clock and the vetting process needs to proceed
>> anew.    Worse yet - if it keeps changing - there will be great pressure by
>> those who don’t want it, to keep advocating to wait for the next one.   Or
>> claiming that the standard is not stable because it keeps changing.
>>
>> So it is kind of complicated.
>>
>> But the people I would talk to are those at the Access Board.   They
>> actually have a better idea of what is or isnt possible and timing etc than
>> I or anyone else on this list.   Give David Capozzi a call and talk to him.
>>    If what he says agrees with my comments — the good for me.   If it
>> differs from what I said - believe him.   I am speaking from experience and
>> the past.  He can speak from both experience and the past AND a much better
>> understanding of the present and the future than I can.
>>
>>
>>
>> *gregg*
>>
>> On Oct 6, 2016, at 10:28 AM, Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I echo the hear, respect and trust comment from John, but also think that
>> this is true:
>> “*working on an "All or Nothing" sum-total proposition, where they
>> believe​ we need to get *all* the new proposed Success Criteria into the
>> next dot release of WCAG for fear of "missing out"*.“
>>
>> I’m fairly ambivalent about the time between 2.1 and 2.2, but there are
>> two main problems I’m picking up:
>> 1.       Scale of work needed.
>> 2.       Impact on / take up of stakeholders such as governments.
>>
>> *Scale of work:*
>> Even from outside the process I could see that a huge amount of work that
>> went into WCAG 2.0, and if I thought 2.1 was going to need the same level
>> of work I would agree with Gregg.
>>
>> There is an implicit assumption in the 2.1 approach that might not be
>> obvious to people who haven’t been involved in Agile projects in the last
>> few years. I could also be wrong that this is an assumption, so let’s make
>> it explicit.
>>
>> Apologies to everyone very familiar with Agile, but for everyone else:
>> the assumption is that *you fit the work into a time-box, and release
>> what is done in that time*.
>>
>> If there are only 3 new SC that get consensus by the deadline, then 2.1
>> may have only 3 new SC. Given the time between 2.0 and 2.1, I think we can
>> manage a lot more than 3, but that is an assumption of the process.
>> (I appreciate that the guidelines need to work as a whole, so we should
>> also get consensus on the whole at each dot release, not just the
>> individual SCs.)
>>
>> The rest of the W3C appears to be working in this way, I suspect we need
>> a very good case not to follow suit.
>>
>> *Governments / legal stakeholders*
>> This is an important point and important stakeholders, but I’m not sure
>> how much of a problem it will be to have more regular updates.
>>
>> How do Governments deal with changing technical specifications, e.g. Do
>> they still specify HTML 4.01 because they haven’t updated? Do they say
>> latest version?
>>
>> I know accessibility guidelines are different, but they are also trying
>> to keep up with technical specifications and changes. Touch interfaces
>> weren’t popular in 2008, now they are ubiquitous.  We can produce more
>> techniques and understanding, but many of the new SCs are for things that
>> were not around previously, covering gaps in the normative text.
>>
>> If it is pitched to Governments as a steady progressions of a standard
>> that will be backwards compatible, it is up to them to decide at what point
>> they want to take a snapshot. That is assuming they can’t do what the UK
>> does and simply not specify a particular standard. In the UK a legal case
>> would ask “what is the standard in the industry”, to which the obvious
>> answer at the moment is WCAG 2.0 AA. A year or two after WCAG 2.1 that
>> answer would change.
>>
>> At the EU level their Government procurement guidelines say things like
>> “Where ICT is a web page, it shall satisfy WCAG 2.0 Success Criterion 1.4.4
>> Resize text.” [1]
>>
>> If that anchor point is still there, it should not cause them issues.
>>
>> I have to admit I have a slight allergy to how big government
>> organizations work (it sends me to sleep), but it seems like the dot
>> release approach should work…
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> -Alastair
>>
>> 1] http://mandate376.standards.eu/standard/technical-
>> requirements/resize-text
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *Wilco Fiers* - Senior Accessibility Engineer
>
>