Re: charter update with two year cycle

>> The old folks of A11y are getting older -- myself included.  It's time
to start turning the reins over to the generation that grew up with the
internet and smart phones. That is not going to happen if we old farts keep
standing in the way of new vital work.  Let's stop driving 40 miles an hour
on the superhighway.

​"​
It reminds me of
​a
 story about group founders. The
​y​
 ultimately divide into two classes known as "elder statesmen" and
"bleeding deacons."
​ ​
The elder statesman sees the wisdom of the group's decision to run itself
​ ​
on group conscience
​ ​
and holds no resentment over
​ ​
his or her
​ ​
reduced status. His
​ ​
or her
​ ​
judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is sound; he
​ ​
or she
​ ​
​​
is willing to sit quietly on the side lines patiently awaiting developments.
​ ​
​
The bleeding deacon is just as surely convinced that the group cannot get
along without him
​ ​
or her
​​
. He
​ ​
or she
​ ​
constantly connives for re-election to office and continues to be consumed
with self-pity. Nearly every oldtimer has gone through this process in some
degree. Happily, most of them survive and live to become elder statesmen.
They become the real and permanent leadership of a group.
​"​


Having said that, it seems that in the case of committing to a 2 year cycle
in the Charter, it's not driven by a young energetic generation with new
and fresh ideas. It's driven by people of the same generation with ideas
that are just as old and static but who weren't around when these ideas
were fleshed out 18 years ago, so
​we're going over

​the age
 old issue. "How do we stay relevant and create a stable standard?"

​Since there is a request to speak about facts

​Fact 1: WCAG 2 Success Criteria were never ​designed to only last 2 years.
They were intended to last a long time. That's why they are Normative. We
can dig through the minutes of 2002 if we need to.
Fact 2: The current WCAG model has a great mechanism to stay relevant for a
few years...  the evergreen techniques. That's why they were made
non-normative

​I really do hope Silver waves a magical wand​ and fixes this tension
between "relevance" and "stability", but the DOT versions don't have that
luxury. We have a format... and yes it was created by old farts :)


Cheers,
David MacDonald



*Can**Adapt* *Solutions Inc.*
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On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 2:51 PM, Jeanne Spellman <
jspellman@spellmanconsulting.com> wrote:

> While I agree with Jon that we should not try to get "biannual" into the
> charter, I don't want us to walk away from striving for a 2 year cycle for
> dot releases.
>
>    - We have a responsibility to PwD not to fall so far behind the
>    technology again
>    - We have a responsibility to the companies that are driving new
>    technology to keep up
>    - It makes us more in line with the rest of the W3C working group
>    common practices
>    - It gives the WG purpose,  direction and milestones to accomplish.
>    - Greater relevance of WCAG will attract new people to the WG.
>
> <alert for potentially offensive material>
>
> But here is the real long-term reason:  The old folks of A11y are getting
> older -- myself included.  It's time to start turning the reins over to the
> generation that grew up with the internet and smart phones. That is not
> going to happen if we old farts keep standing in the way of new vital
> work.  Let's stop driving 40 miles an hour on the superhighway.
>
> </ end offensive material>
> Jeanne
>
> On 10/7/2016 10:01 AM, Katie Haritos-Shea GMAIL wrote:
>
> +1
>
>
>
> ​​​​​
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ** katie **
>
>
>
> *Katie Haritos-Shea*
> *Principal ICT Accessibility Architect (WCAG/Section 508/ADA/AODA)*
>
>
>
> *Cell: 703-371-5545 <703-371-5545> **|* *ryladog@gmail.com*
> <ryladog@gmail.com> *|* *Oakton, VA **|* *LinkedIn Profile*
> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/katieharitosshea/> *|* *Office: 703-371-5545
> <703-371-5545> **|* *@ryladog* <https://twitter.com/Ryladog>
>
>
>
> *From:* Jonathan Avila [mailto:jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com
> <jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com>]
> *Sent:* Friday, October 7, 2016 9:47 AM
> *To:* WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org> <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
> *Subject:* RE: charter update with two year cycle
>
>
>
> Ø  Coming back to the question that started all of these cycles of work
> for all of us discussing this, I propose that we simply remove the sentence
> about "biannual" releases from the charter. We have no obligation to say
> that. Let's get 2.1 finished. New people to the group will learn a lot from
> the process, and let's re-evaluate at that point.
>
>
>
> Exactly my thoughts David.  There is no reason to include this language in
> the current charter because it only covers the timeframe for 2.1 – so why
> include it – let’s focus on getting the proposed SC tightened up to a place
> where they can make it into 2.1
>
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> Jonathan Avila
>
> Chief Accessibility Officer
>
> SSB BART Group
>
> jon.avila@ssbbartgroup.com
>
> 703.637.8957 (Office)
>
>
>
> Visit us online: Website <http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/> | Twitter
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>
> Check out our Digital Accessibility Webinars!
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>
>
> *From:* David MacDonald [mailto:david100@sympatico.ca
> <david100@sympatico.ca>]
> *Sent:* Friday, October 07, 2016 8:47 AM
> *To:* Katie Haritos-Shea
> *Cc:* AlastairCampbell; WCAG
> *Subject:* Re: charter update with two year cycle
>
>
>
> I think we need to understand the current WCAG model well before deciding
> to do something different.
>
>
>
> A 2 year cycle is a completely different model than what WCAG 2 was
> designed for. The Success Criteria were made to be technically agnostic
> BECAUSE technology is moving fast and no standard can keep up with the pace
> of technology advancement.  So the SCs have general statements such as "All
> functionality is available with keyboard" and "all images have text
> alternatives". We purposefully don't say terms specific to technology. The
> reason for that is because we knew it would take a long time to put out the
> standard and we didn't want to be out of date... we would keep up to date
> through the techniques, and many of us worked hard to keep the techniques
> as up to date as possible.
>
>
>
> Normative language takes a LONG time to get through. non normative advice
> on how to meet the requirements of the normative language can be updated
> frequently and easily. The good work of EO is an example of keeping up to
> date with how best to meet the requirements of the SC in today's context.
> Now naturally after a number of years those long term SCs need to be
> revised, but they were designed to have a longer shelf life than 2 years. I
> think we were hoping for 5-6 years... and we succeeded. There were almost
> no complaints in that time frame.
>
>
>
> If we want to move to a 2 year cycle, that is a completely different model
> and there is no need for the technology agnostic SC language. You can say
> "use this JavaScrip handler, and this HTML5 tag" right in the normative
> document ... and that gets us right back to the issue that we had in 2002,
> two years after WCAG 1. Being out of date but not being able to get new
> normative language quickly.
>
>
>
> Coming back to the question that started all of these cycles of work for
> all of us discussing this, I propose that we simply remove the sentence
> about "biannual" releases from the charter. We have no obligation to say
> that. Let's get 2.1 finished. New people to the group will learn a lot from
> the process, and let's re-evaluate at that point.
>
>
> Cheers,
> David MacDonald
>
>
>
> *Can**Adapt* *Solutions Inc.*
>
> Tel:  613.235.4902
>
> LinkedIn
> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacdonald100>
>
> twitter.com/davidmacd
>
> GitHub <https://github.com/DavidMacDonald>
>
> www.Can-Adapt.com <http://www.can-adapt.com/>
>
>
>
> *  Adapting the web to all users*
>
> *            Including those with disabilities*
>
>
>
> If you are not the intended recipient, please review our privacy policy
> <http://www.davidmacd.com/disclaimer.html>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 7:53 AM, Katie Haritos-Shea <ryladog@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Alistair,
>
> Please do not think you have anything to do with my angst. You come across
> just fine.
>
> Those of us with experience in developing this standard, working to get it
> taken up in government regulations, and then imlementing them both inside
> and outside of government - do bring some informative points to the table
> as to how this is going to actually play out.
>
> I have been asking, all along, for a compromise between 2 and 10 years for
> a regular cycle...to which I hear crickets from those pushing for two
> years....
>
> Katie Haritos-Shea
> 703-371-5545
>
>
>
> On Oct 7, 2016 6:55 AM, "Alastair Campbell" <acampbell@nomensa.com> wrote:
>
> HI Katie,
>
>
>
> Firstly:
>
> > “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.“
>
>
>
> I’m sorry if my emails come across as argumentative or as not listening,
> that is not my intent.
>
>
>
> On this topic in particular (where I don’t have in-depth experience with
> Government processes) I have tried to take an approach of identifying the
> key differences and pushing on those to understand, but that might come
> across too aggressively, I’m sorry.
>
>
>
>
>
> For Wilco’s points (his email arrived as my previous one left), I think
> the initial thing is to come up with a good ‘pitch’, and discuss that with
> people like the one Gregg suggested.
>
>
>
> > “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?”
>
>
>
> For Governments that specify a version of a standard (which is not all of
> them) and have very long time-frames: I would try pitching the dot-releases
> as regular updates they do not have to take up, but they should look to
> Silver / 3.0 as the next major release.
>
>
>
> > “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?”
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, the faster release of normative SCs *is* the issue, if
> people still agree with the approach of having 2.1 rather than extensions
> (which I do), then we are talking about updates to normative WCAG.
>
>
>
> If we try to get all the SCs from the tasks forces into 2.1, we are in a
> situation of: Quick, Good, Cheap – pick any two.
>
>
>
> ·         Quick & Good: We’d need to hire several FTE people to work on
> it, like WCAG 2.0 effectively had (is that an option?).
>
> ·         Quick & cheap: Inconsistent guidelines that fail all concerned.
>
> ·         Good & cheap: Next version in 5+ years.
>
>
>
> None of those are good options, so to me that is why we need an
> iterative/dot-release approach, to get around the quick/cheap/good issue by
> releasing new SCs in smaller chunks.
>
>
>
> Am I missing something?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> -Alastair
>
>
>
>
>