RE: CFC - Focus for Working Group

-1 to the CfC.

I am concerned that WCAG 2.2 would absorb considerably more time and effort than anticipated on the part of the working group, for at best modest improvements in the accessibility of conforming content, constrained by the WCAG 2.x heritage (including the conformance scheme), and delaying progress toward completion of Silver.

I could live with a WCAG 2.2 effort if there were a strong rationale, statement of scope and drafts of success criteria to be added – sufficient to confine the required work within manageable limits.

Development of Silver should be moved into the full working group and not carried out primarily in a task force.

Phase 1: a suitable first objective for Silver would be to write a document that specifies equivalent requirements to WCAG 2.1 (without adding or removing requirements), but which is structured according to the Silver architecture and uses the Silver conformance scheme. (The architecture and conformance scheme would need to be completed and agreed upon.) This would eliminate the pressure to agree on new normative requirements while developing the approach to be carried forward in Silver. It would also provide a clear mapping of WCAG 2.1 conformance levels to Silver conformance statements to facilitate the transition.

Phase 2: in the second phase, establish considerably shorter update cycles for adding and changing requirements along the various “functional performance” dimensions of Silver – physical, sensory, cognitive, or whatever they turn out to be.

Requirements originating in the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines or User Agent Accessibility Guidelines could be included in either phase 1 or phase 2, depending on the design chosen for the specification and considerations of scope.

All of phase 1 would need to be carried out within a charter period; having a draft of additional requirements suitable for the first phase 2-style revision would be a desirable objective as well, but not essential.

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2019 3:32 PM
To: WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Subject: CFC - Focus for Working Group
Importance: High

Call For Consensus — ends Friday February 22nd at 3:30pm Boston time.

The Working Group has discussed how to focus the efforts of the group over the next 12-24 months and the proposal is that the WG can address the short-term need for improvements to Techniques and Understanding and begin to ramp-up work within the Working Group on Silver as well as commit to a WCAG 2.2, which will avoid the possibility of a large gap in time between the June 2018 WCAG 2.1 and Silver reaching Rec.

Proposed Schedule
March 2019-April 2019: 45% Techniques and Understanding, 45% Silver, 10% WCAG 2.2 (most drafting of new SC in ad hoc groups or TFs)
May 2019-forward: 45% WCAG 2.2, 45% Silver, 10% Techniques and Understanding maintenance

Survey: https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/35422/WCAG22_yesno/results


Call minutes: https://www.w3.org/2019/02/19-ag-minutes.html#item11


If you have concerns about this proposed consensus position that have not been discussed already and feel that those concerns result in you “not being able to live with” this decision, please let the group know before the CfC deadline.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Head of Accessibility
Adobe

akirkpat@adobe.com<mailto:akirkpat@adobe.com>
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