Re: AG Participation follow-up

Hello Chairs,

> We want to emphasize that everyone’s feedback and thoughts are welcome


Reading through this email, and I must offer the following
correction/observation related to Participation. The current charter
<https://www.w3.org/2019/12/ag-charter#participation> states:

The Chairs, specification Editors, and Test Leads are expected to
contribute four hours per week towards the Working Group. *There is no
minimum requirement for other Participants.*

Expecting every member of this Working Group to now contribute 4 hours a
week is an onerous and unworkable demand - that constitutes 10% of most
people's work-week, *which is a lot of weekly volunteer time*. (As it is,
most of us are already contributing 2 hours for the weekly calls, and
likely another hour+ responding to emails, CfC's / WG Surveys, etc.).

Looking at previous characters
<https://www.w3.org/2017/01/ag-charter.html#participation> and the
Participation requirements HAVE NOT insisted on this amount of
participation for many years now.

So I am now reading this as the Chairs *raising the bar for participation*,
which concerns me greatly (as well as directly contradicting our current
Charter). Rather than fostering a "less exclusionary culture" my suspicion
and concern is that this minimum expectation will actually *reduce the
number of active participants*, as some of our current group will simply
not be able to contribute that much time every week. This may also
potentially impact the 15-member minimum requirement also enshrined in the
current Charter. ("To be successful, this Working Group is expected to have
15 or more *active participants* for its duration")

I also note that our current Charter is set to expire this Fall (Oct '22),
and at this time I will strenuously Object to any change to our Charter
that mandates a minimum of 4 hours participation from all of our individual
members as being fundamentally exclusionary in its outcome. (Should this be
a consensus decision of the WG during our Charter renewal however, then I
would withdraw that objection.) But having an imposed change to the current
or future Charter without the consensus of the WG is something that I
fundamentally reject as being outside of the current W3C Process
<https://www.w3.org/2021/Process-20211102/#Consensus>.

Respectfully,

JF

On Fri, Jul 1, 2022 at 10:47 AM Bradley-Montgomery, Rachael <
rmontgomery@loc.gov> wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
>
> During the June 21st AGWG call the working group was asked to participate
> in an exercise of categorizing existing WCAG 3.0 success criteria. About
> half the group participated in this exercise, for which we (the AG chairs)
> want to thank you. Notably, we observed that about half the participants on
> that week’s call did not attempt the exercise, neither during the time
> reserved for it on the call or afterwards. We spoke to this during this
> week’s AGWG call (June 28th), and it resulted in a number of questions and
> comments afterwards. As a result, we want to follow up to better explain
> what we meant.
>
>
>
> As part of moving our efforts more towards WCAG 3.0, the AGWG chairs feel
> it is important that the group change from a group that spends most of its
> time fine-tuning, to one focused on rapidly developing new ideas and
> delivering content in support of those ideas. We intend that for the next
> charter, all active participants will be involved in subgroups. Meeting
> time will place emphasis on presenting and building a shared understanding
> of proposals. Critiquing and fine-tuning those proposals will shift to
> other asynchronous mechanisms.
>
>
>
> We discussed minimum time commitments at the meeting and took an action to
> follow up with you. Previous charters set an expectation of 4 hours but our
> current charter has no minimum time commitment for participants. The chairs
> believe that subgroup participants should have about 4 hours per week
> available to meet and work, to ensure the productivity of subgroup. See the Subgoup
> Handbook
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_caRiZaTQDmsd2Vq415sz4AIullNse-GeGtohUfg_5M/edit?usp=sharing>
> for more on subgroups.
>
>
>
> Our plan is that everyone who regularly attends AGWG meetings participates
> in multiple subgroups throughout the year. Based on the time needed, we
> expect participants will only be in one subgroup at a time. We also
> understand that there will be gaps in participation due to personal and
> professional commitments.
>
>
>
> We need active participation in order to publish WCAG 3 in a reasonable
> time frame. The AG chairs will track who participates in subgroup work, as
> well as exploratory and writing exercises during calls, in order to:
>
>    - Ensure that no individual is “spread too thin,”
>    - Create a more productive and less exclusionary culture, and
>    - Better estimate AGWG’s workload and bandwidth.
>
>
>
> We want to emphasize that everyone’s feedback and thoughts are welcome.
> What will change is that some comments and thoughts will be considered
> outside of AGWG calls through other asynchronous methods, to better focus
> our productivity within our meetings. Various other mechanisms exist for
> providing feedback, and we will increasingly steer the AGWG towards using
> those mechanisms, so that calls can be used for knowledge sharing,
> brainstorming, and other exercises needed to develop WCAG 3.0.
>
>
>
> Lastly, we want to let you all know that if you have any questions,
> concerns, suggestions, or if at any point you experience difficulties
> joining, contributing to, or participating in any of our meetings to please
> contact us at group-ag-chairs@w3.org. We received feedback on how to
> better support participants engaging in exercises and will be trying that
> out over the next few months.
>
>
>
> We want your participation, and we will work with you to help you find out
> how you can best contribute.
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
>
> The AG chairs
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> Rachael Bradley Montgomery, PhD
>
> Digital Accessibility Architect
>
> Library of Congress
>
> Email: rmontgomery@loc.gov
>


-- 
*John Foliot* |
Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility |
W3C Accessibility Standards Contributor |

"I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter." -
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