Last Call review of User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

Dear Chairs, 

On behalf of the User Agent Guidelines Working Group [1], I am 
pleased to announce the publication of the "User Agent 
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" Last Call Working Draft. 
The document address is:

       http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-WAI-USERAGENT-19991105

The Last Call review period will end 1 December 1999. Please
send review comments before that date to w3c-wai-ua@w3.org (archives
available at [2]).

At their 3 November 1999 teleconference [3], the User Agent Guidelines
Working Group decided to move the UA Guidelines to Last Call. By
moving to last call, the Working Group asserts that it
has met the requirement of its charter [7] "to complete the
development of user agent accessibility guidelines addressing
accessibility of graphical, voice, and text browsers, multimedia
players, and third-party assistive technologies which work in
conjunction with browsers and multimedia players." 

The Working Group has also published a "Techniques Document" that 
explains different ways to satisfy the requirements of the Guidelines.
Comments on this document are also welcome, although it is not
in Last Call. The Working Group does not anticipate moving
the Techniques Document to Recommendation. When and if the 
Guidelines become a Recommendation, the Techniques Document will
become a W3C Note. The Techniques Document published at the
same time as the Last Call Guidelines is:

       http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-WAI-USERAGENT-TECHS-19991105

The list of changes to the Guidelines [8] and the WG's issues
list [9] are available on the Web.

QUESTIONS AND ISSUES

In your review, please consider the following questions and issues:

1) Do you understand the Guidelines and Checkpoints or do they need
   clarification?

2) Do you find the documents (Guidelines and Techniques) themselves
   usable? Can you find what you are looking for?

3) Two checkpoints [numbers here] require user agents to make
   available to users information about the current input
   configuration (e.g., keyboard input). These checkpoints 
   have been assigned different priorities: Priority 1 for 
   user-specified configuration and Priority 2 for
   author-specified configuration (e.g., access keys). The Working
   Group did not reach consensus on whether these two checkpoints
   should be merged into a single checkpoint, and what the priority
   of such a checkpoint would be.

4) Checkpoint 6.1 (Priority 1) asks user agents to implement the 
   accessibility features of supported specifications. 
   In the Authoring Tool Guidelines Proposed Recommendation, 
   checkpoints that refer to
   content accessibility do so by "Relative Priority". This means that
   the priority of the checkpoint in the UAGL depends on how much
   you wish to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
   [6]. There has been a suggestion to make 6.1 a checkpoint with
   a Relative Priority rather than Priority 1. The Working Group
   did not reach consensus on whether the burden of doing so
   (complicating the priority definition) outweighed the benefit 
   of consistency among the three sets of Guidelines. Also, it is 
   not clear that a Priority 3 requirement in WCAG would always be 
   a Priority 3 requirement in UAGL (i.e., it may be more important
   to implement   a feature than for the author to supply it). 
   Comments on the proposal to make 6.1 a Relative Priority
   checkpoint are welcome.

DEPENDENCIES AND REVIEW

The Working Group thanks all who have contributed to the
Guidelines and Techniques document. The Working Group also
thanks in advance those people who have committed
to reviewing [4] the Last Call Working Draft: 

    1.Jim Fruchterman
    2.Doug Geoffray
    3.Ben Wiess
    4.T.V. Raman 
    5.Fraser Shein
    6.Bryan Campbell 
    7.Peter Korn
    8.Lakespur Roca
    9.Earl Johnson
   10.Mike Paciello
   11.Janina Sajka 
   12.Liam Quinn
   13.Eric Freese
   14.George Madaus
   15.John Gardner
   16.Gregg Vanderheiden
   17.Markku T. Hakkinen
   18.Geoff Freed
   19.Patrick Sheehan
   20.Richard Primack
   21.Håkon Wium Lie
   22.Chuck Hitchcock

All Group Chairs are also invited to send their comments to 
the above address. 

The Working Group has identified dependencies with the following W3C
Working Groups and requests review from them. Even if review
is not possible, we request that the Chairs listed below
announce their review intentions to w3c-wai-ua (a public mailing list).

1) WAI Protocols & Formats WG
   Co-Chairs: Al Gilman and Daniel Dardailler    
     UAWG provides input on accessibility requirements with regard to
     W3C technologies for which PFWG manages dependencies.


2) WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WG 
   Co-Chairs: Chuck Letourneau and Gregg Vanderheiden (Trace) 
     UAWG ensures that the "until user agent" clauses in 
     WCAG are addressed by user agents.


3) WAI Authoring Tool Guidelines WG 
   Chair: Jutta Treviranus (U of Toronto)
     UAWG coordinates on common component of user interface 
     accessibility.


4) WAI Education & Outreach WG 
   Chair: Judy Brewer (W3C)
      EOWG will assist in promoting awareness and implementation of 
      User Agent Accessibility Guidelines.


5) CSS/FP WG
   Chair: Chris Lilley (W3C)
      UAWG will provide input on accessibility requirements in CSS.


6) DOM WG
   Chair: Lauren Wood (Softquad)
      UAWG will provide input on accessibility requirements for DOM. 


7) HTML WG
   Chair: Steven Pemberton (CWI)
      UAWG will provide input on potential improvements 
      to XHTML accessibility features. 


8) Mobile Access IG 
   Chair: Tatsuya Hagino (W3C)
      UAWG and Mobile Access IG will coordinate to ensure consistent 
      approaches on guidelines development and on CC/PP.


9) MathML WG
   Co-Chairs: Patrick Ion (AMS) and Angel Diaz (IBM)
      UAWG will provide input on accessibility requirements for MathML.


10) SYMM WG
    Chair: Thierry Michel (W3C)
      UAWG will provide input on accessibility requirements in SMIL.


11) Voice Browser WG
    Chair: Tomasz Imielinski (Rutgers U)
      UAWG will provide input on accessibility requirements in 
      Voice Browsing.


Thank you,

 - Ian Jacobs

[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/1999OctDec/0244.html
[4] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/1999/10/reviewers-last-call
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/PR-WAI-AUTOOLS-19991026 
[6] http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT
[7] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/wai-ua-charter
[8] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/wai-ua-wd-changes.html
[9] http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear.html

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel/Fax:                     +1 212 684-1814
Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

Received on Friday, 5 November 1999 19:22:32 UTC