My Retirement Letter

Dear Friends,

I am retired from AG. I’m 72 and I am gardening, teaching my grandchildren
on Zoom and studying mathematics. It’s fun, and I strongly recommend giving
yourself time to enjoy your time on earth.

This letter is to reflect on my time with the W3C. It has been wonderful,
even if I got really frustrated at times. That is the nature of changing
the world. We all have good ideas, and at the W3C many are brilliant. I
felt honored to bask in the glow of so many luminaries. I was so lucky to
meet people who had a lot to give and gave all of it.

I also love what you have accomplished. Incomplete, sometimes flawed, but
always improving life for people with disabilities, the W3C work has done
more for print disabilities than any other group in history. I can read
almost every topic I need to read. Sometimes I hit dead ends, but today
that is rare.

I am mildly sorry about being a pain in the --- at times. I do wish I could
have remained diplomatic, but I am flawed.

There one thing I would like to suggest for future Wayne’s. When a person
complains about an access issue please listen to the need. People with
disabilities often perceive issues that support personnel and researchers
do not know. Support personnel and researchers are experts, but the person
with the disability knows more than any expert.

When a person with a disability says, “I cannot do activity X.” There
really might be profound accessibility issues that have not been recognized
at present. At that point we need to ask four questions.

   1.

    Does the issue observed problem reveal of a new accessibility barrier?
   2.

    Can the barrier be addressed with web technology?
   3.

    Does the structure of web accessibility guidelines enable a strategy
   that can address this issue?
   4.

    If 1 and 2 are true and 3 is false, is it ethical for the AG to ignore
   the issue because it exceeds the scope of the current accessibility
   guidelines?

I am not sure how to implement a protocol like this, but I think it is
necessary. Silver is moving in this direction, but I think our new
guidelines need to build in mechanisms for growth and foundational review.

WCAG 2 attempted to anticipate changes in web technology with the Robust
Principle, but it did not make room for changes to assistive technologies
or the need for new assistive technologies. At the writing of WCAG 2 there
was little to no consideration of the personalization issue. WCAG 2
addressed transformations of one learning mode to another mode like
text-to-speech and speech-to-text, and mouse access (visual) to keyboard.
However, WCAG 2 did not address intra modal transformatio. For example,
text to modified text was not addressed in an effective way. Real access to
intra modal transformation lives outside the scope of WCAG 2. For example,
change of color is impossible within the scope of WCAG 2. We just gave that
up.

Sadly, the WG often questions the user need when the current technology or
limits of the guidelines cannot slove the problem.

When a future Wayne comes along, maybe you could just say. “You have
identified a serious problem, but we don’t know how to solve it.” That
would be disappointing, but it would not feel dismissive.

With Love, Wayne