Re: Concerns with Accessibe joining W3C

Hi John,

are you really trying to persuade us, that accessibe joined the W3C to work NOT in the accessibility field anymore, but they might’ve found their passion for linguistics?

Also I can’t see a huge flame war or hate speech, just different opinions - that does not address your mails - I’d rather speak not to a single person anyway, because I’d like to say something about the whole discussion.

accessibe is into a11y and they have been noticed as a company, that puts user interests after their own economic grow, they have aggressive marketing and it’s at least likely that they will use their W3C membership in their marketing for an approach, that nearly none of us supports and that users don’t want.

 I think it’s ok to feel uncomfortable with this and to talk about it here.

But: Also I think it might be good to look closer to new/unorthodox/strange solutions.

Maybe there will be a time, when we all think, how stupid it was, to rely on the changing landscape of UA/AT vendors to implement the accessibility related stuff like aria correctly into their products instead of website owners  taking care about a11y with tools like the one accessibe is working on.

Although I myself think that this is very unlikely and that it is very uncomfortable to learn a bunch of a11y overlays and finding on each website an individual solution - I’m also sure that progress is not made by forbidding new ideas and approaches.

Even if this tool they offer in future versions still is not good for the end users: a whole bunch of ideas and thinking, that went into it, might give important inspiration for future specifications and solutions that we - taught to think in a certain way - won’t be able to think of or much later.

So both sides - the people fighting for every company that gives money to the W3C no matter the reason and the people that have a problem with this - should try to stay open minded, listening to the others argument and for gods sake don’t tell each other who knows more or less.

In this very thread the W3C netiquette was posted!

Read it - pleeeaase!

😉

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Marc Haunschild
https://Accessibility.Consulting


Am 30.05.2021 um 01:03 schrieb John Foliot <john@foliot.ca>:


Steve writes:

> For a start, they actively discourage website owners from learning about accessibility and fixing the issues with their websites. That is not some peripheral opinion of theirs - it's the basis of their entire business model. That alone puts them completely at odds with the objectives of the W3C and all its existing members.

Really? I'm sorry, but I believe you are now working under a very false assumption. (Doubly so, as seemingly Test Partners is not even a W3C member - https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List#xT - although I would be happy to learn otherwise.) I am curious to understand how you came to this assertion?

First, the W3C is about more than just accessibility (although the work and contributions that happen inside the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative to advance digital accessibility is an important part of the W3C's mission). First and foremost the W3C is a stakeholder consortium that focuses on technical standards. It is NOT a 'social change' organization, and in fact, with members from quite literally around the planet, including countries with decidedly non-western political constructs like Russia and China, the W3C walks a fine line there. (There has been some discussion within the membership about that, and it proves to be a very tricky line to walk indeed).

You may or may not recall that within the W3C a while back there was quite some consternation about supporting the EME<https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/>, which, while not (NOT!!!!) DRM (Digital Rights Management), was nonetheless technical work on developing a standardized API for browsers to support Encrypted Media. There were numerous "Open Web" advocates that wanted the W3C to avoid doing that work ("DRM is Evil"), up-to and including the EFF "joining" the W3C to try and block that work. They too came to realize that this was simply not how the W3C operated, and that work continued despite major frustration from many rank-and-file participants. (Sadly, the EFF does not appear to be a member today - I suspect they did not renew their membership when they didn't win their fight, but that is just a guess on my part.)

Second, while accessibility *IS* an important part of the work the W3C does, I suspect that there are more than one member who have joined the W3C for reasons that had nothing to do with accessibility, and who perhaps have joined because as a tech company they wish to also 'bask in the cache' of being associated with the W3C - again for reasons that have nothing to do with accessibility.

For example, a quick visit to https://www.w3.org/TR/ - the 'repository' of Technical Recommendations at the W3C - (thus the /TR) shows a lot of emergent effort to address issues related to internationalization and non-western characters and layouts. I suspect that most of the people working on *THAT* pressing and far-reaching issue (also related to equitable access) are not participating at the W3C for issues related to accessibility.
(For the curious and those who like to learn new and interesting 'stuff', check out: https://w3c.github.io/typography/gap-analysis/language-matrix.html)

In fact, some here may be surprised to learn that there is a W3C policy that emergent specifications get an accessibility "horizontal review" (by the Accessible Platform Architecture Working Group) SPECIFICALLY because the majority of the active participants within the numerous working groups at the W3C are equally unfamiliar with the nuances of accessibility considerations, and the task of that Working Group is to help our fellow W3C colleagues NOT create specifications that reinforce or frustrate accessibility issues. And as an active member of that group, I can assure you we still see items that, if we did not capture and report them, would harm "accessibility" even further - so again, accessibility at the W3C is important, but it is not the only driver, and it is NOT why all members join the W3C.

So respectfully Steve, while I truly do understand the frustration that having accessiBe become members causes (and FWIW that ship has sailed - they ARE members today<https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List#xA>), your assumptions and assertions of what the W3C's role and mission is are somewhat misinformed. I stated earlier, while I too am disappointed and frustrated with accessiBe and their business model, I would also fight tooth and nail to retain accessiBe's right to join the W3C.

Anything else is the antithesis of inclusion, and if nothing else, we need to eat our own dogfood.

Respectfully,

JF

On Sat, May 29, 2021 at 8:21 AM Steve Green <steve.green@testpartners.co.uk<mailto:steve.green@testpartners.co.uk>> wrote:
I would agree with you if the only thing we knew about accessiBe is that they propose to become members. But we know a great deal more. For a start, they actively discourage website owners from learning about accessibility and fixing the issues with their websites. That is not some peripheral opinion of theirs - it's the basis of their entire business model. That alone puts them completely at odds with the objectives of the W3C and all its existing members.

We know that not only does their tool not make a significant improvement to the websites it is applied to, but the tool itself has serious accessibility barriers. These could be easily fixed, but it is an indictment of the company's competence and/or commitment to accessibility that it either doesn't know about them or has chosen not to fix them.

I do not believe that we should overlook these and their other behaviours when assigning motives or predicting their future actions.

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: Charles 'chaals' (McCathie) Nevile <chaals@yandex.ru<mailto:chaals@yandex.ru>>
Sent: 29 May 2021 07:09
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org<mailto:w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Concerns with Accessibe joining W3C

Again, this is ascribing motives to individuals and making specific assertions about what they will do based on those motives. That is not reasonable behaviour.

As Patrick pointed out, a vast amount of work done over the 24-year existence of WAI was done by private companies, or organisations funded by investment money, or individuals looking to be paid by someone.

Investors can choose whatever reason, or combination of reasons, to put money into an organisation.

Completely hypothetically (I neither know nor care about the specific details of this case), it is entirely possible that the series A money came from some organisation whose mission is to improve accessibility, and a condition of the funding is participation in W3C and demonstrating an improvement in the effectiveness of their work specifically to counter the current stream of bad-mouthing that many in the accessibility community raise against them, by actually answering the complaints with improvements.

It is quite reasonable to point out things that don't work as advertised, or why a certain solution they develop fails to meet a certain requirement. It is reasonable in turn to question whether that requirement still makes sense. The point is to reach consensus on the answers to such questions. We have been doing that in WAI for 20-odd years, and should continue.

cheers

Chaals

On Sat, 29 May 2021 01:56:00 +1000, Steve Green <steve.green@testpartners.co.uk<mailto:steve.green@testpartners.co.uk>> wrote:

> Their investors expect the company to maximise the return on their
> investment and won’t want anything to get in the way of that, >even if
> it makes the world better.



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John Foliot | Senior Industry Specialist, Digital Accessibility

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