Minutes from Telecon on 28th October

Minutes are also available at the WWW site:
http://www.w3.org/wai/ua



Attendance
Jon Gunderson (Chair)
Ian Jacobs (Scribe)
Judy Brewer
Kathy Hewitt
Kitch Barnicle
Charles McCathieNeville
Marja-Riitta Koivunen
Paul Adelson
Scott Leubking

Action Items and Conclusions
- Ian and Charles: Arrange a meeting to discuss an appendix specific to
HTML/CSS. 
The following actions involve authoring based on the upcoming 20 October
draft.
·       Paul Adelson: Guideline rationales 
·       Scott Leubking: Frames and tables 
·       Kitch: Configurability and visibility features 
·       Kathy Hewitt: Talk to developers about script stuff. 

Minutes
1) Discussion of upcoming document restructure
Ian discusses new document structure, that will be available Friday 
·       Guidelines still abstract 
·       Techniques will be oriented to developers 
Charles: What is missing is a list of elements. 
IJ: I agree that this should be an appendix.
Charles: I'd like a checklist w.r.t. elements/attributes/properties and their
priorities that I'd like to take back to developers.
JG: Input from WG participants on issues like these is very important.
Charles,
would you like to assemble such a list?
Action Ian and Charles: Arrange a meeting to discuss this appendix.
2) Division of labor 
JG: one problem that emerged during the FTF meeting was that grouping of
information made the guidelines difficult to "check off". The new format will
address this. Longer list of priority 1's, but each will be more specific.
Also, Priorities will be expressed in terms of user needs. Some techniques
will
be required to be implemented natively. Others may be implemented by assistive
technologies, with hooks where necessary.
Scott: Will the other access technolgy developers agree to this?
JG: Some of the developers at the meeting were not aware of technologies like
the DOM. I would like to organize a workshop for developers to expose
technologies to them.
JB: Good idea.
JG: The developers at the meeting were more enthusiastic now that they had
been
better exposed to what the WG and the W3C does.
Scott: Is this a philosophy that we want to pursue? That implementations by
other software will lag behind.
JG: We would ideally like all UAs to be accessible out of the box ...
JB: Hang on. The issue is what the guidelines are trying to accomplish. We
concluded at the meeting that many functionalities were the responsibility of
user agents natively.
Scott: How well does HJ handle javascript?
IJ: I think that the WG will have to make some difficult decisions, but has
the
notion of "division of labor" clearly in mind.
JG: Guidelines will reflect current state of technology.
JB: In the upcoming draft, as part of an introduction.
IJ: (I already wrote one this morning).
JB: I don't agree with Scott's fear nor JG's statement about attending to this
specific moment in time.
PA: One of the issues is that the document may outlast the current state of
technology. Don't want the document to rot too quickly. 
/* Mini discussion of DOM */
Scott: My fear is that the document will be used as a justification why
something is not being supported.
PA: The statement "If the user agent doesn't support it then, " is the one I
oppose. Should be "even if it supports it, it must make available the
information".
3) Scripts
JG: One issue that we addressed more clearly at the face-to-face involved
scripting. The WG felt that with scripting, the author was creating a new
interface. The issue was not the accessibility of scripting itself, but the
use
of the script and that the use has to be accessible. (For example, some
scripts
perform invisibile tasks that don't really "concern" the user.) Since the
author is creating a new interface, they should observe guidelines related to
interface: keyboard accessibility, etc.
Additional suggestion that the UA provide repair strategies for inaccessible
authoring (e.g., that use mouse clicks only).
KH: Let's be clear about that. The "repair strategy" is very hard to
implement.
Our developers don't know how to do this easily with the object model.
Charles: E.g., generate "onactivate" for an "onclick" event. "Onmouseout" and
"ondoubleclick" are hairy.
IJ: I think that for the list of finite events defined by HTML, that access to
behaviors attached to them should be obvious to implement (although admittedly
politically difficult, e.g., due to the underlying keyboard model). This is
distinct from a UA having to "know what a random script does to the document",
which I agree cannot be known in the general case.
4) Getting participants involved in helping to author the document.
·       Get Rich Schwerdtfeger involved. 
·       Jim Allan will be getting involved SMIL 
·       Hans as well 
·       Kevin Carey as well. 
·       Paul Adelson (IJ: Can you help write rationales behind guidelines.) 
·       Scott Leubking will address frames and tables 
·       Kitch will look at configurability and visibility features 
·       Kathy Hewitt will talk to developers about script stuff. 
5) Upcoming teleconfs.
JG: Do people want to have weekly meetings?
IJ: W3C meeting in Kyoto week of 18 November 
Thanksgiving the following week.
JB: I think they should be held weekly until the document goes to PR.
JB: Once Friday draft available, WG will review quickly, and assess whether
another ftf will be required at the 4 November teleconference. Need to make
decision <em>urgently</em> due to W3C Process concerns.
JG: A potential face-to-face could take place the second week of December. 

Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
WWW:	http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
	http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess

Received on Friday, 30 October 1998 11:23:02 UTC