Summary where UAAG is from the chairs perspective

I just wanted to summarize my thoughts on yesterdays telephone conferece:

1. Is the UAAG document "done"?
I think from UAAG perspective the document should be considered done from a 
requirements perspective, and that it should be presented to developers as 
such.  Candidate Recommendation is a period to secure developer commitments 
to implement and document actual implementation.  The only potential 
reasons a requirement would be removed from UAAG are:

a. The requirement is not found to benefit people with disabilities
Result: This is easy to remove from the document, since this is what are 
document is about.  There has been no suggestion to this point that any of 
our current requirements fall under this case

b. There is a technical reason the requirement cannot be implemented
Result: May require rethinking of a requirement.  We have already done a 
lot of requirements tuning during our last calls, so I don't think this is 
a big issue during CR.

c. There is a general lack of commitment to implement a requirement by 
developers
Result: This is probably our biggest issue for the requirements we do not 
have implementation expereince, but I think that we should use CR to 
leverage commitment.  I think we should use the process as long as we see 
developer progress in using and implementing the guidelines to improve the 
accessibility of their products. I think by presenting the document as 
done, we can increase developer interest.  We also need to get groups 
outside of WAI advocating for implementation of UAAG.

2. When will the working group be "done"?
The major milestone to determine when the working group is done is when the 
document goes to recommendation.  There will probably be some discussion 
and documentation of requirements for a future UAAG document, but that is 
minor compare to UAAG going to recommendation.  The biggest stumbling block 
in moving to recommendation is implementation experience.  The group is 
currently wrestling the balance of forces between wanting to get UAAG to 
recommendation with the force of maintaining the current requirements.  I 
think as long as we see developer interest in implementation, we should 
continue in CR.

3. Charter
I think the charter needs to be redrafted in a way that allows the working 
group to evaluate CR progress periodically and allow the group to make 
decisions at those points on whether to continue to collect implementation 
experience, or to remove requirements that are not being implemented and 
move the document to recommendation.  I think this should take place at 
least once every 6 weeks.

4. In the mean time we really need to improve our implementation report and 
508 vs. UAAG comparison.

I welcome the working groups comments and ideas on these topics,
Jon






Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
MC-574
College of Applied Life Studies
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
WWW: http://www.w3.org/wai/ua

Received on Friday, 14 December 2001 09:33:56 UTC