RE: Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA)

A few responses inline... 

> > Why is a group that is, "encouraging the enhancement of current 
> > technologies, the creation of new technology, and promoting the 
> > implementation of these APIs and specifications cross-platform and 
> > across the industry," focusing on one browser and one proprietary 
> > accessibility architecture?

The projects listed are initial projects that were of interest to
members of AIA as it was forming. Additional projects can and will be
formed and the initial projects do not create boundaries that define the
group.  As additional members join, the focus of projects will be
infludenced in additional ways.

> > While there is no doubt that there is always room for 
> improvement, why 
> > do we need to call out the "extension" of IAccessible2 
> specifically? 
> > It's already an accepted, open standard that was 
> deliberately designed 
> > to be consistent with AT-SPI, thus helping to mitigate 
> precisely the 
> > inconsistency that the AIA wants to remedy. It seems to me that UIA 
> > Express ought to be morphing to IAccessible2 and, in turn, to ARIA, 
> > not vice versa.

Perhaps that is how it will happen.  The focus is to have engineers look
at the different APIs and make good decisions to improve accessibility
for users and ease implementation for developers. That may mean
extending UIA or extending IA2, or it may not mean extending IA2.  for
my part, I'm open to anything that will help us achieve accessibility
goals.

> > Finally, the AIA, "may also pursue formal standardization of the 
> > resulting technologies and/or specifications, recognizing 
> the value of 
> > adoption by standards bodies (such as ANSI and ISO) in driving 
> > mainstream use." As Gregory asks, is the AIA going to be 
> working with 
> > the W3C or the Open A11y Working Group of the Linux Foundation to 
> > insure that any resulting standards proposals are 
> harmonious with ARIA 

ARIA is certainly on the radar and working with ARIA is part of the
focus of at least one of the projects.  

> > and IA2? Should we invite one of the three board members to PF or 
> > should PF attempt via the W3C to become a board member of the AIA?

For Adobe's part, we already have Matt May on PF.

The AIA welcomes participation from additional companies and
organizations. Please feel free to contact me or other AIA members for
additional information.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick

Senior Product Manager, Accessibility

Adobe Systems 

akirkpatrick@adobe.com

Received on Thursday, 20 December 2007 20:40:21 UTC