Discussing ARIA in HTML5 integration

I happened to find this curious statement in the IRC logs of a third WG:
"Gregory: We (WAI) arranged a special meeting with HTML5 people to  
discuss Aria, and no one from HTML5 turned up"
"... so we are ignoring them for the moment"
http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/xhtml/20080402#l-139

I wonder what meeting this was. To my knowledge, the previous meeting  
where the PFWG invited HTML WG participants was a face-to-face meeting  
at TPAC. And there were people from the HTML WG there.

I checked public-html and public-html-wg-announce archives, and I  
didn't see a meeting invitation. When was the meeting supposed to be  
and who was invited?

- -

On a more general note:

Face-to-face meeting and telecons are problematic for discussing  
detailed technical things like language integration, because people  
don't have the opportunity to re-study drafts, write test cases and do  
research in order to make informed statements and change their  
opinions based on verified information in the middle of the  
conversation. Moreover, by charter[1], the HTML WG "primarily conducts  
its technical work on a Public mailing list public-html". After all,  
face-to-face meetings and telecons would discriminate against a  
substantial number of HTML WG participants.

The HTML WG had a recent success in inter-WG language integration  
discussion with the Math WG. The thread was simply CCed to both public- 
html and www-math. I think a similar mode of discussion would work for  
ARIA and HTML5. In addition to public-html, I have addressed this  
message to wai-xtech, since according to the PFWG charter[2] it is the  
PFWG list for non-confidential matters.

I realize that in general ARIA work doesn't happen on a public mailing  
list, but it is a problem if issues relevant to HTML integration  
gravitate into the Member space where most HTML WG participants can't  
go. (And those who can go there aren't allowed to discuss what they  
find there on the HTML WG communication channels.)

[1] http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter.html#communication
[2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/charter200612#Communication
-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2008 08:18:47 UTC