Making DI/WAI/I18N checks a formal part of the W3C spec publication process

Hello QA,

In a discussion regarding a recent message received by the group, I was
given the action to raise an issue with QA that derives from a
suggestion contained within the message, namely:

"if you have any guidelines for spec writers regarding device
independence we would appreciate the references."

This request opened the issue of how to raise awareness of DI with spec
writers.

It was agreed that questions like:
  - Does this spec give due consideration to Accessibility?
  - Does this spec give due consideration to Device Independence?
  - Does this spec give due consideration to I18N?
  - etc.
might be good "tick boxes" for spec authors as part of the formal
publication process. If this were the case, authors of specifications
would be required as part of the publication process to confirm that
they had considered such issues, preferably with the help of the
relevant groups, and had either taken appropriate actions, or deemed the
issue not relevant to the spec. The tick boxes could be linked to
guidelines provided by each group to streamline the process.

Would it be possible as part of the QA work to consider/comment on such
an enhancement to the quality of the publication process? Would the
consumers of new specifications be more confident in the specifications
if they were aware that the publication process formally included such
checks as a necessary step?

We acknowledge that there are other oversight processes (e.g. the Chairs
acting in concert to suggest reviews of new specs by various groups),
but the suggestion we are making is to make explicit certain broad
issues like Accessibility, DI and I18N (to name but three).

Regretably, DI has not written guidelines for spec writers, but if this
were a formal part of the authoring process then I'm sure we (the DIWG)
would be happy to craft something to that effect.

On behalf of DIWG,
---Rotan Hanrahan.

Received on Wednesday, 14 June 2006 15:04:48 UTC