updated CSS Snapshot request; serious accessibility problem with CSS deliverables schedule

aloha!

i am writing to you as an individual who just happens to be a member
of the Protocols & Formats working group (http://www.w3.org/wai/pf)
and who just happens to be blind.

As part of my responsibilities for the PFWG, i have been attempting
to assist in the effort to track, coordinate and facilitate reviews of 
all CSS modules as they are developed, so that any accessibility 
concerns and/or needs can be addressed during the developmental stage, 
and not merely through comments when a draft reaches Last Call or 
Candidate Recommendation status. Consult, for example:

http://www.w3.org/wai/pf/wiki/CSS

i have been using the "CSS Snapshot 2007" 
(http://www.w3.org/TR/css-beijing) since it was released, as a 
timeline/roadmap of CSS3 module development, but the last version of 
that document to be issued is datestamped 2008-05-16 and a lot of 
activity has transpired since that date.

Is the Style Activity/CSS WG working on an update the CSS Snapshot 
document?  Is there an editor's draft of the CSS Snapshot that 
presents an up-to-date summation of CSS3 module development, 
deployment and timeline?

The reason behind this request is that -- as a blind user -- i cannot
use the CSS Working Group/Style Activity's deliverables schedule page 
located at:

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work

there, color coding is used to indicate the development status of the 
Style Activity's individual drafts. While there is a legend for the color 
coding used in the chart:

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work#legend

this is the type of info that it is essential to convey to a non-visual
or monochrome user explicitly by documenting the precise background 
and/or foreground values which are intended to reflect the current 
status of documents under development -- the legend simply shows the
colors and their associations -- the actual colors (background, in
particular) are NOT named and need to be discovered by querying the text
in the legend for font/display properties, which is an UNDUE burden on 
any -- let alone the average -- user.

The legend needs to contain the equivalent information in plain, human
parseable language, NOT as the current legend does, by using examples
of background colors, but by naming the background colors so that a user
can query/command their assistive technology to read text (or process 
text) that match the specified combinations AND by binding them to their 
symbolic meaning using SemWeb techniques, such as, for example, RDFa.

One must never forget that even when one separates style from structure, 
color coding is still a modality-specific means of communicating 
information, no matter how the color coding is achieved.

thank you, gregory.
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Accessibility, Internationalization, and Interoperability are not
"features", "overlays" or "add-ons".  Rather, they are core 
components of any architecture -- programmatic or otherwise.
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     Gregory J. Rosmaita, gregory@linux-foundation.org
Vice-Chair, WebMaster & Listmaster, Open Accessibility Workgroup
http://a11y.org/                                http://a11y/specs
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Received on Wednesday, 14 July 2010 15:11:17 UTC