Accessibility Re: SVG WG announces Last Call of SVG 1.2

Accessibility

Honourable Chairs,

on behalf of the disabled community, I would like to request that 
further work* and attention is paid to the accessibility requirements 
of SVG, before publication.

In particular I draw your attention to the fact that whereas SVG 1.1 
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/ has an appendix 'H' titled: "Accessibility"
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/access.html
there is no such appendix in the current 'last call' working draft
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVG12-20041027/

I would further remind you that the discussion Note "Accessibility 
features of SVG"
http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG-access/
was last published 7th August 2000 and that there do not appear to be 
any revisions to reflect our current understanding.

Please also consider this recent quote: "Alas, SVG and MathML are not 
accessible yet at all." from Aaron Leventhal on 8th October 2004:
http://nostalsong.com/mozillalinks/html/links23_full.html#community

It may be that the Working Group has built a strong relationship with 
the disabled community and that their needs are addressed in this 
document.
However it would be helpful if this was documented in an appendix, 
together with a new Techniques document, and a further discussion Note 
expanding on the possible benefits of sXBL with regard to 
accessibility**.

I commend the SVG working group on what they have achieved, and ask 
them to take one further step, for us all.

regards

Jonathan Chetwynd
http://www.peepo.co.uk     "It's easy to use"
irc://freenode/accessibility

*a talk "SVG and Accessibility" given at the second SVG London User 
Group meeting Tuesday 9th March 2004:
http://www.peepo.co.uk/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SVG

**an SVG Graphical User Interface document with links to a draft 
Accessible sGUI OWL schema is here:
http://www.peepo.co.uk/launch/index.svg

On 27 Oct 2004, at 22:39, Chris Lilley wrote:


Dear Chairs,

On behalf of the SVG Working Group [1], I am pleased to announce the
publication of the 27 October 2004 "Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.2"
Last Call Working Draft. The document is available at:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-SVG12-20041027/

Review start date : 27 October 2004
Review end date   : 24 November 2004
Mailing list      : www-svg@w3.org (public archive [2])

Please find below the following information:

    * Which groups should review this document
    * Decision to advance to Last Call
    * Patent disclosures
    * The abstract and status section

For more information on the purpose of a Last Call review, please
consult section 7.4.2 of the W3C Process Document [3].

The SVG WG looks forward to your review comments,

Chris Lilley     Chair, SVG WG
Dean Jackson     Staff Contact, SVG WG

[1] http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Group/
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/
[3] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/Process-20040205/tr.html#last-call

========================================
Which groups should review this document
========================================

The TAG welcomes review from all interested parties including
implementors of SVG renderers, of SVG authoring tools, content
designers, and the interested public.

In particular, we request review from the following W3C groups:

  CSS WG                         [Bert Bos, Chair]
  Compound Document Formats WG   [Vincent Hardy, Chair]
  Device Independence WG         [Rhys Lewis, Chair]
  HTML WG                        [Steven Pemberton, Chair]
  Internationalization WG        [Addison Phillips, Chair]
  Multimodal Interaction WG      [Deborah Dahl, Chair]
  QA WG                          [Karl Dubost, Chair]
  SYMM WG                        [Yoshihisa Gonno,
                                  Guido Grassel, co-Chairs]
  Timed Text WG                  [Glenn Adams, chair]
  Voice Browser WG               [Jim Larson,
                                  Scott McGlashan, co-Chairs]
  WAI P&F WG                     [Alfred Gilman, Chair]
  XForms WG                      [Steven Pemberton, Chair]
  XML Core WG                    [Paul Grosso,
                                  Norm Walsh co-Chairs]
  XML Schema WG                  [David Ezell, Chair]


The Chairs of some of these groups have already confirmed with the SVG
WG their intent to review the document, at the Friday 22 October
Hypertext CG call [4] or individually [5]. For other groups, the W3C
Director will appreciate a response (sent to www-svg@w3.org) with or
without review comments.

[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-html-cg/2004OctDec/0012.html
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-svg-wg/2004OctDec/0524.html


In addition, the following external groups are explicitly requested to
review SVG 1.2:

  3GPP                      [Robin Berjon, SVG<->3GPP Liaison]
  OMA                       [Vincent Mahe, SVG<->OMA Liaison]



=================================
Decision to advance to Last Call
=================================

The SVG WG decided to advance to Last Call, with no objections and one
abstention, at their Thursday 21 October 2004 telcon. [6]

Resolution: Publish Last Call  with unmerged spec.

[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-svg-wg/2004OctDec/0491.html



==================
Patent disclosures
==================

First public working draft of this specification [7] was 15 November 
2002.
A patent disclosure page is maintained at [8]

Per the W3C Patent Policy, Working Group participants have 60 days from
the publication of the Last Call Working Draft to exclude any claims
made essential by the Last Call Working Draft not included in earlier
drafts. The deadline for such exclusions is  26 December 2004.

[7] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-SVG12-20021115/
[8] http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Disclosures


==============================================
Abstract of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.2
==============================================

SVG is a modularized XML language for describing two-dimensional
graphics with animation and interactivity, and a set of APIs upon which
to build graphics-based applications. This document specifies version
1.2 of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

==========================
Status section
==========================

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its
publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of
current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical
report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at
http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This is a W3C Last Call Working Draft of the Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG) 1.2 specification. The SVG Working Group plans to submit this
specification for consideration as a W3C Candidate Recommendation after
examining feedback to this draft. Comments for this specification should
have a subject starting with the prefix 'SVG 1.2 Comment:'. Please send
them to www-svg@w3.org, the public email list for issues related to
vector graphics on the Web. This list is archived and acceptance of this
archiving policy is requested automatically upon first post. To
subscribe to this list send an email to www-svg-request@w3.org with the
word subscribe in the subject line. Comments are accepted until 30
November 2004.

This document lists the changes from SVG 1.1. It is not a complete
language description.

This document has been produced by the SVG Working Group as part of the
Graphics Activity within the W3C Interaction Domain.

This document was produced under the 23 January 2002 CPP as amended by
the W3C Patent Policy Transition Procedure. The Working Group maintains
a public list of patent disclosures relevant to this document; that page
also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who
has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains
Essential Claim(s) with respect to this specification should disclose
the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C
Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or
obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite
this document as other than work in progress.



-- 
  Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
  Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
  Member, W3C Technical Architecture Group

Received on Thursday, 28 October 2004 08:13:19 UTC