Review Groups and Gallery Background Notes

Last updated January 20, 2000
Judy Brewer, WAI Domain Leader & EOWG Chair

This page is a compilation of some of the initial discussion and planning notes on the topic of setting up Review Groups for accessibility of Web sites and a WAI Gallery demonstrating a variety of accessible Web sites.

August 5 1999

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Date: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 11:40:50 -0400

To: Sylvie Duchateau <sduchate@hall.snv.jussieu.fr>,

Dominique BURGER <Dominique.Burger@hall.snv.jussieu.fr>,

danield@w3.org, ij@w3.org, charles@w3.org, max@w3.org, jbrewer@w3.org

From: Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org>

Subject: Minutes, review groups planning, 5 August 1999

MINUTES: Preliminary planning discussion for establishing Web site review

groups

Thursday, August 5, 1999, 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. US EDT

Chair: Dominique Burger

Scribe: Judy Brewer. Send any corrections to cc list for this meeting.

DB Dominique Burger, BrailleNet

SD Sylvie Duchateau, BrailleNet

DD Daniel Dardailler, W3C/INRIA

CMN Charles McCathieNevile, W3C/MIT

IJ Ian Jacobs, W3C/MIT

JB Judy Brewer, W3C/MIT

MN Masafumi Nakane, W3C/Keio

DB Need to concentrate on method to progress, need a timeline to start

with, and we need to develop a proposal for how to proceed.

DD do we share the same goal? main goal is to build the gallery?

JB multiple goals: build gallery; and build review capability affiliated w/

WAI.

DD really easy to find that a site is not accessible; harder to find that

it is good.

JB does this affect review process?

DB yes, it does. believe there are multiple goals. 1. build gallery, 2.

share expertise in different countries; 3. disseminate this information in

different countries. for instance, important to explain why sites were

chosen for the gallery, although expect that some people will disagree.

DB which countries, how to pull those together?

JB Helle/Denmark; Julie/UK; Masafumi/Japan;

SD Rafael/Portugal

CMN Nir?

JB moving to the US

CMN but he's fluent in multiple languages

JB Sylvie how did you pull together the group you work with

SD worked w/ a small group, a team, in laboratory; would try to put

together more teams

DB we need to work on cross-disability evaluation capability. go beyond

visual disability, extend our experience.

JB have contacts?

DB w/ physical disability community, yes

JB with deaf community also?

DB in France Telecom, yes, we can contact them. what contacts do you have

in disability communities?

JB first, there is a large number of organizations represented on the WAI

Interest Group list, with strong contacts with other parts of the

disability community in different countries. in addition, I have lots of

contacts in international disability-specific organizations. if you drafted

a call for interest, you could send it out both through the WAI IG, and

then also through these other networks. I'm sure you'd get people interested.

JB Masafumi, cross-disability contacts in disability community in Japan?

MN Yes, have good contacts

DB great

CMN question of what people start reviewing

JB discussion of corporate sites that may be available for review. one

company has offered its site, 10,000 pages, to be practice material, or

fee-for-service material, or to sponsor training for review groups

possibly, if needed

CMN two other organizations that would probably be interested as well. but

really hard questions there, such as fee for service, huge sites, etc. this

could really become complicated from a bureaucractic perspective.

DB there are some difficult questions we would want to focus on at next

meeting; criteria for electing the sites; type of cooperation needed w/ Web

masters; question of fees; informal vs. formal work--what was this item on

your initial discussion questions Judy?

JB informal would be the practice stage, developing a consistent process

for doing the reviews, in order to get some things in the gallery quickly;

formal would be once our review process is more polished, and we can say

with more confidence that the sites have passed through a certain review

process.

DB what do other participants think?

CMN, MN, IJ yeah, at W3C generally develop our process on the basis of

experience

DB there are sites in each country that we already _think_ are accessible;

we could start with these

CMN start with sites that are claimed somewhere to be good.

JB like this idea. by the way, we're eager to have W3C site reviewed.

CMN, IJ yes!

JB we've tried internally here, but don't have the resources to go through

all the areas.

JB could select review sets, maybe five local or language-specific sites to

practice on, and three English-language sites that each of the

language-specific review groups could practice with, so they would all

compare their results on these and develop more consistency.

CMN maybe. are we assuming that English is the common language of the

review coordination?

<silence...>

JB I assume that the local or language-specific groups use whatever

language they want to, but that their representative to the Web site review

coordination group would need to be comfortable in English.

CMN consistent w/ W3C process

JB the most likely default language given the breadth of language groups

already interested.

CMN need to state this expectation explicitly.

JB time check, we will lose the phone bridge in 15 minutes. what steps do

you want to have in place by the end of this call?

DB should agree w/ a few Web sites to start practice reviews, and have the

name of people to start working on it as soon as possible. do all the

people on this phone call agree to starting this work, in the coming two

weeks, and exchanging comments on what this review means. once we have the

method for review, can easily transpose it to or from English.

CMN what about starting informally w/ Web sites in local languages?

JB doesn't matter to me the languages initially selected for review,

although hope that the W3C site is reviewed early. but I wonder about

better defining the roles of people on this call. for instance, should have

said this at the beginning, sorry, but Ian and Charles had expressed

interested in this activity partly to volunteer as a technical resource on

HTML, CSS, etc if needed and for in-depth familiarity with the Web Content

Accessibility Guidelines, so, as staff resources for the review groups. but

we've already found that none of us on staff have had much time to actually

do reviews, so may not be realistic to think of people on this call as

reviewers. maybe at the next call, we can have people committed to

developing review groups, and they could make commitments to do certain

number of practice reviews.

DB a kick-off meeting, then

JB well, still a planning meeting, but broader, it may take several drafts

to get the process description and call for interest in good shape, and

then later on you'd have a kick-off meeting

DB are people okay with that? so then we should plan a meeting in about two

weeks, and draft a call for interest before then? are people available on

Monday August 23?

JB trying to check the bridge calendar, can't open it. maybe two hours,

since there'd be more people, 10 - 12 US EDT?

DB 4pm here, okay

JB Masafumi?

DB midnight here now, okay though, if I'm awake.

JB will book a phone bridge, 10:00 - 12:00, Aug 23, and send confirmation

once booked. we could send a general invitation out, or just invite those

people we know already have some background on the review groups idea, to

keep this next stage meeting still well focused

DB will circulate a first draft between now and then, writing first draft

based on discussion today, and proposing an agenda for the meeting. will

send it to everyone on this call, and will expect feedback from everyone.

when will have the minutes?

JB within an hour. what about invitations to the other people we mentioned,

shall we do those jointly-- Julie, Helle, Rafael, Nir? and I think I was

supposed to contact Kelly?

CMN Gregory Rosmaita.

JB Dominique & I send out joint invitations to those people described, and

we figure the rest of this out on line?

DB Agreed. Thank you, everyone.

------------------

[the appended message is background information sent by Judy prior to the

meeting above]

Sylvie, Dominique, Daniel, Charles, Ian,

This message confirms our call today/Thursday August 5, to discuss how to

proceed with establishing review groups for Web site accessibility, using

the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

Our call is from 10:00 - 11:00 a.m., US Eastern Daylight Time, 16:00 -

17:00 in France.

Phone number is +1.617.252.7000. You can call directly without a password.

Some thoughts and questions to get this going follow, but Dominique and

Sylvie will be coordinating development of the review groups.

(for background) at the July 19 EOWG meeting we said we needed a gallery of

accessible sites, showing:

- diversity of function, creative & stimulating sites

- reviewed regularly; date of review & snapshot of front page present

- agreement w/ webmaster

- need diversity of languages; therefore diversity of language groups in

reviewers

- do this in two stages; informal and then more formal

we said that the reviewers should be...

- cross-disability

- have technical expertise

- have familiarity with the guidelines

- have some design awareness

- have some expertise in assistive technologies

- use WCAG 1.0 as their review base

- have some code of conduct for their work

- check each others work

- give a single, coordinated review per site

- each language group of reviewers should have a delegate to an overall

reviewers coordination group

- in some cases may have specific groups of reviewers per language; in

others per country

- reviewer groups should be hosted by collaborator organizations

- reviewer groups should give feedback to Web Content Guidelines working group

We'd need criteria for which sites get how much attention:

- we have two candidates for practice reviews: the W3C site, and a

corporate site that has been volunteered.

- first public reviews could then be organizations willing to be in

gallery, and/or W3C Member organizations.

- to what depth would sites be reviewed, on a no-fee basis? for instance,

the corporate site that has been offered has ~10,000 pages, and they would

be willing to do this on a fee-basis.

- are there general guidelines for how fee-for-service reviews might be done?

- is there any need to bring reviewers together for a meeting?

- are there liability issues for the reviews, or disclaimers needed? for

instance, in countries where there are legal requirements for

accessibility, do we need to clarify that the review does not hold legal

weight?

- will the WAI/report tool be part of the manual review?

- how do reviews handle sites that are changing even during the process of

review, or that change immediately after?

- should WAI have some process of saying which are "approved" review

groups, e.g. review groups that are committed to WAI's review process and

code of conduct?

- how do we develop the first review groups, and set up a communication

system for them?

Judy

----------

Judy Brewer jbrewer@w3.org +1.617.258.9741 http://www.w3.org/WAI

Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) International Program Office

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

MIT/LCS Room NE43-355, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

August 12, 1999

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Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 17:18:53 +0000

To: Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org>,

Dominique BURGER <Dominique.Burger@hall.snv.jussieu.fr>,

danield@w3.org, ij@w3.org, charles@w3.org, max@w3.org

From: Sylvie Duchateau <sduchate@hall.snv.jussieu.fr>

Subject: First proposal for the gallery of web sites and reviewer groups

Hello all,

Following our phone meeting of August 5, Dominique asked me to write a

proposal for the gallery of web sites and the reviewer groups. this

proposal is based on what was discussed last thursday. This is a first

draft and any comments on what is missing or what should be improved or

deleted are welcome.

Regards

Sylvie

First draft proposal for the establishment of a gallery of accessible web

sites and reviewer groups.

1. The goals:

A gallery of accessible web sites should be set up in order to show

examples of what does an accessible web site look like.

Moreover it would be useful to create reviewer groups. All those groups

would be affiliated to Wai.

2. How to proceed

This should begin with an informal small group familiar with that topic. It

could start for example with people who were in Sophia, France, at the

WaI-EO face-to-face meeting who represent different countries: Denmark,

France, Great Britain, Japan, Spain and some others.

3. What could the gallery look like?

Several sites will be presented that were determined to be accessible and

it will be explained why those sites were chosen. The gallery would be a

moving gallery. That is, different sites will be shown on the gallery for a

couple of weeks. Those sites will be reviewed regularly and replaced by

others. The accessibility of the gallery sites relies on the WCAG 1.0. But

other criteria should be defined during the informal period. The sites of

the gallery should represent several categories: governmental sites, media

but also corporate sites. An agreement should be passed between W3C and the

webmasters of the sites of the gallery so that those sites can be reviewed

regularly.

4. How should each subgroup be set up?

Several reviewer groups should be set up that would represent a country or

a specific language. Each country or language reviewer group should be

representative of cross disabilities, have technical expertise, have good

knowledge of the guidelines, and be familiar with assistive technologies.

To build those groups it could be useful to contact members of the WAI

interest group list and international disability organizations. Each

reviewer group could chose in which language they communicate and in which

language the reviewed sites should be. Nevertheless, there should be a

coordinating group in which a representative of each subgroup would

participate. The communication language of this group would be English to

facilitate exchanges as the languages spoken by each group would be very

different. This coordination group could allow that the work of each

subgroup could be checked by the other groups. To facilitate the

communication inside this group a mailing list could be created, as Daniel

Dardailler already suggested.

5. How could the sites be reviewed?

Once the groups have been set up they could start with sites which are

considered to be accessible somewhere. English speaking sites could be a

start to have a basis. One of the first sites could be W3C. Five or six

local language specific sites could also be present on the gallery.

At the end of this informal period the results should be compared and a

method should be developed.

After the gallery and the reviewer groups have been set up a more formal

group could begin with the developed process.

The informal period could last minimum three months and a deadline could be

the end of the year 1999. At the end of 1999, the coordination group could

decide if the informal period should continue or if a more formal period

should be started.

Details of the proposal could be discussed on August 23, during another

phone meeting with the people who attended the first meeting on August, 5,

and people who would like to be involved in the setting of the gallery and

of the reviewer groups.

August 19, 1999