21 December 2000 WCAG WG telecon

Summary of action items and resolutions

Participants

Regrets

Checkpoint 6.2 - selection of technologies

JW Current proposal: remove completely or rework? Support for a checkpoint of this type.

WL Along these lines?

JW Would help people to choose between technologies.

WC Evolve into "use XML accessibility Guidelines" or whatever they evolve into?

JW Yes, then can fit the XML Guidelines in as a technology document. That's not the only scenario.

LK Suggest this belongs in discussion on compliance. Balance desire with difficulty.

WC How put it into conformance if requirement?

LK Redundant. If says "provide alternative content" then have to use a language that provides it.

WL What does 6.2 say?

/* 6.2 Use languages and protocols that support the use of these guidelines. */

JW It's not the checkpoint itself but the criteria under it.

WC So you're saying that if they are creating a language and trying to conform to WCAG then they will automatically conform to WCAG? What if the people creating the language are different than those who are using it?

WL Don't see how creating a language overlaps with following these guidelines?

LK Then that's part of language guidelines.

JW Those requirements are so similar to WCAG that there is an open possibility that they become techniques for these.

GV Could be removed as a checkpoint since it falls into the category of good advice. If someone can make something that is accessible other than a language that supports these guidelines then it should be allowed. On the other hand it says, use something that we just said.

JW LK suggested move to conformance.

GV Not conformance, but implementation.

JW Could add something related to testing, it used to be an appendix. Perhaps a separate section that is non-normative that deals with selection of technologies, issues of user agent capabilities, and testing and so on as an informative.

MM I want to see a non-normative document that says "we recommend this. we don't recommend that."

JW What about implementation advice?

MM Like law and considerations for what we've written.

WL Do other checkpoints have this quality?

GV Maybe convert 6 into "recommendations for graceful transformation" and the whole set of guidelines are about doing these things.

WL In the preamble!

GV If down here get picked up in checklist summary.

WL Regardless, could get down to 5 guidelines.

JW Using testing tools doesn't seem as important as these other things. But is advise for implementors.

WL That's part of ATAG.

LK There are ways of creating content that are more easily testable.

WC Bring up good tools early on in the process to help people make good decisions early on.

GV Maybe this belongs in the "things that are good to do."

WL If we don't foster indexing we're not being good netizens. It's clear that all of the tools we are designing depend heavily on being able to reach into the content. Summarizing is a requirement, now that I've dealt with indexing.

JW Question for LK: could you draft a requirement or word of advice regarding designing for ease of testing that would apply across testing? Are there aspects of a document in any format that make it easy to test?

LK Good question. I'm thinking of technology-specific techniques.

WC Perhaps then go into techniques?

LK Good to tease out the commonalities, tho. e.g. must be easy to determine the alternatives for an object.

WL Also for finding. All content is part of a greater content. The access to greater content is what we're about.

Action LK: draft a testability checkpoint.

WC resolution that we move 6.2 to a new section?

GV Can we think of a way to cause it to be strong so that it does show up in summary lists? It needs to be concise.

Resolved: Move 6.2 into its own section. appendix similar to testing section from 1.0.

WCAG 2.0 checkpoint 1.3

GV There is a typo "theessential." There should be an additional sentence, "if browsers can play text descriptions then text descriptions would satisfy this." not a "when" but allows us to meet with text. no provision for text. oops, no. the only comment is the typo.

JW It's one that has been substantially improved.

GV right, "a synthesized voice "

JW A good way to get rid of the "until.." clause.

GV right.

JW The necessary process must exist. It's the author's option.

JW Further issues for the next draft?

Guideline 2

GV Problem with guideline 2: it says to separate them but the checkpoints say to provide all three.

WL CAn't separate if don't provide them.

JW There has been recent discussion on the list

Definition of data model

GV still need one

KHS I have one.

GV Post it to the list.

Action KHS: post definition of data model to the list

Sidenote

WL The section 508 rules came out today, it talks about what we're doing today. It mentions WCAG 2.0. I want to say that there is a lot of malignment of WCAG 1.0. Where it is today overcomes all the carping about it. It is testament to its usefulness.

Techniques database

JW What's up with that?

WC Talking with W3C Systems team.

Meeting next week

Resolved: no meeting next week

Guideline 3

GV These are techniques not checkpoints either that or they are all priority 3. It has a dozen items under it compared to the others that have 4 or so. E.g. houses have to look different or can't identify.

WL Consistency helps. The fact that odd on one side even on the other helps you identify. Tend to agree too many.

GV Let's look at these and see if some of these are ways to achieve higher principle.

JW Agree. They have not had as much attention as need. Inherited from WCAG 1.0.

Action WL: propose weeded version of guideline 3 checkpoints.

Misc

GV I'm posting something to the list that is greater than web access. It basically is the same concepts in the WCAG 2.0 but started before it. So the parallelism is very interesting. We're converging on the truth.

Closing

Happy Holidays everyone!!


$Date: 2000/12/21 22:05:59 $ Wendy Chisholm