Accessibility Update
By Shawn Henry (W3C)
See also the slides.
Transcript
Great, thank you.
So I'm gonna step up a level.
As we've talked about, there's been several transitions and one of those, that we're really excited about, how the accessibility work has played into those transitions.
So, within accessibility is now really woven into the fabric of W3C Inc.
And you can see that in the mission, in the vision, in the press release announcing it, and even on the website.
So near the top of the homepage, accessibility is featured and we have even nice iconography with a person in a wheelchair.
So, accessibility is woven throughout W3C.
We did decide to keep the Web Accessibility Initiative or WAI brand, just because it has a lot of recognition in the community.
Slide 11.
So this, as we said, as Philippe said, we have had a lot of transition, and we're excited about the collaborative team that we have now together working, focusing on accessibility as well as accessibility throughout the organization.
So I'm Shawn Lawton Henry, and I'm leading the WAI program, the communications and the education.
We have Kevin White, who is coming up on his year anniversary of coming back to work with W3C.
And Kevin is leading the technical work, he's doing working group oversight.
He's working on managing the accessibility within W3C, helping to make sure that all of our work is accessible.
Roy Ran supports the working groups and task forces as well as accessibility in China.
Daniel Montalvo also supports some other working groups and task forces.
He's focusing on standards harmonization, particularly in Europe, and on accessibility testing.
And as Philippe mentioned, we have an open position for new support, new staff who will also be working with working groups, task forces, and supporting accessibility at W3C.
So slide 12.
In 2023, we have been really focusing on making sure that we're advancing the active projects throughout the transition.
So a lot of transitions and we wanted to make sure things are keeping going.
For example, the web content accessibility guidelines, or WCAG 2.2, is nearing recommendation.
And we have, if you wanna follow up and get an update on that work, there's a link to what's new in WCAG 2.2.
We revived our work on translations, as Ralph mentioned, we really wanna improve our global reach and perspectives, and reaching the needs of people around the world.
And one aspect of that is translations.
So, we already have translations of accessibility materials in over 35 languages, and we'll be updating those and increasing that as well.
There's a lot more, so there's a dot, dot, dot.
There's a lot of things that we've published and a lot more going on right now, and I won't take the time to go over that, but we do, we have been providing that information that you can get up to date on.
So our publications and other news is available in the link there.
And we've also been doing a monthly update of what we're working on.
So, you can find out the accessibility activities and publications that we're working on now and that are upcoming.
So I hope you find that useful, and as always we welcome input on that.
And then the other thing that we've been focusing on is really strategic planning for 2024 and beyond.
I'd say one of our biggest issues is there is so much work to be done in accessibility and there's so many opportunities and things that W3C is really uniquely positioned to help with on accessibility in the world.
And we need to be realistic about what those priorities are.
So going to slide 13, we've been working on that strategic planning and there's a draft available, in progress draft that we're working on: the mission, the vision, the objectives.
And it's important to note that this extends the W3C vision and mission.
So it's not instead of, it just provides more specifics when we're talking about accessibility.
And the reason we wanna prioritize these, a couple of reasons.
One is just to define and document W3C's commitment to accessibility more specifically, and to encourage support for accessibility work throughout W3C.
So to encourage, you members, to contribute and others to contribute to the work of W3C and accessibility.
And as I mentioned, to direct the limited staff resources to our top priorities.
It's so tempting to take on all this exciting work and it's important that we focus on the top priorities so that we can better succeed in those, and also have reasonable workload for the staff and the chairs, the task force facilitators and all of the working group participants.
So slide 14.
So we are exploring what those priorities are.
We've had initial discussions and we're opening that up to get your input.
So, we have discussion topics in GitHub such as: what is the priority of improving the accessibility guidance?
What about mobile app accessibility?
How does that fit in the scope and priorities?
How do we help improve accessibility in low resource regions or the Global South?
How do we better engage with under-represented stakeholders?
Again, this is W3C wide and we're also focusing specifically in the accessibility area with that.
How do we help support standards harmonization internationally?
And there's several more of these potential priorities that we're exploring.
And those are, again, all in GitHub for you to contribute.
And there's also, you can send email or talk to us if GitHub's not your preferred way to contribute.
So, slide 15 is really about your contributions.
We need them.
We have more than 16 working groups and task forces working on accessibility.
Some of our task forces have a huge amount of work going on as well.
So there's a lot of work going on.
Some of the things that we've identified as needs that you may be able to contribute to.
One is skilled technical writers and editors.
We've got a lot of backend technical expertise in the working groups, and not as much in the writing and editing.
So if perhaps you have, you would want to contribute skill technical writers and editors to our work, we welcome that.
And then there's some other areas where we really could use your contributions through collaborative contributors in the work of the working groups and task forces.
And again, there's a GitHub issue discussion open on how we can, what resource to accomplish our priorities.
Slide 16.
So, those were some things that we're asking of you and we also have some things that we're providing for you.
So for example, we have a free course that really provides the digital accessibility foundations and an Intro to Web Accessibility.
So a lot of members have been using that to help train up your internal staff.
And I hope you find that useful.
So finally, I just wanna say let's talk, right?
So we tossed out a lot of open issues.
We have a breakout tomorrow that we'll be talking about that.
As I mentioned, we have the discussions in GitHub and we encourage you to, you know, grab one of us, whether it's a hallway discussion or a zoom discussion, and let's, let's be coordinating and working together on defining what are the top priorities for W3C accessibility moving forward.
And I end with a little graphic that says speech bubbles on inclusive, diverse, and responsible.
Thank you.
