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Participation in the Protocols and Formats Working Group

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This page explains the requirements and procedures for becoming a participant in the Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG). It also explains how non-participants may contribute to the Working Group by subscribing to the group's mailing lists, monitoring the group's progress, and contributing on the lists. See also Participating in WAI for broader participation options throughout the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Join the Working Group

Participation enables you to influence the development of the deliverables, and you and your organization will be listed as contributors to the deliverables of the PFWG where appropriate. Participant status, however, requires a commitment on your behalf to support the work of the group. Participants are expected to observe the requirements of Section 6.2.1.7 of the Process Document ("Good Standing in a Working Group").

Before applying to join, please read the PFWG Charter to review the activity and commitments. When you join the group, you are automatically added to the w3c-wai-pf mailing list (Member-only archives).

Employees of Member organizations

  1. Complete the Member Access Request Form if you do not already have a W3C account. You should receive your W3C login name and password within 2 business days.
  2. After you receive your W3C login name, ask your W3C Advisory Committee (AC) Representative to nominate you to the Working Group.

Individuals

If you do not work for a W3C Member organization, but you feel you have the expertise and availability to participate, you may apply to become an Invited Expert.

  1. Complete the Public Access Request Form if you do not already have a W3C account. You should receive your W3C login name and password within 2 business days.
  2. Ensure that you can comply with the terms in the invited expert and collaborators agreement.
  3. Complete the Invited Expert Application Form, indicating the PFWG as the group you wish to join.

Candidate Invited Experts should demonstrate topic expertise and availability to participate regularly. If you work for an organization whose business is related to that of the W3C, we may instead ask your organization to join and nominate you as a Member representative.

Follow work on mailing lists

If you would like to monitor the work of the Protocols and Formats Working Group and contribute on-line, you may subscribe to the following mailing lists. You will not be considered a formal participant but may comment and contribute. At a future date, if you wish to participate more fully, follow the steps to join the working group.

The PFWG has the following public mailing lists:

Other ways to follow work

Much of the technical work is done in the W3C ARIA repository on GitHub. You may watch the repository or submit pull requests according to documentation available on the GitHub site.

PFWG uses W3C Bugzilla to track issues on its technical specifications. Search for or file bugs on the product "ARIA" for ARIA-related issue, or "PFWG" for other specifications.