The mission of the Accessibility at the Edge Community Group is to examine improvements to internet accessibility via "edge computing", a relatively new paradigm that focuses on performing tasks at the edge of the network. Unlike cloud computing, edge computing emphasizes activities that occur closer to the user; these could include accessibility oriented user-agent extensions, applications on content delivery networks, JavaScript-enabled capabilities, AI or ML. The group is a forum for discussing both currently available products, potentially new applications not yet commercially available, as well as objective measures of the quality of any one of these. Our tasks can include inventorying both opportunities and challenges, drafting and incubating Internet specifications for further assessment, standardization, prototyping and testing of reference implementations. A11Y-EDGE CG meetings work and operate under the W3C Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.
Group's public email, repo and wiki activity over time
Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.
With the W3C Technical Plenary event in Vancouver behind us, we’re excited to canvas our intrepid community group for a Zoom teleconference time. We’d like to propose meeting weekly, at least for a few months to give each of us a full opportunity to get our concerns expressed and on the record. Our teleconferences will be held on Zoom and will be minuted using IRC as is customary in W3C activities.
Below there are nine suggested weekdays and hours where we could hold regular weekly Zoom calls for our A11yEdge Community Group. All times are specified for Boston, as is also customary for W3C scheduling. A link to aid in converting that time to your local timezone is also included. The provided links begin on Monday 7 November, because this will be the day when North America and Europe (where most of us live and work) will be back in sync following our autumnal asyncronous returns to standard time. For each suggested time please simply note as one of the following three options:
* Can and prefer * Can * Cannot
As we welcome sharing this invitation widely, we’re also providing a tenth option for our friends on the Pacific rim to request a more conducive meeting time. If that’s you, please indicate your hours of UTC offset. If there are indeed several individuals from Pacific rim time zones, we will indeed try to work out a second hour for at least a couple of weeks in each month.
Please send your choices to public-a11yedge@w3.org and we’ll collate your responses and announce what the group has collectively chosen during the week of Monday 31 October; and we’ll begin meeting the week following.
All times are in EST, with a link to a World Clock so you can see the time in your time zone:
Thanks to everyone who joined our well attended breakout session at TPAC 2022. About 75 people in total attended this inaugural meeting to discuss accessibility at the edge, accessibility overlays, and more. Our goal was to let people be heard, and we did pretty well: some fifteen people had a chance to speak as you can see in the minutes, here.
We are sorry that time didn’t allow everyone to fully express their opinions and concerns, but expect an email survey on teleconference date and times soon for our next meeting. Here are some highlights:
We are excited to announce a special Breakout Session on the important topic of accessibility overlays. This session at TPAC 2022 is open to anyone interested in discussing current and prospective edge technologies as they relate to enhancing accessibility. Attendance is free, we just ask you follow the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (more on that below).
Date and time: 11:15 to 12:15 Pacific Time, Wednesday September 14th 2022.
To request a turn to speak, add yourself to the queue by typing q+
Please follow the following guidelines, based on the CEPC:
Appreciate and accommodate our similarities and differences.
Have empathy when discussing sensitive issues.
Treat everyone with respect.
Be honest, be truthful.
Be aware of how much time is taken up
Be sensitive to language differences. In particular, English is not the primary language of all participants (avoid idiomatic expression), speak slowly
Respect confidentiality and privacy.
Review W3C guidance for hybrid meetings
Time-box the conversations to allow them to keep moving forward
We will have a scribe selected in advance to take minutes of the meeting, which will be published afterwards. If you do not wish your comments captured by the scribe, just ask them to pause scribing before you speak.
We look forward to this important kick-off! See you soon.
To frame the TPAC breakout session of the Accessibility at the Edge Community Group during the W3C Technical Plenary on Wednesday 14 September, as well as our on continuing work in the CG, we offer a draft document for your consideration:
Overlay Applications in Web Accessibility
https://a11yedge.github.io/overlays/
This draft is intended to help us define:
What is meant by the term “overlay,”
Overlays as a specific type of edge technology,
Specific examples where overlays enhance accessibility,
Specific antipatterns where overlays interfere * with accessibility,
What additional edge services might be * developed or leveraged to enhance * accessibility. Your comments and editorial suggestions are gratefully appreciated. Janina Sajka, A11yEdge Facilitator</code></pre></li>
If you’re generally interested in the application of edge technologies to enhance accessibility, this might be the group for you. We are finding unexplored opportunities in emerging edge technology we believe could significantly enhance accessibility, and we’d like to explore them with you.
If you have opinions about accessibility overlays, this might be the group for you. We hope to involve both proponents and opponents of overlays in respectful discussion to identify a set of patterns and anti-patterns, in order to guide the public about when overlays are appropriate and how to use them responsibly.
The W3C Accessibility at the Edge Community Group [1] will collectively examine the opportunities and challenges posed by web developments at the edge–including overlays, of course!
We are planning for a in-person breakout session (which will also be accessible on Zoom) for Wednesday 14 September during the upcoming W3C TPAC [3] hybrid (in person and virtual) conference. Precise time and Zoom coordinates will be announced as soon as they’re available.
Subsequently, we will continue meeting regularly via Zoom on a schedule yet to be determined. Stay tuned for our scheduling survey!
We will leverage email lists and the power of github to document our agreements and disagreements.
a11yedge/
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