Meeting minutes
<Chuck> agenda
<Chuck> stay safe
<ChrisLoiselle> I need to leave at 30 minutes past hour for customer call, apologies
Chuck: welcome to the last AGWG meeting of the year
Chuck: before the holiday break
Chuck: next meeting will be 7th of January
Publishing First Public Working Draft (FPWD) of Mobile Accessibility: How WCAG 2.0 and Other W3C/WAI Guidelines Apply to Mobile https://w3c.github.io/matf/
Chuck: this one is about the first public working draft for WCAG2Mobile
Chuck: this is a set of guidelines about applying WCAG to mobile
JJ: the link shared is the link to the editor's draft, most recently updated yesterday
JJ: [shares screen]
JJ: we're on GitHub at https://
JJ: with the code on GitHub you can test it locally; every time we merge to main it gets published as the editor's draft
JJ: our goal is to show how WCAG applies to mobile, we're currently focusing on A and AA at the moment
JJ: this work is focused on mobile applications, but also includes mobile web pages
JJ: the guidance is non-normative, it does not set new requirements, just like WCAG2ICT
<JJ> https://
JJ: it succeeds the previous document that the mobile accessibility task force did, which is about 6 years old
JJ: this work is from the new group that started January this year
JJ: the goal of this is to become a Working Group Note
JJ: for each criterion, we first quote WCAG 2.2, then we quote WCAG2ICT and then we add our own guidance
JJ: for instance, for WCAG 1.1.1, the guidance from WCAG 2.2 and WCAG2ICT are shown as collapsed accordions
JJ: we are working on making a draft first in the Markdown files
<kirkwood> [lots of scrolling]
JJ: all success criteria are in the document that is open for review now
JJ: we may add Guidelines and Principles later too
GreggVan: what's the purpose of this note? in relation to WCAG2ICT?
GreggVan: purpose of WCAG2ICT was for applying WCAG outside of web, it seems to me that mobile is a subset of 'outside of web', wouldn't this new document do the same thing? how would it differ?
GreggVan: and how would people use it differently than WCAG2ICT?
JJ: we're mostly trying to close the gap with iOS and Android, as well as web content inside of native applications. Our intention is also to become a group note, which could potentially be used in legislation, to have a similar status as WCAG2ICT
JJ: the goal is to help people make mobile apps more accessible
<kirkwood> How is ‘Mobile’ defined? so non HTML?
GreggVan: it seems to me like we'd end up in a situation where we have two documents with the same purpose, as the purpose of WCAG2ICT was also to cover mobile. Would be a problem if they differ
GreggVan: you used the word 'views' in this one, in regulatory terms this would need to be testable
GreggVan: ever since WCAG2ICT 1 we have tried to make 'views' work, we spent months, probably like a person year or more, we could never make it work, because it is completely untestable. In software, what is a view? If you move things around etc, at any point in time there is an infinite number of views
GreggVan: there is no way to test views, there is no 'set of views' to test
GreggVan: it works conceptually but to test is hard
<Zakim> Chuck, you wanted to ask about the calendar
Chuck: what is your expected calendar of events for the AGWG?
JJ: somewhere early 2025 go to CFC for the first public working draft, so that we can involve the public more and get public feedback on the structure we have
JJ: then in the next year we'd like to go to Group Note status
maryjom: I wanted to echo GreggVan's thoughts. Have had a first look at the document. I am concerned there might be deviations in this that conflict with WCAG2ICT
maryjom: I think there needs to be more coordination
<ljoakley1> maryjom +1 on possible conflicts
maryjom: the former version of this document didn't become a note… it seemed to look at how various technologies can support the criteria, this seems like a departure from that
<kirkwood> +1
JJ: it's definitely our goal to align with WCAG2ICT where possible. Difficulty was that we initially wanted to scope it to just native mobile apps, but now we consider web too after feedback
<Zakim> alastairc, you wanted to comment on view
JJ: it's hard to align with two sets of guidance at the same time
alastairc: re: views, we have a whole subgroup working on that
alastairc: it's a difficult problem, but not more difficult than defining things based on a web page. If you would start from scratch now you'd find they are equally difficult ways to define scope
<Zakim> Chuck, you wanted to ask how do you want feeback?
alastairc: I think it's a good idea to have both the WCAG and WCAG2ICT quotes in the document, it makes sense to me to have guidance for native app technology
Chuck: how do you want people to provide feedback?
JJ: you can reach out to me personally via email linked in the document, or you can submit it via GitHub
ljoakley1: going forward, what's your process for reconciling between your group's work and AGWG?
JJ: the definition of views will be quite important to get right, but there are some other definitions that we may need to alter, we're still working on those
JJ: once we have those we'll check with WCAG2ICT and AGWG
Detlev: I wanted to say… one approach to entangle this would be for the MATF to keep focus on iOS and Android apps, and not cover mobile web. I don't knnow why that was decided to do, it seems strange as that is also part of WCAG when you look at pages with small viewports
<kirkwood> +1 to Detlev direction
JJ: mostly related to the charter and the historical focus on web. WCAG2ICT was an exception there, but am not sure what other history there is. I would personally also, like Detlev, prefer to also focus on iOS / Android only, as mobile web already covered in AGWG.
<scott> agree with detlev - i'm not sure i understand why web needs to be handled by this Note.
<GreggVan> suggest that since WCAG covers web and WCAG2ICT is non web -- they might just point out where they DIFFER from WCAG2ICT instead of making all readers have to look at both for differences.
Chuck: thank you JJ
WCAG2ICT Scope
<alastairc> Yes - please comment soon, rather than waiting for the CFC :-)
<scott> i'm also concerned with the overlap with wcag2ict, and how this new version of the doc looks, it seems that maybe mobile-specific updates to wcag2ict could be made instead?
maryjom8: this is not finalised yet within the TF… there are various things we want to update in our task force statement
maryjom8: now we're looking at the next phase of work
maryjom8: some of our work is parallel to what the MATF is looking at
<JJ> maryjo - I'm still here for a couple more mins ;)
<ChrisLoiselle> need to leave to attend a customer call. Apologies.
maryjom8: where WCAG2ICT has been used in policy, there has been some correction in DOJ
maryjom8: thought it might be good to have an explainer that explains what is and what isn't covered in WCAG2ICT, so there aren't incorrect assumptions made by readers of the document
maryjom8: other changes we were considering, to give examples of some success criteria, which might not be applicable in non web technologies
<kirkwood> +1 to explainer to reduce confusion
maryjom8: there are cases where it may not be fully supportable
<JJ> Gregg - one of the benefits of having WCAG and WCAG2ICT guidance in an expand/collapse element is that readers could skip those and just look at differences in our guidance for mobile as you mentioned.
maryjom8: we're looking at changes to normative language, where that is adopted to standards that apply WCAG to non web technologies
<Zakim> Chuck, you wanted to ask if there is a written proposal for these changes of scope?
Chuck: is this written up anywhere?
maryjom8: am working on a pull request
Chuck: does anyone have concerns re what we've just heard?
Chuck: we'll have opportunity to look at the details later too
<ljoakley1> aleady stated my concerns
<maryjom8> Preliminary PR link: https://
Year end wrap and timeline for 2025
<Rachael> https://
[ shares screen with linked presentation ]
Rachael: we are working towards the end of the current Charter
Rachael: including rewriting existing guidelines, adding guidance to address known gaps in WCAG 2, creating new guidelines for emerging technologies and complex conformance questions, such as third-party content, scoring, accessibility
Rachael: we also looked at maturing the proposed approach so that reviewers can understand the intended scope
Rachael: so far we've accomplished a number of things, like a list of possible guidance and an approach to provide clear guidance to emerging tech
Rachael: we narrowed down the direction for conformance, though it's not final
Rachael: we've also explored publication options and for now go with the one doc model
Rachael: and we had conversations about challenges
Rachael: for Q3 this year, we aimed to publish the exploratory conformance model and WCAG3 explainer, that has slipped, might happen this week, hopefully
Rachael: we've also started to address things that came up at TPAC
Rachael: looking at history, we've done pretty well sticking to the schedule
Rachael: we're making a couple of changes to the schedule
<alastairc> Wiki page of this timeline: https://
Rachael: we are proposing a one month extension to the Charter
Rachael: we are working as chairs to schedule better and more proactively
Rachael: charter convos will start Q2
Rachael: we'll also continue discussion of core issues, and plan to publish a list of outcomes
Rachael: in Q3 we'll continue the charter process and continue on the 2 maturing outcomes
Rachael: with that in mind…we won't get the charter done in October, we want to get the data at the same time as when we're rechartering
Rachael: any questions re this proposal?
Rachael: we have a about 48 guidelines, grouped in the grouping excercise
Rachael: assuming we get everything wrapped up the first week of January, we have 38 guidelines to get to before end of Q2 publication
Rachael: we need 4 weeks to get to publication, which gives us 20 weeks to work with
Rachael: if we break it down to 5 weeks we'd need ~30 active members in the WG
Rachael: if we break it to 4 week periods with 8 groups working, we'd need 24 active members, we typically have more than that so that seems doable
Rachael: we probably want to do 4 week sprints
<Zakim> Chuck, you wanted to say more time would need to be spent on working in order to reduce the periods.
Rachael: we would potentially group related outcomes into a 'path', a series of guidelines
Rachael: groups that finish early can go to the next guideline in the path
Rachael: that might save some time, though we still want to check back within 8 weeks
Rachael: we want to add invited experts so that we have enough invited experts
Rachael: we'd aim each group to meet twice a week
Rachael: I don't see many other directions we can go if we want to get through this work. But as chairs \we wanted to bring it to you as the group
<Zakim> Chuck, you wanted to say we acknowledge that we are asking a lot
Rachael: we have the expertise and can bring in invited experts, but we need everyone to put in the efforts
Chuck: we know we're asking a lot from the group
Chuck: there will be an opportunity on us to comment on how this is working in the retrospectives
GreggVan: what we're trying to do is monumental
GreggVan: with WCAG 3 we're trying to solve problems that we've spent 2 decades trying to solve
GreggVan: I am worried that we've set an artifical timeline for doing it, and in the process we could fail in two ways. 1, we find we keep running over as goals too ambitious. 2, we're going to decide we need a baby but only have 4 months and take it out too early… meaning we don't take enough time to think it through
GreggVan: I appreciate that we need to keep the pressure on… but I do worry about this, it's really hard stuff that we've been trying to do for a very long time
Rachael: I want to honour that statement, it's a very valid point. But we've actually mostly stayed on schedule this year
Rachael: if we base the timing on the last year, the schedules have been reasonably close, we've not been slipping more than a quarter
Rachael: this is about getting to a point that we have reasonable confidence in a direction
Rachael: if we find we fail ,we've spent this time wisely as we now have info on why we're failing
Rachael: one thing we've learned is that the structure is critical for the rest of the decisions we'd need to make
<Zakim> Chuck, you wanted to say thus far our goals haven't been extremely over aggressive, we've been meeting most of our stated goals
<Zakim> alastairc, you wanted to comment on charter to charter timeline
alastairc: going into the end of next year, we should have the top level of all the guidelines done
alastairc: we're not trying to create all the informative documents and methods and all those bits, we can have bullet points for each one
<Zakim> Jennie_Delisi, you wanted to ask for clarification of time commit, if trimmed down participation options
alastairc: that should make the subgroup working a bit more streamlined
Jennie_Delisi: can we clarify time commitment? is it 2hrs of AGWG weekly of which 1 hr goes to the sub group + a second hour dedicated to the sprint?
Jennie_Delisi: and question 2: if people cannot commit to that ,can people contribute in a slimmed down fashion?
<Zakim> Rachael, you wanted to answer times
Rachael: I would expect 4-5 hour commitment per week… 2 for AGWG, 1 for an additional meeting in between, and then 1 for work in between… we've also had great async participation in subgroups previously
Rachael: we'd want to aim ~4 people per team
dan_bjorge: what doesn't seem represented in this schedule: most of the subgroups had several areas that were noted as research gaps, there weren't studies to create guidelines based on research / data
dan_bjorge: I don't think I'm seeing anything allocated for addressing those gaps
<Zakim> Rachael, you wanted to answer Dan
Rachael: we worked with the research task force to discuss the process… we'd not be doing the research, we'd be identifying it and passing it to a coordinated effort to ask others to get the research together
Rachael: so for us, if it was a known research gap, we'd not include it in the first round of WCAG 3
Rachael: we've not done the down select yet, but we need everything developing as part of that process
<Zakim> Chuck, you wanted to time check and ask for a scribe change
Rachael: I can try and add that in more explicitly in the schedule
dan_bjorge: would be good to clarify when it happens and who is responsible
Rachael: will take an action, see also the outcome handbook
<Zakim> ShawnT, you wanted to speak about the text to speech
ShawnT: i'm leading text-to-speech, and I'd like to announce we've switched to creating user-needs. Would like people who use text-to-speech to join. We're doing an async approach now.
… we've reached out to the APA TF to ask for help.
GreggVan: On the text-to-speech, does this have to do with providing T2S, or being compatible?
… is it a matter of software doing it?
ShawnT: We're not sure. As a text-to-speech user I know what I need, but we're not sure about what others need.
… the difference between t2s and screenreader is important.
<Zakim> hdv, you wanted to speak about views subgroup
hdv: I'm leading the views group. Have a question - if there's one definitin of views, with sub-definitions for different technologies.
… does that resonate with people? Would that make it easier to apply?
<ShawnT> Link to Text to Speech (Exploratory to Developing) WORD: https://
hdv: e.g. when trying to evaluate conformance. Or should we have one definition to rule them all?
Rachael: We have a lot of work. If you, in a sub-group think something is covered elsewhere then you can close the sub-group and go elsewhere.
GreggVan: On views, examples are good, make sure you have a devils advocate, someone to question assumptions.
… e.g. what are the 5 we haven't thought of? Lists are an indicator of trouble.
… if you don't have them, recruit them, at least for a couple of sessions.
<Glenda> @ShawnT - have y’all tried reaching out to https://
GreggVan: also, on text-to-speech (t2s). We'll have (soon if not now), the ability to have things read to us by whatever device we're using. So the things we're asking people to do, may not be needed anymore.
… some of the things we're asking for are just not needed anymore.
… the user-agents are improving quite rapidely.
alastairc: On that point, and Shawn put in critique in IRC. The idea is that we identify the requirement and we allow user agents to achieve, and if they can't, then we list the requirements for the content author. I think we have it covered, and we are structuring things that could happen soon or may take a while.