2 April 2001 ER/AU Minutes



LK: Agenda items?

HS: Item - summarize what's been going on in joint meetings.

LK: Item - what's up with Adobe & PDF accessibility.

HB: Heads up - Re my collection of resources and policy papers. I want to widen to include documents from other companies (Microsoft, Sun etc.) Then invite other W3C companies to make available.

LK: Where housed, EO?

HB: Could be. Will decide later.

HB: Another heads up: Survey I did re accessibility tools & books. There are now about 350 books that deal in some way with web authoring. 10% in abstract may deal with accessibility. Second editions can be a result of adding accessibility topics.

LK: (summarizing what's been going on in AU & ER) - Created a set of techniques (AERT). Many just formalize WCAG. Some folded into WCAG2, others (like heuristics) added to AU docs.

HS: Just handing off to WCAG?

LK: Not really. Meeting with WCAG but not handing off.

LK: We're working on a language for expressing accessibility evaluation (EARL).

HS: Who determines what text to use in this language?

LK: We use formal statements. Plan to use RDF [LK describes RDF].

HS: What is value of EARL? It seems to require different tools, one for testing, one for evaluation.

LK: Results of accessibility evaluations can be stored in standard language. Different tools can share data.

HB: Evaluations can be generated by different tools and then used by other tools.

LK: Moving from a natural language to formal language in RDF. Now using N3 which is simple form of RDF.

MMP: Can't comment on PDF as I'm working on GoLive. Re EARL - we can easily integrate evaluation languages.

HS: Is Adobe allowing others to create an evaluation like that?

MMP: Yes. Our product can be extended this way. Doesn't matter if we develop or others develop. Both can be plugged into our application.

LK: If Adobe adopts then other companies may too.

HB: Many evaluations require human judgement so how will that be recorded.

HS: AU is trying to evaluate tools to see how they meet the standard.

MMP: If tool detects poor Alt text then could feed into GoLive.

LK: ER has general idea about how output should be used.

HS: UI is implementation issue. Concentrate on language is priority.

LK: AU does get specific

HS: Just use term 'prompt user'. Other term like 'fit naturally'.

HB: Note: AU guidelines now moved to stable document.

LK: If EARL continues, how will it effect AU document?

MMP: Important to EARL to get examples to show it works.

LK: Does AU have a method

HS: AU has guideline that says: tool must be accessible.

HB: Does Microsoft or Adobe have a process to review EARL?

HS: Our team is in transition but will soon be able to review guidelines.

LK: People from 'testing' dept. would be good.

HS: We have central group that deals with this.

HB: Does Adobe have same sort of group?

MMP: We're in transition too but I think there is a person. Will send email with name. Dianna Callesen (callessen@adobe.com)