20000113 WCAG telecon

Summary of action items

Confucius say that Chair who cannot hear reaches consensus quickly.


New co-chair

WC our new co-chair is Jason White!

/* whoo-hoo! */

JW says some pleasant words about Chuck's co-chair.

The group recognizes Chuck's efforts as co-chair and would like to thank him for his diligence and good work.

Ian's unified conformance scheme

IJ who validates conformance claims, being able to use meta data to provide details of the claim.

WL what this means is that AU and UA instead of getting into conformance stuff will get into unified scheme.

IJ not sure how to implement as one rather than three. don't think we should change the current WCAG one. The page that you go to find out about conformance to WCAG could be changed. An address already exists. is it worthwhile to have a single page to update once or to have different cases.

JW a conformance statement is integral part of a specification. would seem that it would be copied into the relevant specification as well as exist separately.

IJ 2 pieces.

  1. what you must do to claim conformance and criteria.
  2. details on nature of conformance that could lay outside of the spec.

yes, boilerplate would be exist in both places. central page, "this is what conformance to wai guidelines means" but

WL this should be a separate entity that GL, AU, UA, ER, etc. points to this one conformance area and it contains the logos, boilerplate, and possibly the validators.

CMN we collect that info in a single place but the normative version is in the relevant spec. if can conform to a spec, then it ought to say how can do it.

JW a position that brings these together: link the pages that link conformance levels. in WCAg there is an icon for each level, each has a discussion of conformance.

WL yes, reasonable and workable.

IJ propose and synthesize: each spec contains the same but slightly varying statement of what it takes to conform to the spec. there are currently a page for each logo (what get when click on logo at someone's site) - how to use, what it means, etc. go to 4th page more info. WL proposal: put all in one page with internal anchors. some people have complained about landing in the middle of a page. i'm going to stick with william - one page for each guideline document, one page for each level.

JW does anyone dissent?

IJ does anyone here go to CG?

@@IJ take the unified proposal (single conformance page) to the CG.


GR brought this thread from IG. I conclude that it is still a problem. More informational rather than topic for discussion.

@@WC takes action to make sure test results are incorporated into the user agent support page.

"one size fits all" thread

WL like the AU thread about making authoring tools accessible. It boils down to: do you have an alternative version of a page b/c we have left that door open. i.e. phone someone have it read to them. separate but equal we understand. separate but superior is also not o.k.

CMN i'm not saying "separate but superior is bad." i'm saying that there are better things than "separate superior" like "not separate." Instead of making the split at info and semantics, you should provide different style sheets. You are changing the presentation. User can further enhance.

WL is it from a guy or from a database.

CMN yes, irrelevant.

IJ I haven't fully understood.

JW I am concerned that there is not a proposal to address the issues that have been discussed.

GR it is on WCAG because it has been discussed elsewhere but most discussion has occurred here.

CMN Yes, he is challenging a fairly pervasive assumption in this group that a single page is better than mutliple pages. That is perfectly reasonable. However, I believe the assumptions still hold.

IJ in term of engineering, if you have a single source and can derive documents from it that's a good thing. If it is not possible for a single source to be flexible enough, then we start using a second source. Again, if you can derive first from 2nd then even the better.

CMN a source is generated then shipped to the server. tehrefore beyond what the user can peak into.

WC XSLT and CC/PP is like a combination of both of those things. it doesnt' all happen on the server or not all on the client. there is some communication to f ind the best fit.

IJ Goal: Ship semantically rich content. (Hakon's fear was that if you shipped formatting objects only, everyone would lose). On the server side, you might send content tailored based on profiles. But you can change the config of what you want (or are capable of handling).

JW the underlying assumption that he is making is that markup languages are presentation and that you should be sending presentation. i would disagree and say that structure and semantics be sent. How best should we deal with this issue?

IJ 1. ask scott to write a proposal of what to change in the proposal.

JW ask scott to send a proposal to the list as to what he would like to see changed in the guidelines.

CMN one of the valuable things about the mailing list is that people can express themselves. there is useful exchange going on. It causes us to reassess what is going on.

IJ engagement is great, but it has to become concrete at some point. We are in no way asking him to go away. We want resolution.

CMN he proposed that he has a good technique. He made a proposal that this is a technique for doing things.

JW it is there in that checkpoint 11.1 or 11.4 "if all else fails" is already there. It can be introduced as a technique b/c of that checkpoint. he seems to not want it to be a last resort but the primary method. that would cause significant changes to the guidelines.

IJ that is a good way to get to the next step. "I hear this. it suggests a radical change. etc."

@@JW summarize points about the "one size fits all thread", ask for proposal.

Issue with the errata for 10.2

WC reads gregg's suggestion

IJ is this the best way to do?

WC no, but we ought to get it right.

@@WC make editorial change to errata for 10.2

IJ Confucius say that Chair who cannot hear reaches consensus quickly.

Use of META to describe conformance level

IJ handled by unified conformance claim

WC issue isn't to use it or not, but to use daniel's pics proposal from May.

JW what about RDF?

CMN did it but amaya ate it. yes, adopt DD's.

IJ this is a technique for making a conformance claim.

CMN add to errata.

IJ point to new unified conformance claim. link this with earlier discussion.

JW is there one for UA? let's take to CG.

CMN there are a lot of reusability between the conformance claims. To convert AU to UA will be small job.

JW then to GL?

CMN yes also small. AU will include a GL conformance.

JW who will make sure the schemas are written and available so that when the CG reviews unified conformance proposal these are ready for review.


  1. put daniel's claim in errata.

IJ but it may not include the data that we now want.

CMN it is like the icon but instead you point through meta data.

  1. put daniel's claim in errata.
  2. RDF scheme that inclues for ian's unified scheme.
  3. once unified is settled and in place is settled through all of the groups it ought to point to all of these things.

IJ on the condition that CMN writes the RDF schema.

JW any proposals?

@@ IJ and WC put daniel's in errata

@@ CMN to write RDF schema in relation to WCAG and IJ's unified conformance scheme.


@@WC write, post, and link from WCAG home page "how to get into ETA"

@@WC make reading ETA issues public, but adding issues only working group.

@@everyone try to register (those w/member access).

IJ there is a form control to configure how to view the issues.

$Date: 2000/11/08 08:30:14 $ Wendy Chisholma