[Accessibility] Jan. 28 2004 draft meeting minutes

John Goldthwaite john.goldthwaite at catea.org
Wed Jan 28 15:37:55 PST 2004


Accessibility Working Group Meeting January 28, 2004

Doug Beattie
Sandy Gabrielli
John Goldthwaite
Bill Haneman
Randy Horwitz
Earl Johnson
Peter Korn
Scott McNeal
Janina Sajka
Gunnar Schmidt
Matthew Wilcox
Allen Wilson

Janina- check on a11y.org, calls to each member, talk to Mario about having
discussion on Shared I/O on Feb. 11

Agenda-
Report on Linux World, NSF proposal and resource planning
Reports from 3 working groups

Minutes from last meeting approved as proved.
Action items:  Ephraim has given the NSF proposal to his supervisor for
review and approval.  No news on licensing from U. Wisconsin.

Scott: PR effort, the press release went out on Wednesday the 21st, the
first day of the conference.  The San Jose Mercury News did a good article
which was picked up by Detroit Free Press, Infoworld, Wired, Linuxworld +
others
Bad news, the quote sheet was not attached to the press release when it was
sent out.  It was handed out to press in hardcopy and electronically.  Want
to put it on the website (already there).  Other organizations tried to
attract the press and didn’t do as well as we did.  Pretty happy with the
way things went.

Peter- Keen to get it out and to get it much more prominently displayed on
the website.
Scott- set up webpage so that you get a different quote on the page, change
every time it refreshes.  A11y.org is working.  We need to get a11y.org in
addition to www.a11y.org.

Janina- would like to call each member to talk about each person’s role in
the project; what we’d like to do.  Will make these calls over the next
couple of weeks.  We want to get everyone’s talents engaged.  Thinking about
how to organize for now; could we go round robin with one of the groups each
week. We covered keyboard last time, we need to touch base with Mario on the
Shared I/O – driver stack.

Peter- there are some open issues.  Not sure what the next step on AT-SPI
is, that’s probably a good reason to have the discussion.
Janina- We’ll work on AT-SPI next week and try to get Mario for the
following week.  We need to hear from NSF so that we can make plans about
the meeting.
Peter- on the website press release, there are no frames.  How readable is
the webpage for screen readers with nav bars on both sides.
Randy- I didn’t have any problem reading it with JAWS, can’t speak to
Windoweyes.  We aught to have a skip to link,
Peter- I was worried about how it renders in Lynx.
Janina- I use Lynx and haven’t had a problem using it.

Janina- we worked on FAQ’s, would it be useful to send time on it?
Bill – I think we need to work on some of them.
Doug- lets keep working on it on the list and get it finished up.
Janina- I think we were about 85% complete.  I think I threw the last wrench
into it by rushing the last question and not giving credit where it was due.
Let’s work on it and talk about it next week. Janina will the next cut at
the answers and put it on the list.

Randy- would like to see more information on the page for 1st time visitors.
Janina- we could use links to some of the legislation,  similar to Gnome
site
Bill – if you see things on the Gnome site that needs updating please
contact me
Scott- we want all the work groups to have a similar look and feel.  We want
all the sites to meet the letter of the law and be useful.
Bill- has an accessibility checker been used on it?
Scott- yes, the developers were told that it needs to be accessible.
Bill- problem on the ? work group site, they are using a graphic login to
defeat spammers.
Janina- I didn’t find a lot of access problems with our page or with the new
LSG page. I couldn’t read anything on the i18n page.
Scott- i18n has a new web page, I’ll send you the url.  We would like people
to try the pages with various access checking tools and send us comments.
Janina- there is a forth coming Microsoft Accessibility study that will be
published in February
Peter- there is an effort for a new switch input standard for USB ports that
’s been put forward by Randy Marsden of Madentec.  They are trying to move
away from keyboards and mice.  Although they are looking at this from
Windows/Mac view point the product should be useful on our systems as well.
Do we want to define a new USB device HID or do we use a general device?

Janina- do we have a usual approach on that?
Peter-   if the option is to define a new HID or to use  
.
Bill – the X server is usually responsible for interacting with HIDs.  Its
convenient for the device to emulate keyboards and mice and allow redirect.
If a totally new device is defined on USB, there would be more work for us.
We’d have to define the device or create a new library.  Are they going to
do a superset of USB or do something entirely new.
Peter- That is what they are discussing.  We have to deal with the fact that
Windows is the dominant platform for switch use.  
 standard 
.

Bill – there is a generic HID interface available in X input 
.
Peter- its being used as the mouse button input – perhaps we don’t want to
do the deep dive here on the call 


Janina- I’ve gotten a dozen or so people who have asked from more
information about the project.  Do we want a list that’s announcement only
for people that just want to track want we’re doing?
Scott- That would be a way of dealing with email that’s not appropriate on
the list but still keep people informed.  We could make the minutes
available.
Janina- comments?


John Goldthwaite
Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access, Georgia Tech
john.goldthwaite at catea.org





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