[Accessibility] Draft minutes for Accessibility meeting 12/1/04

[John Goldthwaite]

Accessibility meeting 12/1/04

-Doug Beattie
-Sandy Gabrielli
-John Goldthwaite
-Bill Haneman
-Earl Johnson
-Randy Horwitz
-Peter Korn
-George Kraft
-Janina Sajka
-Gunnar Schmidt
-Matthew Wilcox
-Kris Van Hees

Minutes:  11/24 minutes approved
Janina- We’ll do the agenda in reverse order, let’s set meeting dates up to
the conference and deadlines for events leading up to the conference.
University of Wisconsin has asked what type of license we would like?
Bill-  what is the technology that needs to be licensed?  Isn’t it just the
names of the features?
Janina- lets get some clarification.  First the agenda,  No problems with
most of us attending 12/8 and 12/15.  12/22 and 12/29?   Some people
unavailable for 12/22 and 12/29.  We will skip 12/29 but hold a meeting on
12/22.   We’ll hold meetings 1/5, 1/12/ and 1/19.   We’ll meet 2/2 after the
conference.
Earl-  Not sure what we need to do to make sure the conference comes off
smoothly, is there a list?
Janina- we need to do that.
Earl- I’d like to see more people involved in helping with the meeting.
Just want to get that on the agenda.

Janina-  Back to the U. Wisconsin, there shouldn’t be any code.
Bill-  there shouldn’t be any code for AccessX.  Don’t want to get into
patents.  If they have trademarked the names ( Stickykeys, Slowkeys,
Bouncekeys, etc. ), we want a royalty free, unrestricted license.  Otherwise
we have a big problem.

Janina- we want to make sure there are no patents?
Bill- don’t think we should do a search, just ask Trace if they have
patented any of the accessX components.  If they do we have a big problem.
( patents on the techniques used to implement AccessX).

Bill- If there are trademarks, we’d need to get some lawyers involved so
that we can make it compatible with GPL.  Its some what difficult because
GPL would require that they essentially release the trademark.
Willy- I disagree, we could do accept them with name changes.
Bill- there is still some difficulty.  Example, Bitstream fonts.
Earl-  I don’t think they trademarked the names.
Bill- we want to be careful into what we agree to.  Even if it seems
innocent, it could still give us trouble.
Janina- I will ask if they have any trademark.  If they do, we come back and
talk about how to handle it.

Doug- with another group, I had them agree to give over the code and
documentation.  We just referenced the work.
Bill- that was an implementation.

Bill- we’re not using their technology, just using their name for the
features.
George   -  if we have a question, we can send it to the FSG and their
lawyers will answer it.
Janina- they probably have some kind of copyright  on it.
Bill- if you want people to freely use them, you wouldn’t trademark them.
Janina- if there is any kind of technology, we’ll need a license like LGPL.
Doug-  get an email in writing from them to document it.
Janina- it will be an official letter from the university.  Going back to
the meeting, some of us tried to get together before the phone before the
meeting and we had some strange telephone problems.  We are about where we
were last week.  The small group should still do that before we put the
finishing touches on the agenda.   For the NSF coverage, we should run the
agenda by some of the other people we named in the proposal – Gregg
Vanderheiden, Neil Scott,    For diplomatic reasons we should run it by
them.

We should try to finalize the agenda by 12/22.    Round two invitations have
gone out and we have asked them to reply by 12/15.   We should also firm up
who will need support on 12/22 if not 12/15.   We need to get telephone
connections setup by early January. We need to test the streaming equipment,
get phone lines into the room.  Have it in place by 1/5 and finalized by
1/12.

Sandy- some people have said they had trouble getting to our travel agent.
Janina- I had trouble getting to the hotel, I got hung up in some Flash.
There is a good link on our website.
Bill- where is the conference location?
Sandy- The community college is between the airport and downtown.  I ‘ll see
if we can put a map on the website.

Janina- what are the other areas to cover for the list-  Printed agendas,
Braille version of agenda,  
.
Sandy- we have a committee to handle this.
Janina- we know we need to test the streaming technology.  We need to test
Fluendo if we’re going to use it/
Sandy- we’ve got the equipment and will be trying it on Saturday.  He was
having some problems with audio drivers.
Janina-test throughput, access from the command line,  accessing video and
audio or just audio.
Doug- we need to get the material and put it on our website.
Janina- They have Internet2 as well as Internet1 fiber to Hawaii so we
should have problems with bandwidth.
Bill-  my concern is that its such new technology that people will need new
version of media players.
Earl-  it sounds like the expectations is that people will be on Gnome and
not using Windows or Mac.
Janina- I don’t think so, we should be able to provide guidance for Windows
and Mac.  We will need to find out about the details.  The Fluendo people
should be able to tell us about that.  We should ask about the versions of
media players for Linux as well as Windows.
Peter- there is a Java applet that plays Fluendo on their website.
Janina-  Winamp can play the audio as well.
Sandy- the Linux and university IT people will help us with the test on
Saturday.
Janina- if we can leave this machine up and just stream a video from a
camera so that we can test.
Peter  - fluendo.com, products, player less streaming applet
Janina-
Earl-  audio is one way,  is phone good?
Sandy-  we have teleconference equipment in the main room, we could do voice
over IP in the other two rooms.
Earl- Do we need to set up a teleconference ?
Janina-  we need to schedule the times for teleconferences.  Need to get an
800 number for North America and Europe.   I have been researching these.
Sandy-  I’ll come up with a teleconference plan and send it to the group.
Janina-  a checklist would be very helpful if you’d send it to us.
Anything else on real time equipment?   We talked about collecting a list of
resources and should we have that by the conference ( position papers,
Sandy- we’d talked about having links to white papers.  There is a place for
it on the website.
Janina-  the utility would be to get people’s ideas and positions on paper
ahead of time so we could have some idea about what people are proposing.
Sandy-  on the Gaudec site they have pictures of participants, do we want to
do it too?
Janina- that would be nice – (tactile version for Blind attendees)
Something they have written, pointers to their webpage,
Sandy- any url’s to things they have published:  code, specs, documentation.
Perhaps what their expectations for the outcome of conference will be.
Earl-  lets get the list of things that need to be done and see who is
handling each.  Then get volunteers for those items that are not covered.
Janina- Sandy will post the list of what needs to be done.  We have listed
most of the things we need.
Earl- we need to get owners for all the items as soon as possible.
Janina-  in terms of generating follow up, I’m currently handling that
unless someone else would like to help?  [silence]  Okay, it’s still with me
for now.  Same time next week.

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