[Accessibility] draft minutes for Accessibility meeting 10/20/04

[John Goldthwaite]

Accessibility meeting 10/20/04

John Goldthwaite
Bill Haneman
Randy Horwitz
Earl Johnson
Peter Korn
George Kraft
Bill Laplant
Janina Sajka
Gunnar Schmidt
Kris Van Hees
Matthew Wilcox
Allen Wilson

Minutes:  10/13 minutes approved as submitted.
Janina- Fluenda was released last week.  They sent syntax for gstreams from
the command line.  We need someone to check this out.
Peter- Gnome Accessibility turned 4 yesterday.  SUN sponsored the Gnome
accessibility conference in Minneapolis 4 years ago.  Link to it from Gnome
accessibility website.
Janina- we should review that for the big picture before our conference.
Peter- there were 150 accessibility bug fixes in the Mozilla release this
week.
Janina- we said we’d start working on the time for each topic.  We may not
be able to get all four days scheduled but we could start.   Lets look at
the invitee list as well.  I got only one suggestion for changes to the
press release- do we want any more changes?
Earl- there is an important thing that is not in it.  Are you going to be
the contact person?
Janina-  I’ll be the contact person for the press, we also want a pointer to
the web page for the conference that have a outline of the meeting schedule
and skeleton for conference elements.
Peter-  releases often have quotes from companies.  Maybe since this is
invitational, its not worth the effort.
Janina- we’re the group that will building the accessibility consensus.  We
could
Earl – does it make sense for to have our members be quoted or should it be
some of the invitees.
Janina- we got a good set of statements when we announced the workgroup.  We
could have a pointer to those.
Bill Haneman joins- repeat of Fluendo discussion
Bill Laplant joins
Janina – would be great to get an update on V2.  We want to discuss it at
the conference and would like to be the first OS to support it.

Janina- lets look at topics.
Peter- weren’t you going to do a quick version as a starting point.
Jamina- maybe I was, it’s been a bad week.   Lets start with the draft road
map on a11y.org  We never finished the road map but
Earl- in the draft press release you had 3 high level activities- consensus
on standards, agree on engineering activities needed and discuss future
efforts needed.    Does it make sense to drive the agenda from these 3
activities?
Janina- that was taken directly from our NSF proposal as what we would do
with our time at the conference.
Bill Laplant- how do we add to the list of potential invitees?
Peter- email them to me or 
 give them to us now

Peter- three working groups- keyboard, API and shared IO
Bill Laplant-  V2 would be in the API area.  V2 is providing a mechanism for
an abstract description for the interface.  I think it fits best in the API
area.
Janina- I think the  important thing is that Linux is used across a range of
systems from handheld to servers.  If we use V2 to support socketing of
interface in a user appropriate manner.
Bill L - we’ve developed a template for describing discovery, it’s a generic
way to describe what’s in the environment.
Janina- the need to look at the wider range of issues,  who are the other
competitors to V2
Bill- there is overlap with U-PNP, there is some overlap with Java user
functionality in Jini.  There is a lot of overlap in functionality in Xforms
for describing user interfaces.  It depends on what area you are talking
about:  discovery, interface.  None of these things meet all the
requirements for V2.

Janina- Where does V2 fit versus Corba/Dbus discussion.
Bill L- we don’t consider them competitors,  we want to get them to work
with us so we can reduce our scope.  I think if they can be at the meeting,
they may see.
Janina-
Earl-  it sounds like it could take a lot of time.  It could be like the
speech stuff that we were trying to limit.
Janina-  This topic will take more time but could be worth it.
Bill H.- I don’t see us making much progress in an hour.  It seems to be

Peter- it would useful to block out the things we need to have for our core
mission and then see what time is left.
Bill H- we said the keyboard project did not need to break out.  We would do
a presentation on it at the beginning.
Janina- we’d do a presentation of keyboard that illustrates the process.
Will that take a half day?
Bill H-  we need to discuss strategies for how we will resource our projects
and create validation suites- which are automated, which manual.
Peter- can we enumerate this for the list?
Bill H.  I was suggesting we use 2 hours for the transfer of information on
the keyboard.  Maybe just one hour.
Bill H.- once we’ve decided on what a spec is – how to we do from concept to
reality.
How do you resource the projects.

Bill- I think we need a day of general AT-SPI discussion.
Earl- discussion of speech.
Bill- need discussion of that plus general topics.
Bill L. – that’s were we should discuss V2.
Peter-  I’ve put these on the blog.  other issues?

Peter- we’d talked a bout a 4th workgroup –  support for assistive
technology?
Janina- what needs to be discussed in Hawaii?
Peter- there are a number of services that AT needs from the OS-
magnification, key injection in queue.  An hour to discussion those features
and magnification.
Bill L- there are a number services that Screen readers need – they are
currently tightly bound to the OS, maybe too tightly.
Janina- there is also the area of looking at the entire stack.  Someone
needs to document what you do in the console environment.  There are issues
like with DOS screen reader for things such a n-curses.
Bill L- having a discussion about that and that it is well documented would
be useful.
--- [something on applications] 

Bill H- we said early on that we are not going to cover applications.
Peter- there are things in the applications that are important for use
experience but that shouldn’t be put in the standard.  We are working on
just the things necessary for OS accessibility requirements.

Janina- what does it mean when we comply with the binary test – what are the
parameters of that.
Earl-
Randy- doesn’t that dovetail with what George will cover on the framework-
It is critical that we understand what the seals are before we get to the
resources.
Earl- Where does George’s discussion fit into the framework.

Peter’s rough sketch:


Goals
-----

 o To achieve consensus on those standards which can be adopted to
   support accessibility in the near term. The FSG's Accessibility
   Workgroup is currently preparing specific proposals;

 o Agree on engineering research which must yet be performed in order to
   support all persons with disabilities;

 o Identify areas where further targeted research is required before
   engineering solutions can be put forward;


Topics
------

 - Workgroup: Accessibility API [AT-SPI]
 - Workgroup: Keyboard support (AccessX) - general preso, not break-outs
 - Workgroup: Shared I/O
 - New Workgroup: AT support components: mag, speech, Braille, audio, ...
 - Validation - how we turn this into standards; validation test suites
 - Speech requirements (1 hour - short discussion just to set requirements)
 - V2 presentation? (1 hour, 2 hours?)
 - Magnification support standard?
 - Boot & BIOS & kernel issues?
 - Installation & update?
 - GUI/Console interoperability issues?


Agenda sketch
-------------
Day 1:
  1-2 hours on keyboard status & Transfer of Info on process.
  1-2 hours Discussion about 4th workgroup: "AT support components"
  V2 general presentation?
  George Kraft: frameworks - standardization process in FSG

 Day 2:  All day AT-SPI

 Day 3:  [breakouts]

 Day 4:  [breakouts]
   1 hour speech requirements mtg. [early in day for European
participation?]

Janina- next week same time.  We will do list pruning next week and continue
the agenda discussion.

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