[Accessibility] 9/8/04 accessibility meeting draft minutes

John Goldthwaite john.goldthwaite at catea.org
Wed Sep 8 12:20:20 PDT 2004


Accessibility meeting 9/8/04


Harald Fernengel
Sandy Gabrielli
John Goldthwaite
Bill Haneman
Randy Horwitz
Earl Johnson
Peter Korn
George Kraft
Janina Sajka
Sharon Snider
Gunnar Schmidt
Kris Van Hees
Matthew Wilcox
Allen Wilson


Corrections to minutes submitted from Peter, Harald, Gunnar.  John will edit
them in and resubmit.  Sharon will resend the August minutes and we will
review and discuss next week.

Janina contacted Jim Zemlin yesterday and he had not submitted the NSF
paperwork yet.  He promised to finish those today and submit it.

Janina send out a list of action items for the conference covering the
logistics and mechanics for the conference
What do we want for outcomes from the conference?  We need to know who will
do what and by when.  We need to start in September.  If we get funded we
need to be ready to announce and have things organized for that.   Janina
and Sandy can work on the press release
Sandy- conference mechanics shouldn’t be hard to organize.  I will be back
in Hawaii on 9/20 but I’ll send you my contact information.
Earl- we need to have notetakers
John- We used students as notetakers in our Wireless conference and it work
well

Peter- Guadex  was audiocast and videocast using some new public software.
Peter- that company probably isn’t ready to do simultaneous broadcast of the
notes/captions
Bill- it’s a company from Norway
Janina- Sandy can see if there is a local company in Hawaii

Bill- they didn’t use MPG2 because of the patent, they used OGG open format
instead.
Peter- OGG is a container like Quicktime that can handle a number of media
Earl- is there a communication department in the College?  Maybe they would
take it on
Sandy- I thinks so, I will be investigating it.
Peter- does Helix play OGG?
Bill- yes, the Helix player 101 does
Janina –  that would be helpful and it would give us something to for the
website
Peter- It is good to do show we can use all open products for the
conference.  An that its accessible as well

Janina- we want to be ready with a press release about the meeting.  We need
a webpage for the conference linked to a11y.org.   Proposal,  who we are
looking for to participate.  We need to develop what we want to say about
the participant.  It will be 40 people by invitation only but we want people
to write us to tell us why they should be invited.  Where  Speakup list,
Blinux,

Peter- do we have a list of who we want to invite?  We may have almost 40
without having people send proposals.
Janina- let’s get a sense of who we want to invite.
Peter- If the purpose of the meeting is to make technical progress, having a
lot of people who aren’t up to speed will hinder the process.

Peter- we had 3 open source software disability meetings- 20 attendees at
LSM, 40 Unix Accessibility Forum, x at Guadex.  I have the list of Guadex
attendees on my blog.  Go to the LSM organizers for their’s.
Harald- we should be able to get the UAF attendees.
Earl- are we doing 40 total or 40 plus the core group.
Janina- we were budgeting for 40 with 24 being subsidized.
Peter-  not everyone who is from Europe will be able to fly to Hawaii, plus
the people who object to the US immigration procedures.

Sandy- people in Japan and  Asia will make up for that since we are making
it easier for them to attend.
Janina-   
. From Australia

Peter- get the list in priority order and send invitations as soon as
possible.
Harald- some people won’t be able to come, so we’ll n
Janina- Be prepared for those who change their minds in November
Earl-  does it make sense to have a big posting if we’re doing it by
invitation?  We can do a big posting closer to the conference about the
streaming.
Peter- making a big announcement when we can’t accommodate them doesn’t make
sense.
Janina-  we have an obligation to accept qualified people.  Wanted to cast a
wide need because we want the results to be widely accepted.
Peter- are we spending money on space or food
Sandy- No, we are spending most of the money on airfare and hotel
Peter- if we get some people who self select and want to come and pay their
own way, we should be able to take them,  just need a few more place
settings.
Peter-
Peter- risk will be getting people who will distract us from making
technical problems
Peter- in the 3 conferences this summer, I don’t think that any of the less
technical people detracted from the technical progress.  They were there to
learn and did it quietly and asked questions in the hall later.

Peter- based on that, we can make the announcement about the conference.  We
can see who applies to attend and see how to use the scholarship funds.

Peter-  I wouldn’t make announcement about the streaming until we have found
a company in Hawaii that can handle the broadcast.
Sandy-  I will get working on finding the resources.

Janina- Sandy and I can work on the press release
Sharon- we want it on the first page or a small blurb with a link to the
press release.
Janina-  we want a skeleton for what we need on the website-  resources for
before the meeting, during the meeting and after the meeting.

Sandy- the pac rim conference is the Feb.  They hired a sharp person to do
the conference website.   He’s from the Center for Disability studies

Janina- George sent us a good email about what is FSG, what is the LSB
process
George- what has open ITN has done.  This group will be producing the
standards and performance test suites.  Logo, VPAT – pull VPAT into distro

Peter-  not sure about the VPAT- every app would have to be compliant.

Peter- from consumer and developer point of view it’s good to have some sort
of “Good housekeeping seal” but that may apply to a core.
George- this group needs to decide what the core would be for each distro

Bill- it will be into year 1 before we’d have that
Bill- I’ve got a problem with the branding word.  The xkb group has been
working on the standard and identifying what needs to be tested and how it
will be tested.  I don’t consider that a branding activity
George- how do know if 
 I’ve run all these conformance test and here is the
results.

Peter- do organizations self certify or do 3rd parties do it
George- yes, each group does its own testing then submits the results to the
FSG.  Complaints go to the certification committee.
Bill-  .. drill down to what needs to be tested
George-  currently have logos for LSB certification, other logo for
international,  w

George- might have to have a couple of sub-brands, for example Workstation,
Janina-  won’t they have a list of what tested?
George- the core is,  if its out side of the core like FireFox.  could
certify each application  and add them to the core.

George-  does grep handle wide characters, does
 handle.  The applications
also have to certify that they handle wide characters.  I18y is the
operating system, you have to check each application on your own.
Peter- the branding will be confusing to end user.  They are going to care
about the applications

Janina- how to do it and make it clear to consumers will important.


Janina-  could be part of LSB process
George- I
Peter- it would be base 2.x ,  it wouldn’t be the disability log
Bill-  we shouldn’t do anything that will be identified by the consumer
until we can handle the applications.  That’s not in the near future

Peter- statement- accessibility infrastructure is present, not that its
accessibility.
George -  submitting 2.x  to ISO

Janina- doesn’t mean the accessibility isn’t coming along, it just takes
time to do standards

Peter- then can ask applications vendors- does your product use access
infrastructure,

Janina- times up, we haven’t finished Free Desktop but we can wrap up next
week.  Gather the list but be careful not to broadcast.
Peter- list of people who attend summer accessibility conferences

Meeting next week –same time – 9/15/04



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





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