[Accessibility] Accessibility meeting 9/29/04

[John Goldthwaite]

Accessibility meeting 9/29/04

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


Minutes:  Bill sent a note about the minutes for 9/1.  Is that a consensus
with Harald?
Bill: no but I hope its some forward motion.  I wanted Harald and Gunnar to
look at it and see if is satisfactory.
Janina- we’ll let them look at it and see if we can approve it next week.

Janina- we had some corrections on last weeks minutes.
Gunnar – I had one correction and there was one correction from Bill as
well.
Janina- has everyone read those corrections?  Any problems?   Minutes
approved.

Janina- any other items?  None noted.  The Trace section 508 list has a
debate going a assumptions in standards.  It may be worth tracking.  Peter
your key bindings document has created some intense discussion on the W3C
lists.
Peter-  not just mine, much from Peking.
Janina- well we now have a grant for the conference.  So that brings us to
organizing the conference.  Let’s start with the days of the week we want to
have the conference.  Do we still only want 3 days or do we need more?
Which day of the week should we start?
Earl- if you stay over a Saturday night you usually get a better airfare.
Doug- for folks coming from Europe it may be better to come earlier in the
week and get acclimated..
Bill- have we decided 3 days is enough?
Janina- that’s still on the table.
Bill-  it’s a long trip for a short stay.  Many may want to take some
vacation before or after.  We get some burn out after 3 to 4 days.
Janina- we need to lay out the agenda for the things that need to happen.
Some groups may go off afterward.  We need enough face to face to get basic
agreement on the important items.
Peter- Can we get a statement from each of the 3 committees about what they
need to do.
Janina- even if we can’t finalize that today, we should start the
discussion.
Earl-
Bill- I don’t think it is reasonable for the committee heads to do that in
this hour. But we can talk about what needs to be accomplished.
Janina- it would be helpful if we could get a sense of that today.  If the
heads can provide some of that today, it would be helpful.  We can finalize
it later.
Earl  - What our group has been doing is looking over XKB and seeing which
features are important to include in a UI.  We’re close to agreeing on which
features are needed.  Our next goal is to delve into the XKB spec.  We’ll
look at the types of tests that need to be developed.  Bill what’s next?

Bill- the keyboard group is the least controversy and is the most straight
forward.  I’d hope we’d be close to finishing by the conference.
Earl- we may have gotten to the point where we look at it

Janina- what I’m hearing- you can start off the conference with summary of
what you’ve done and how you’ve done it.  It’s a good example of what the
LSG process is – what’s included, what needs to be tested.  That would be a
good example for the others.
Earl-  I agree with Bill that 3 days is a lot if they are packed with
intense activity.
Bill-  Four days may be a good compromise, with the risk of being a bit
burned out.
Janina- We could start on Tuesday and finish on Friday.
Earl- should we  go through Saturday so we could get better airfare?
Janina- we can check with the travel agents
Bill- a lot of airlines have gotten rid of the Saturday stay over
requirement.
Sandy- I check with the travel agent and see.  The Tuesday start time is
good for the facility.  They have a conference the prior week through
Saturday and need the day to set up for us.
Janina- I’ll be there a day early so that I can check on things.
Sandy – prior week conferences- Trans-Pacific Open Source Software
Conference and The SIP Summit at the Winter Pacific Telecommunications
Council.  I’ll send out information about those along with info about local
attractions.

Peter-  I found the best Chinese restaurant the last time I was there, the
best Dim Sum I’ve ever had!  Legends?
Janina- we were discussing whether we’d all like to be in one hotel.  

?
Sandy- its Honolulu Community College, they have the Red Hat training
facility.
Janina- we should connect with them during the conference, I will talk to
Jonathan.  Bill, can you take a guess at how much time AT-SPI will need?
Bill- part of the challenge is how to do the validation and how to do a real
spec.  We have to validate against the spec.  How to define it so that we
can validate but still satisfy all groups.
Peter- a key to that will be how much Gunnar and Harald can participate in
the conference.  How are the teleconference arrangements proceeding?
Bill- are they not planning attending in person?
Peter- the US visa program goes into affect in October.
Janina- I didn’t hear them say they wouldn’t be able to come.
Gunnar – I will begin my diploma thesis in the next week and will need to
talk to my thesis professor to see if I will have enough time to attend.
Janina- I feel we really need you and Harald.
Doug- If we can get a fast internet line from Honolulu CC we shouldn’t have
a problem with teleconferencing.
Janina- my experience is that there are very good pipes to Hawaii.
Matthew- what time zone is Hawaii in?
Janina- GMT minus ten hours
Matthew- that’s going to be a very short day for me, maybe 3 hours.
Janina- we’ll have to see how to make it work.  We’ll see if we can make the
video available overnight.
Janina- so in terms of outcomes what will want for AT-SPI?
Bill- the group hasn’t met in a while so my comments aren’t definitive, but
we’d like to leave the conference with a list of what we need to do and a
strategy for acquiring the resources.  Validation tests are required so who
is going to write them?
Janina-  we’re not experts in that type of coding.
Bill-  they are binary code that exercise the interface and generate
reports.  We’re all volunteers and don’t have the time for that much coding.
Once we have an agreed upon plan, we might be able to go to our respective
companies and ask for the resources.  That job will be easier if we have a
good plan and everyone participating has endorsed the plan.
Janina- that points to some of the additional participants we need to
invite, people who can build the tests.  Okay, in terms of  the rest of it-
Shared I/O and the other things on the roadmap.  Those are relatively
undefined.  Those could get better definition at the conference.
Earl- Shared I/O?
Janina- Keyboard I/O, Shared I/O, Magnification,  plus other items.  These
will need to be better defined before we can do the agenda.  These are part
of the reason that NSF is funding us.  XKB and AT-SPI are fairly well
defined, these have some aspects that require some research.
Bill- this is a means of getting people with disabilities in to the
sciences.  So in addition to the research, there is the greater inclusion of
people with disabilities in STEM education and research.
Janina- we’ll be able to go to NIDRR and European agencies to request
funding for these tasks.
Bill- I believe the Canadian standards group is active in pragmatic
standards activity.  They don’t come up with standards but if someone had
ways of verifying a standard the would be interested in it.
Earl- we’ve got the list of activities, is that the roadmap?
Janina- we got that but we need to further define it before we get to
Hawaii.   When we go to funding agencies we can show that what we are
proposing was discussed at the FSG conference and is a priority activity.
Earl-
Janina- these will be the items that will probably not get don’t by the time
Longhorn ships in 2006.  I hope we’ll have XKB and ST-SPI by then.  I wonder
if another area is the kind of thing Willy was asking about – a list of
where our dependencies are and covering that in the course of future
activity.
Doug- it sounds like that after the general meeting, the separate committees
will have a better idea of what to do and can breakout for their meetings.
That’s how things have worked at other FSG projects.
Janina- we’ll have at least a day of discussion
Sandy- can we distribute the proposed agenda and then we can discuss it.  It
’s a basic conference structure, we can edit in topics we want to cover.
Earl- can this print out as text document?
Sandy- I can re-send it as a text document.
Matthew- there’s a program called Anti-Word that’s very helpful.
Sandy- I knew I was going to get some flack on this

Janina- I think we’ve got a good start for the meeting with Earl’s report.
Then we come back to work and dig into AT-SPI discussion.  Let some of this
germinate.
Earl- you carved out about a half day of AT-SPI, is that what you think it
will take?
Janina- no it will take longer but we should spread the time out so people
have time to digest what they have heard, sleep on it and then come back to
it.  This is a good start, if we can continue next week.  Earl if you are
having a meeting, can you discuss this?
Earl- we are meeting Monday,  you mean presenting the AccessX work?
Janina- that’s right but also what additional time for your group will need
to work.  Talk about what your needs are in the group meeting and let us
know next week.  We haven’t gone through any names for invitation.
Peter- My blog website has the latest names on it .
Sandy- please send me any requirements people have for accessibility in the
hotel and other facilities.
Doug – which hotels are we look at?
Sandy- Will is compiling a list of hotels and the number of accessible rooms
and price.  If you want to see the ocean its about $175 a night, if you don’
t want a room on the ocean its about $95.  We budgeted for $125 a night.
Janina- I think we’ve set our dates – Tuesday – Friday.  In terms of
announcements, we want to get some attention in the industry.  We should do
a press release that we have been funded to hold a conference.  We should
invite the University of.Hawaii to do it jointly with us.  It may look a lot
like our prior press release. Thanks, everyone – we’re getting a good start.
Think about who should be invited.  Next week, same time, same phone number.



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