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LYNX-DEV WAI launch notes: pt. 1


From: Christopher R. Maden
Subject: LYNX-DEV WAI launch notes: pt. 1
Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 21:30:57 GMT

Notes from the Web Accessibility Initiative launch, 6 April 1997,
Santa Clara, CA, USA, sponsored by the World-Wide Web consortium and
the Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation.  Taken for the Lynx Developers'
Group by Chris Maden, address@hidden

Introduction: Jean François Abramatic, Chairman, W3C
====================================================

This was initially supposed to be delivered by Tim Berners-Lee, but he
was unable to be present.  A videotaped speech was played; TimBL
talked about the initial intention of separation of content and
presentation, and slightly slammed HTML authoring tool vendors for
dirtying the Web waters.

Keynote Presentation: Tom Kalil, Senior Director, National Economic
Council, White House
===================================================================

He began by reading a statement from President Clinton; basically
fluffy politico stuff about how great it is that we're coming together
to do this, but it was a significant indicator of the profile of the
project.

I wondered during his presentation about the conflation of
disabilities - "the disabled" tended to be tossed around rather
casually.  I hadn't thought about it before the conference, but motion
limitations can affect Web use, but in a totally different way from
visual impairment.  Auditory loss may prevent hearing annoying
<bgsound>s, but personally, that's a limitation I could live with.

The essence of the presentation seemed to be, "the U.S. government is
big, and we are throwing our weight behind this initiative; that
should make a big difference."  I will refrain from interjecting my
libertarian views here.

The U.S. is coöperating on Web access with the European Community and
the US-Japan Common Agenda.

Jim Miller, Meeting Chair, W3C Technology and Society Domain Leader
===================================================================

This is a launch meeting - but what are we launching?

1) An effort to move technology forward to enable access.

2) The International Program Office: a multi-organization coördination
   and education office.  Already, IBM/Lotus, Microsoft, Riverland
   Holding, SoftQuad, and NCR have signed on; the National Education
   Council and the European Community have been solicited, as well.

The IPO will work in five areas:

1) Technology: push development to enable accessibility.
2) Tools: coördinate with tool vendors.
3) Guidelines: produce recommendations for using the technology and
   tools.
4) Education.
5) R&D: figure out where research should go, and coördinate world-
   wide efforts.

Gary Strong, National Science Foundation
========================================

Powerpoint hell: "Universal Access".

The NSF Computer Information Science Engineering Directorate (CSIE)
has goals.  It also has a cheesy clip-art graphic of a bridge, with
one end's landmass indistinctly labeled "21st Century".  Basically,
the CSIE wants to enable accessibility in a way that keeps the U.S. on
top.  (Well, they're a governmental agency.)

Gary has an innovative idea: "Modality-independent means for
representing knowledge; (prior to its expression in a particular
modality so as to facilitate alternative displays and robust
multi-modal understanding, and after its expression to facilitate its
to [sic] translation to alternative forms or its reduction to summary
forms in channel capacity-limited contexts.)"  He calls this
"Intermedia".  Jon Bosak (XML chair) and others whacked him over the
head after his presentation.  What he's describing is *not* a new
idea; it's called "generic markup" and has been around for at least
thirty years.  (Besides, Intermedia was a hypertext system at Brown
University.)

One interesting point was considering rural locations, and lack of
technology for financial reasons, to be disabilities in one sense.

Proposals are already going through the NSF review process for
funding.

Kate Seelman, Director, National Institute on Disability and
Rehabilitation Research
============================================================

She delivered a message from the U.S. Secretary of Education, another
mark of the high profile of this initiative.  She also claimed Ron
Brown would have supported the initiative if he weren't dead.  Then
she droned on for many minutes reading verbatim from her prepared
speech.

Mike Paciello, Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation
===============================================

He was fond of his new acronym.  "The WAI to Web Accessibility" was
the title of his presentation.  We need to educate developers,
designers, users, and educators on the importance of access.

Peter Bosher, Royal National Institute for the Blind, UK
========================================================

Gave many good examples of the spectrum of accessibility found on the
Web, including examples of Lynx-dehanced pages.  'An average case:
... HotWired ... when half way through the speech will suddenly say
"link link link link link link image image image without caption
link".'

He also made the excellent point that, since time is money, the state
of the Web means that the visually impaired *can't* do a job requiring
any Web research as well as a sighted counterpart.  They are not only
access-impaired, but financially impaired.

He specifically mentioned the Lynx message, "Bad HTML - no form action
defined!"  Further evidence that Lynx must be more liberal in what it
accepts.  I think the new parsing modifications eliminate this message
in most cases.

There was an amusing anecodte: Wallace/Exeter is apparently amusing
through a screen reader.

The difference between the serial-only access of speech and the
parallel access of vision was a striking one that hadn't occurred to
me.

He was the first of many that day to use the phrase "temporarily
able-bodied".  It's a *very* interesting perspective on accessibility
issues.

During Q&A, he was asked about how many pages are inaccessible.  In
his opinion, few are completely inaccessible, but many are only partly
inaccessible.  He referred to Lynx as "the best text-based line
browser".

Gregg Vanderheiden, Trace Research
==================================

Gregg and Trace had some role in the creation of unified access
guidelines, but are turning evangelism over to the W3C.

A Java accessibility study was commissioned by Sun.  The problems here
are as much from authors as the technology, and there is the very real
danger of transparent inaccessibility: data that silently goes
missing.

He mentioned the importance of nomadicity and UI flexibility, not just
for un-sighted people, but e.g. for usually sighted people "reading"
e-mail while driving.

Standardization will be key to the success of accessibility.

72% of people over 75 years of age have some visual impairment.

The cool, hip technology is now showing up in schools, which is
further widening the access gap; blind students are losing education
opportunities as use of computers in general and the Web in particular
grow.

Michael Sfyrakis and Constantine Stephanidis, Institute of Computer
Scients of the Foundation for Research and Technlogy, Crete
===================================================================

The focus of this talk was on the Unified User Interface Development,
which is a user profile model in which the presentation of information
is tailored to the user's needs.  Nothing radical there, but they
presented a specific method for doing this.

Murray Maloney, SoftQuad
========================

Murray related a stirring story (Finding the WAI) of a three-day
blindness and longer loss of full use of his hand after a plane crash
in 1982.  He had trouble using his new computer, and became Aware.
While trying to eat soup in the hospital, he asked a friend, "Am I in
the soup yet?"

There was a mother who related to Yuri Rubinsky (the founder of
SoftQuad) how hard it was to find educational information for her
daughter, a blind concert pianist.

Yuri, as an experiment, submitted his book _Christopher Columbus
Answers All Charges_ in electronic form to three different publishers,
to prepare print, audio, and Braille versions.  The Braille version
came out first.

He then gave a bit more history, of ICADD, HTML and UTF, and the YRIF.

Removing barriers to access (Clearing the WAI) includes adaptable
software, accessible hardware, and accessible documents.  He made the
controversial contention that content negotiation will fail to work
for this.  He also railed against data buried in Java applets.

The curb-cut philosophy was a prevalent one - curb-cuts in sidewalks
were instituted to assist the wheelchair-bound, but proved to be
useful for parents with strollers, shoppers, bicyclers, and just plain
lazy folks.  Accessibility on the Web should have the same approach -
"Information Accessibility Provides Benefits for Everyone".  Notably,
speech-accessible documents can be accessed by those whose visual
attention needs to be elsewhere, like drivers or surgeons.

He finished with a plug for the WAI - it can make all this stuff
happen.

Lunch
=====

I had a productive discussion with Jon Bosak, Bill Smith, and Murray
Altheim (all of Sun), and Phil Jenkins of IBM on XML and generic
markup, and their value to accessibility.
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