[WG: Accessibility] Sakai Accessibility Teleconference this week

[Silverio, Gonzalo]

On 8/13/09 1:16 AM, "Sean Keegan" <skeegan at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Perhaps the way to proceed is to target
>> Sakai 3 as a locus for aria enabled semantics, where they will be crucial
>> given it¹s ajaxy ways,  and leave the 2.x  as is, which is generally fairly
>> accessible in old school ways. Does that sound right?
> 
> That sounds fine.  From my experience, 2.x works in terms of
> accessibility and if integrating ARIA attributes into the 3.x code is
> a more effective workplan, than I can support that option.  I suppose
> the big question that comes to mind is then what are the timelines
> surrounding 2.7 implementation as well as 3.x target dates?

2.7 at the end of the year, 2.8 ~ May 2010, 3.0 sometime later, either late
2010 or the next year, not sure.

> Based on the meeting notes, it seems that the inclusion of these
> roles/attributes in the accessibility checklist is one option to
> pursue (as was outlined in the meeting notes from 7/30).  How much
> information do you think is necessary to include in the accessibility
> checklist - in other words, should there be information specific to
> ARIA with examples?

The checklist for 3.0, I am assuming. It is hard to tell. If all goes well
there will be no need to - Sakai 3.0 will use FLUID components for the most
challenging widgets and a library of UI elements that will be decorated by
an ARIA engine with the ARIA attributes. The FLUID components already do
this (decorate a given DOM with the correct attributes, and update them
based on user/application interactions).  All the developer will need to do
is declare a markup fragment to be a type of thing that FLUID or the ARIA
engine recognizes (a menu, a treegrid, etc.).

If this scenario does not materialize then yes, the developer would need
this information. I tend to think the best way would be to provide a clear
match up between a widget and a markup fragment properly ARIAized, so if the
developer is looking at a design with a spinner, she can just grab the
corresponding fragment and use it. Instrumenting the fragment to make it
responsive to interactions, that would be required as well - but at that
point things become very complicated, so not sure, really.

> Also - is there a specific accessibility criteria (e.g., WCAG 2, etc.)
> that we are attempting to meet with either the 2.x or 3.x releases -
> or at least specify to provide direction to developers as to the
> conformance level?  I was poking around but did not see anything
> specific on the Sakai site.

Hopefully Mike can address this.

Thanks, talk to you all later today.

    -Gonzalo