Re: Forming an Accessibility Steering Committee

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi Brian:

> 1) How would you like the committee to interact?  Via discussions on
>     this mailing list or via meetings?  If you think we should have
>     meetings, how often would you prefer to meet, and would you prefer
>     IRC or phone?

I'm fine with working any number of ways as long as we all agree to 
focus on achievable problems within our control/influence.  In general, 
I think we would tend to use all forms of communication available, with 
periodic meetings to provide progress and direction updates.  I think we 
should also work to keep some sort of WIKI content up-to-date and have 
it reflect the activities going on.  Periodic reports to the board and 
the community would also be very important.

I can envision some more intense collaboration needed up front to get 
everyone on the same page, and then tapering it off to less frequent 
(monthly?) meetings.  In addition, we could use GAUDEC and GNOME Boston 
as a means to have face-to-face opportunities 2x a year.

> 2) What would you like to see the Committee be responsible for doing?
>     I would prefer specific and achievable things rather than vague
>     generalizations.

Here's some thoughts, though not all complete...  :-)

For immediate near term stuff, I think an evangelization/marketing 
approach coupled with cleaning up our public face (e.g., a unifying 
documentation/WIKI refactor) is very important.  GNOME a11y has some 
really great work in it and we need to show the world how good it is.

We need to be able to quantify the penetration GNOME is having in places 
like Spain, India, and other countries because of GNOME a11y.  We need 
testimonials from people with disabilities who have made the GNOME 
desktop their primary work environment due to the GNOME a11y offerings. 
 With this, we can give powerful impact statements on stages at FOSDEM, 
Software Libre, CSUN, etc.: GNOME a11y isn't just the right thing to do, 
it is also a differentiating feature.

As part of the evangelization/marketing effort, we also need to reach 
out to developers to get them interested in a11y.  As anyone who is 
looking to hire a11y experts can tell you, there are very few qualified 
people in the world.  We can help change that.

For longer term stuff, we need to look at the overall GNOME a11y 
offering and do some gaps/strengths analysis.  Where is it strong? 
Where is it weak?  How can we improve the overall offering?  What should 
we focus on?  Many of us already know the answers to these questions 
from the depths of our hearts, but it's always good to write things down 
and get us all on the same page.  The results of this will feed into 
specific project areas, many of which we've been pulling together on 
http://live.gnome.org/GAP/GPTDTRT.

We also need to coordinate efforts across GNOME.  For example: what's 
going on with metacity's composite manger and gnome-mag?  What new 
widgets are in GTK+ and do they need GAIL support?  Is this new 
application "X" accessible?  What will the impact of an AT-SPI/DBus 
migration have on the entire offering?  If fixes are being made in GTK+ 
today, will we see them in a release for GNOME 2.22?  When will yelp be 
ready to roll in the new Gecko engine?  What are the prioritized list of 
a11y-related bugs for GNOME? Which bugs really really really need 
addressing, and who can we get to work on them?

We also need to look at things from a wider community perspective.  What 
integration problems are operating system distributions having with 
GNOME a11y?  Can we work to resolve the GNOME/CORBA/AT-SPI/KDE/OLPC/DBus 
issue?  Will we ever fix this problem with audio?  What should we do 
about speech synthesis from a platform perspective?  What other 
organizations and standards bodies should we make strong alliances with 
(e.g., Open A11y Group)?

We also need a nice logo.  :-)

> 3) What do you see that is blocking progress (or hindering acceptance)
>     of GNOME a11y.  What do you think could be done to improve things?

As reflected by our WIKI, it's currently a little anarchistic coupled 
with chaos.  The steering committee could definitely be something to 
help unify things.  The fact that the GNOME Board is bringing GNOME a11y 
to the forefront of its mind is an excellent thing: it shows the overall 
leadership of GNOME is behind it.  That in itself could have a nice 
snowball effect.

Another difficult thing to get past is the perception that a11y issues 
are relegated to a lower priority by developers.  Sometimes it feels 
this way.  When I observed bug activity this year, however, I saw 
developers spontaneously looking at a11y problems without needing to be 
prodded by the a11y teams.  This is way cool, and I think we just need 
to keep encouraging this work.

Money, time, and qualified people are also always a concern.  There are 
definitely a number of good ideas floating around to help address 
these...  ;-)

> 4) Assuming that we can identify a list of tasks in the answers to the
>     above questions, would you be willing to invest time in the Committee
>     to chip in and take on tasks to make progress in these areas?

You bet, as long as my boss agrees.  :-)

Will