TPG at W3C in 2016

The TPG partners Mike, Debs and Charlie have always placed an emphasis on developing and sharing knowledge on how to make the web more accessible for users. A major aspect of this is our continuing contributions to Web Standards at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Here is some of the work we have been involved in @w3c in 2016:

• Léonie Watson was elected to the W3C Advisory Board (AB), which  provides the W3C team with ongoing guidance on matters of strategy, policy, management, legal matters and conflict resolution.
• Léonie also notched up one year as co-chair of the Web Platform WG
  • Working with co-chairs Adrian Batemen (Microsoft) and Chaals McCathie Nevile (Yandex), we made progress on specifications including Gamepad API, IndexedDB API and Screen Orientation API. HTML5.1, Pointer Lock 1.0 and WebIDL Level 1 all became W3C Recommendations, and the First Public Working Draft (FPWD) of HTML5.2 was released.
• Patrick Lauke became chair of the Pointer Events Working Group and co-editor of the Pointer Events specification
• Patrick worked with Henny Swan and Jeanne Spellman in the mobile a11y taskforce to submit new success criteria for WCAG 2.1
• Jeanne Spellman and Sara Horton worked with Shawn Lauriat (Google) to form the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) Silver Task Force:
  • The objective of the task force is to perform preliminary development of a new version of Accessibility Guidelines following a research-focused, user-centered design methodology to produce the most effective and flexible outcome. Code-named “Silver”, these guidelines will address the process of making content and functionality accessible to people with disabilities, including the roles of content authoring, user agent support, and authoring tool support. These guidelines will address current technological and cultural web accessibility requirements and provide a base for continued evolution of the guidelines.
• Michiel Bijil co-edited WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1
  • This document provides readers with an understanding of how to use WAI-ARIA 1.1  to create accessible rich internet applications.
• Steve Faulkner spent another year co-editing HTML5, Notes on using ARIA in HTML, HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0, and editing the ARIA in HTML specification.
• David Sloan is a member of the recently-formed Research Questions Task Force (RQTF) of the Accessible Platform Architectures (APA) Working Group. RQTF will be looking for answers to specific accessibility-related research questions provided by APA and W3C’s other working groups and task forces. In this work, we’ll also be providing research support to the WCAG Silver TF.
• David’s also co-chair, with Mary Ziegler of MIT, of the Accessible Online Learning Community Group (AccessLearn). The focus of AccessLearn is exploring how the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)’s resources can best serve the specific needs of people working to make sure that online learning experiences are as accessible as possible. To do this, we’ll be working closely with the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG).