2006-122 Meeting Minutes

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PDF-UA 2006-122
July 26, 2006

PDF/UA Working Group

Teleconference

PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility) Working Group Draft Meeting Agenda
Wednesday, July 26, 2006,  3:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M. EST
Conference Call Information
International Dial-in: +1-303-928-2600
U.S. Dial-in: 1-888-742-8686
Conference ID: 7083945

NOTE:  Without objection, the Chair has proposed dedicatation of this meeting to improving the Committee's process and resources.

Meeting  convened at 3:06 by Duff Johnson

Roll

Mark Gavin - Appligent
Loretta Guarino-Reid - Adobe Systems
Betsy Fanning - AIIM
Greg Pisocky - Adobe Systems
Ferass Elreyes - Netcentric Technologies
Neil Soiffer - Design Science
Bob Martenengo - Alternative Media Access Center (UGA)
Karen McCall - Karlen Communications
Joe Clark - Independent Accessibility Consultant

AI: indicates an Action Item

Approval of PDF/UA 2006-121, July 26, 2006 2006-121 Agenda

Gavin / Soiffer

Approval of PDF/UA 2006-120, June 21, 2006 MINUTES

Guarino-Reid / Clark

Report on / update and discuss Action Items

Duff conducted a review of the action items list. The table was updated indicating progress or lack thereof. It was appropriately labelled and items updated.

Review Committee progress, goals, methods, workflow and resource requirements.

DJ - Current assessment of progress made to do date. Progress is slow. The current pace of our progress is limited because time spent thinking about the problem appears to be limited to these meetings. There is a need to accelerate the process.

Substantive items that need to be done:

Revise what needs to be done at each stage of process

Devise a clearer template

Renewed commitment on the part of organizations and individuals to read the PDF Reference and make notes or comments on the Wiki.

More resources, resources get concentrated.

NS - there have been some successful instances of participation. 4 hours off the call.

DJ - Pages need to be processed into something resembling a useful specification.

AI: NS - Action item to rewrite the Math page. It was an example of additional comments on the page besides the authors and it was a successful experience.

DJ - Example of Richard Herring, and what constitutes an accessible PDF. Working from the PDF Reference represents one level of activity and discover how items then get addressed in the operational sense "the tagging."

1: Respond to the PDF Reference with statements that can be cast in algorithmic terms. Distinguish between what software can do and what requires user action.

Each step:

All contributors need to set aside some time to address portions of the spec. How do we find more people to do this, or obtain commitments from the current group to commit more time to the task.

Cut copy, paste pertinent sections from the reference, annotate outstanding issues to be discussed, proposed text would be the attempt to develop formal language for the specification. Declarative, definitive statements are what we are after. Issues to take forward to implementation, outside of or implied by the discussion outside the operational sense.

Discussion of the pdfua-section-template and introduction of a new model. What it is that needs to be done and how to do it.

 Lacking the time commitment is the other issue that needs to be addressed.

FE - Does the organization have time to commit on a monthly basis.

DJ - 4 hours per month is possi ble. Look at list in draft and address one and paste / copy the template text and drop into page.

GP - 2 suggestions, a personal commitment, I will get my organization to make this commitment a formal performance objective against which I will be measured. Also announce once again to interested parties in both the public / private sectors through blogs, postings, announcements, etc.,

DJ - Blogs, posting, outreach to accessibility consultants. Looking for a 4 hour off the clock commitment to get people to post to the Wiki.

LGR - I have blocked out a regular time in my regular weekly calendar to commit to the four hours a month that have been asked for.

DJ - 4 such commitments and all I had to do was ask.

BM - Priorities around the process? Do you break down the spec, tackle what is of interest ? Quick return.

DJ - More of these leaves require a document. Most are at different stages of development. Bang out copy, and study the reaction generated by what has been done.

BM - So I am interested in the issue of read order and ensuring logical read order. The challenge is taking these simple concepts and understand how this relates to the complex technical language one would find in the specification.

LGR - For instance, Reading Order is actually discussed in Section 7, Document Interchange.

Draft "Call for Members" content, devise dissemination and "marketing" strategy, assign "Membership Drive" oriented tasks

DJ - The next step, is to incorporate others in the process. We all know someone who is interested in these issues, we need to ask them for their help.

RM - Use the Introduction as the road map for people to start.

AI: DJ - Volunteer for the marketing aspects of the wiki

AI: LGR - I will volunteer to assist people in determining where their subject areas would be appropriately placed in the spec.

RM - TextHelp example of a vendor who has a corporate interest in this activity, contacts at the high tech training center

LGR - People who are working on tools of any kind would be good candidates.

DJ - I would look forward to waking up to 3 - 4 conversations on the Wiki.

DJ - Think about others and sectors where you have relationships and employ them, education, government - think about your professional acquaintances.

JC - I have relationships with experts, though many of them would be unable to sign up for a regular task. These are people who are more prone to be helpful with one specific question and be happy to tackle it.

DJ - Reading the PDF Reference. If we took the draft template and some suggested writing guidelines, if we took for example 3 leaves and who you think you could "sell" them to, would that do the trick?

JC - Indeed, and it's what I have been attempting to do here.

FE - I have updated the two topics while we have been having this conversation.

DJ - One initial task is to Annotate the content (leaves) with the correct location in the PDF Reference. Search the PDF Reference for that heading.  We are only looking at the lowest level sections.

JC - I know people for fonts. The section on tagging, Web Hypertext Technology Working Group has members that would be willing to work on that. I can reach out to some of these people, others you would have to pitch them yourself. I have looked at the list of things to do and I already have people in mind.

KM - Looking at the logical structure. I would like to look at it from the text perspective, I am interested in the logical structure. I will need some instruction or help for pulling these out of the untagged spec.

 DJ - Loretta could you annotate

AI: DJ / GP will extract the text for Karen's benefit

AI: DJ Place the template in the spec at the appropriate locations.

KM - I would like to see an item on the topic of parallel columns.

LGR - Something we should give guidance on, but there is not a specific tag. It could be a place where the current tagging structure is deficient, there currently is no way to express that relationship.

KM - The parallel column has been a traditional problem in access. It's not a table.

LGR - I expect we will find various document relationships for which tag sets have not been defined and identifying those is something we would like to do. We may need to add something to address things like this.

DJ - We often run into the "what about this" situation. There is a small number of people capable of answering those questions.

DJ - When you make an edit in the Wiki, a message is sent to everyone else indicating a change has  been made. What we're hoping for here is that people

LGR: 1 Restrict the way things in the spec are used. 2 Where are there deficincies and are there things we therefore want to propose. When there is a deficiency, it won't be obvious where it fits,

MG: Since it's a Wiki, it's a live document we can always move these items around.

DJ: The important thing is to get the question out and use the mechanism of the Wiki to put items in the right place.

Review Action Items in light of the foregoing

AI: DJ - Update the introductory page for the draft specification.

Additional discussion/wrapup

DJ: Do we need to discuss anything more

LGR: Let's go forth and work. Let's review Dick's work.

Richard Herring's most recent comment found at http://pdf.editme.com/pdfua-annex-b.

AI: DJ I will put a link to Informative Annex B from the main page.

Adjourn

Move to adjourn:

Guarino-Reid / Soiffer

Next meeting: August 8, 2006 3:00 pm EST

Meeting adourned at 4:54 EST