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Planning Council/Cross Project Teams/Accessibility

< Planning Council‎ | Cross Project Teams
Revision as of 09:58, 27 October 2009 by Tcornell.us.ibm.com (Talk | contribs) (Meetings and Notes)

Accessibility Team

Members

Tammy Cornell, IBM
Kentarou Fukuda, ACTF Project
Neil Hauge, Oracle
Kaloyan Raev, SAP
Oliver Keim, SAP

Statement of Problem

Currently, many Eclipse Members have a business need to make sure software they consume from Eclipse meets certain Accessibility requirements. Besides just being a nice thing to do, it is often required to "prove" software is accessibility, in order to sell to certain markets or bid on certain contracts.

The "proof" often comes in the form of conducting certain tests and checks and completing a checklist, for long term documentation of what was done to ensure the software is accessible.

Currently, many Eclipse members have their own process and checklists for this accessibility work, but it would be simpler if there was one "Eclipse Accessibility Checklist" which would set the expectation for all Eclipse Projects ... at least all Eclipse Projects participating in the yearly, simultaneous release. And, of course, this "required item" for the yearly release can not be too burdensome for the Eclipse projects.

Our "required" item for Galileo simultaneous release was a 'should do' item, and stated as simply as "... should design and test for accessibility". So another way to state the problem, is whether or not there is a stronger requirement that would lead to a stronger, more demonstrable or measured statement about accessibility compliance.

Meetings and Notes

Meeting 10/15 9:00am US EDT Attendees: Tammy, Neil, Kentarou & Kaloyan

  • reviewed the goal of this project
  • discussed which Accessibility standards each company is following, confirmed that all (involved in this meeting) are using the US Section 508.
  • Kentarou provided an overview of the incubator ACTF project: http://www.eclipse.org/actf/
  • The ACTF project needs to be enhanced more before it can be widely adopted by Eclipse projects. Currently does not provide tooling for SWT. It currently supports html, flash content, similar function as inspect32... Helios timeframe is to short to build in the additional function.
  • For a short term solution we believe it would be valuable to update the Accessibility guidance located at eclipse.org: http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Accessibility/index.html# This document was originally created by Tod Creasey in IBM, Tammy will contact Tod to see about getting this webpage updated.
  • Confirmed that each team is using the Software, Web & Documentation checklists. Tammy will work on getting a copy of these checklists to possibly include in the 'Should do'/guidelines section of the release train/ emphasize/recommended . http://www-03.ibm.com/able/guidelines/index.html
  • Kaloyan is trying to locate an Accessibility rep to join him on the team
  • Will most likely break this up into two parts: short term/Helios: update guidance documentation and provide stripped down checklists. long term goal: provide tools (possibly ACTF) to automate Accessibility checking during development.
  • will meet again on 10/20 9:00am US EDT

Meeting 10/20 9:00am US EDT Attendees: Tammy & Kentarou

  • Tammy confirmed that the following webpage will be updated by 11/30 http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Accessibility/index.html#
  • Need someone to review the accessibility checklists located here to see if they can be trimmed down/reduced: http://www-03.ibm.com/able/guidelines/index.html
  • Tammy is verifying if the above checklists can be used on the Eclipse website.
  • Kentarou supplied an ACTF presentation that Tammy will distribute to this team
  • Kentarou will hold a meeting this week with some of the other resources working on ACTF to see what they plan to accomplish in the upcoming months. Kentarou mentioned that this project could use some additional resources/active committers.
  • May expand Accessibility guidelines webpage to contain basic testing instructions and possibly a link to an open source screen reader (NVDA) http://www.nvda-project.org/
  • Will try to handle actions via email this week and schedule our next meeting for 10/27.

Meeting 10/27 9:00am US EDT Attendees: Tammy, Neil & Kentarou

  • the Accessibility checklists located here: http://www-03.ibm.com/able/guidelines/index.html can not be reproduced on the Eclipse website, if we use them we will need to provide a link back to the IBM public website to reference them. The other accessibility cross project team members will research and see if they can come up with something more generic that can be stored on eclipse.org.
  • will suggest an Accessibility Verification milestone be added to the release train schedule (possibly around the API Freeze)so release train projects will be reminded to do a first pass accessibility check that is early enough so they have time to react to any accessibility

problems/issues.

  • Neil will draft a recommendation (proposal is due 11/4/09). Will review recommendation in the next meeting on 10/29.
  • Kentarou is meeting with the ACTF team tomorrow and will have an update/outlook for us in the next meeting.

Notes from Kentarou: Here are the URLs of other accessibility resources on Eclipse. 1. Tips for making user interfaces accessible http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.isv/reference/misc/ui_accessibility_tips.html 2. Accessibility features in Eclipse http://help.eclipse.org/galileo/topic/org.eclipse.platform.doc.user/concepts/accessibility/accessmain.htm 3. Accessibility check list example (Eclipse SDK 3.2, 3.3) http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/platform-ui-home/accessibility/status33.html?content-type=text%2Fplain&view=co http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/platform-ui-home/accessibility/status32.html?content-type=text%2Fplain&view=co it might be a good reference for other projects to create their own check list. Item 1 above and this article (http://www.eclipse.org/articles/article.php?file=Article-Accessibility/index.html) will be a good reference documentation (and starting point) for Eclipse developers.

Recommendation to Planning Council

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