Minutes for Accessibility IRC Meeting of August 26th, 2010

When: Thursday, August 26th, 15:00 UTC
Where: irc.gnome.org, #a11y

Meeting Log

20100826_log.txt

Topics Discussed

General Greetings and Conversation (15:01 - 15:06)

Travel Committee Updates (15:06 - 15:14)

Joanie (on behalf of Alejandro Piñeiro) reported that the final list of attendees with airfare and estimated hotel costs is about to be sent to the travel committee for (what is hopefully) the last time.
We wound up receiving far more requests for travel sponsorship than anticipated, including individuals who are not GNOME a11y contributors. Thus we may discover that we have more people seeking sponsorship than we/GNOME can afford to send.
Steve and Joseph each reported that the committee had sent them confirmation of receipt of their applications, but that they had not heard anything else.
General discussion about the process occurred. (See log)

Hotel Discussion (15:14 - 15:19)

Alejandro Leiva pointed out that he is still waiting on confirming the hotel until he gets a list of people and requested that Joanie or Alejandro Piñeiro ping him when he can proceed.
Brian Nitz indicated that he couldn't book his room at the moment and hoped there would still be rooms left when he is able to book it.
Joanie introduced Brian to Alejandro Leiva so that Brian has a local contact should it be needed for locating an appropriate place to stay.
Bryen announced that he just got word that LatinoWare is sponsoring him to do an A11y Keynote in Brazil in November.

Alternative Funding Updates (15:19 - 15:20)

Bryen reported that he had no new updates and is continuing to ping his sources.

Posters for AEGIS (15:20 - 15:25)

Joseph reported that one of his co-authors will make a poster based on a paper he is submitting on gnome shell magnifier.
Joanie reported that she's still wondering what to write about Orca given that the team hasn't done any research or similar activity.
Bryen and Steve offered several suggestions on how Joanie could proceed.

Testing (15:26 - 15:45)

Brian summarized his session as "How to test if your application is accessible. An A11Y automation test tinderbox."
He added that while it isn't written yet, he should have enough of it together to demonstrate how to write a test, and what makes a11y break.
In response to questions from the team, Brian stated:
- Pyatspi + LDTP will be used, and the tests ideally could be used as Accerciser plugins.
- It will be easy to make this completely automated. Doing so will probably be based on nightly builds.
- They will also have their own tinderbox based on sourcejuicer.
Things that could be tested:
- Do all widgets have labels?
- Are focusable items reachable/navigable by Tab and/or the Arrow keys?
- Joanie added: Do we get the correct events and do those events contain the correct information?
Additional comments/observations:
- Bryen indicated it would be great to create a published document to serve as a reference for developers and distros
- Joanie would like to see "some sort of never-ending GNOME Goal" to use this framework because the teams lose much time due to accessibility regressions in other people's modules. She also proposed that part of the session at AEGIS include going over everything each person thinks needs to be tested to be sure each of our lists match.
- Shaun said he could pull this sort of information into blip, once it's running.
- Fer proposed that these tests could be added under the glib/gtk testing framework, perhaps on build brigade. And that, regardless, he would prefer the tests be integrated upstream so that developers learn about accessibility failures.
- Shaun suggested providing developer docs for making accessible applications. The group agreed that this would be worth doing.
- Brian pasted his intro into the room. (See log)
- Shawn requested that AT demos be provided. Joanie responded that this would take place on 4 October, after the testing session.

AEGIS Booth (15:45 - 15:55)

Bryen asked what the group thought about providing Vinux CDs or DVDs at the booth. He was thinking of minting approximately 150.
Some discussion on what Vinux was took place. (See log)
Bryen is also planning on getting some vinyl banners printed and is currently looking for artwork.

Gnu Volunteers (15:56 - 16:00)

Joanie raised the question about the potential volunteers Gnu indiates they have and/or are getting to contribute to GNOME a11y. In particular: Are we able to provide the volunteers with the support they need?
Bryen responded that Professor You (who may have student volunteers) has not gotten back to Bryen yet.
Bryen added that volunteers should not be recruited before a task is identified.
Joanie added that some of those recruited might be working on GNOME a11y modules they know little about. Hence they may require "hand-holding" -- something Joanie herself does not have time to provide.
Bryen proposed that the question be tabled for now and that he will try to match volunteers with team members on a case-by-case basis.

Streamlining Meetings (16:01 - 16:09)

Bryen proposed that "we find a way to further streamline these meetings. We're getting too bogged down in details and it makes the meetings cumbersome"
In response to Joanie's request for suggestions, Bryen stated:
- a high-level status report should be sufficient for these types of meetigns, and further detailed stuff taken afterwards. For example, all the aegis stuff. Just get someone to be coordinator of all that and be the poker to individual contributors of AEGIS. The AEGIS discussion shouldn't take more than 10-15 mins in a a11y meeting here. As we're an A11y team, not all about AEGIS.
Joseph agreed that a 10-15 minute time limit per topic should be set.
Joanie suggested that "idle and irrelevant chit-chat" is also a potential source of lost time and adds visual noise, which at least she finds difficult to deal with due to a visual learning disability. She proposed a combination of Bryen's time limits and trying to limit the chit-chat.
Bryen responded that in his opinion the problem is not the chit-chat but the details. Joanie suggested that Bryen be the one to monitor and complain when a topic being discussed gets too detailed. Bryen agreed.

Agenda for the next meeting

Brief AEGIS update
Brief GNOME 3 updates
- AT-SPI ?
- gnome-mag?
We still need weekly meetings?
We are ok with the current timetable?
- It is clear that there are hours more popular than others
Some people showed some concerns about the current content and format.
- Proposals?
- It is obvious that it is required more input from the mailint lists
- One of the reasons to write the agenda on a wiki is allow people to propose things. Gently reminder.

Due point 2 is the technical one, it is possible to be moved to the end of the meeting, we can decide that on runtime