[html4all] Fwd: Clarification of process for raising html5 accessibility related issues

[Jason White]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 11:28:16AM +0200, Robert J Burns wrote:
> I'm all in favor of us clearing up the process surrounding the WG, but  
> I don't want to endorse Mike Smith’s unreasonable position regarding  
> the issue tracker. The issues Gregory added on my behalf are perfectly  
> within established norms for adding issues to the issue tracker. If  
> their are substantive objections to those issues, then the discussion  
> should focus on the substantive objections (i.e., what problems would  
> solving these issues cause for users, what confusion could solving  
> these issues cause for authors, what difficulties would implementors  
> face in implementing solutions to these issues, etc.).

I agree this is where the priorities should lie. It is more important to fix
the HTML working group's issue tracking practices than to discuss, on this
list, ways of working around their inadequacies.

While it is possible for a working group not to track all issues raised during
the early stages of the development of a spec, this practice needs to be put
in place in later stages of the W3C process so that the group can formally
respond to all issues raised in comments submitted. However, with a large and
complex specification such as HTML 5, I would be concerned that unless issues
are tracked carefully from an early stage, there is a very real risk that
important problems could easily be lost. After all, the purpose of an issue
tracker is to ensure that this doesn't happen and that decisions are
documented sufficiently; and as the number of issues grows, this becomes
increasingly necessary.

If issue tracking isn't carried out properly from the start, then problems
which are discussed but, for one reason or another, not addressed, are likely
to emerge again later in the process, where dealing with them can be much more
painful. No reasonable working group participant wants a large number of
difficult issues to arise at Last Call or later that could have been more
adequately dealt with earlier. Last Call, Candidate Recommendation and
Proposed Recommendation are challenging enough as it is, without a host of
issues that have previously been raised but then overlooked or
disregarded.

Also, having significant, dissatisfied constituencies among those who will
implement or otherwise use a spec, is just asking for formal objections or
negative votes as the W3C process proceeds; so this, too, is precisely a
situation which it is rational for working group participants who are
committed to the success of the process to ensure is avoided.

Of course, HTML is a large spec, and tracking the issues adequately is a
correspondingly difficult job. However, the working group is also a large one,
which should make it possible to divide up the problem among participants so
as to reduce the over-all burden.