W3C Staff Judy Brewer is the 2018 ACM SIGACCESS Award honoree

On 25 July the ACM has announced W3C’s Judy Brewer as the recipient of the 2018 SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility.

The SIGACCESS Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computing and Accessibility recognizes individuals who have made significant and lasting contributions to the development of computing technologies that improve the accessibility of media and services to people with disabilities. This award recognizes members of the community for long-term accomplishments or those who have made a notable impact through a significant innovation.

Judy Brewer is Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and a Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. For the past 21 years, under Judy’s leadership, WAI has developed key accessibility standards, prominent amongst which are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG), User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG), and Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA).

As part of the award, Judy has been invited to present a keynote talk at the ASSETS Conference on October 22nd. Read more about about the SIGACCESS Award, about WCAG and WAI.

by Coralie Mercier via W3C News

W3C Invites Implementations of TTML Profiles for Internet Media Subtitles and Captions 1.1

The Timed Text Working Group invites implementations of an updated Candidate Recommendation of TTML Profiles for Internet Media Subtitles and Captions 1.1. This specification defines two profiles of [ttml2-20180628]: a text-only profile and an image-only profile. These profiles are intended to be used across subtitle and caption delivery applications worldwide, thereby simplifying interoperability, consistent rendering and conversion to other subtitling and captioning formats. This specification improves on [ttml-imsc1.0.1] by supporting contemporary practices, while retaining compatibility with [ttml-imsc1.0.1] documents. Relative to [ttml-imsc1.0.1], any addition or deprecation of features are summarized at Appendix L. Summary of substantive changes (non-normative).

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1 Working Group Note Updated

The Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group has published an updated Working Group Note of WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1. WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1 was previously published as a Working Group Note in December 2017, to accompany the WAI-ARIA 1.1 Recommendation. Since then, the group has added an additional design pattern and examples, and improved the quality of many of the other design patterns and examples, to improve the support for WAI-ARIA 1.1. Separately, as recently announced, WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.2 is under development, which includes the improvements in this document plus additional features specific to WAI-ARIA 1.2. Each version of WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices is specific to the corresponding version of WAI-ARIA. Read about the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

First Public Working Drafts: WAI-ARIA 1.2, Core-AAM 1.2, WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.2

The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) Working Group has published three First Public Working Drafts:

• Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.2: Accessibility of web content requires semantic information about widgets, structures, and behaviors, in order to allow assistive technologies to convey appropriate information to persons with disabilities. This specification provides an ontology of roles, states, and properties that define accessible user interface elements and can be used to improve the accessibility and interoperability of web content and applications. These semantics are designed to allow an author to properly convey user interface behaviors and structural information to assistive technologies in document-level markup.
• Core Accessibility API Mappings 1.2: This document describes how user agents should expose semantics of web content languages to accessibility APIs. This helps users with disabilities to obtain and interact with information using assistive technologies. Documenting these mappings promotes interoperable exposure of roles, states, properties, and events implemented by accessibility APIs and helps to ensure that this information appears in a manner consistent with author intent.
• WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.2: This document provides readers with an understanding of how to use WAI-ARIA 1.2 [WAI-ARIA-1.2] to create accessible rich internet applications. It describes considerations that might not be evident to most authors from the WAI-ARIA specification alone and recommends approaches to make widgets, navigation, and behaviors accessible using WAI-ARIA roles, states, and properties. This document is directed primarily to Web application developers, but the guidance is also useful for user agent and assistive technology developers.

These document are part of the WAI-ARIA suite described in the WAI-ARIA Overview.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

W3C Workshop Report: Web5G: Aligning evolutions of network and Web technologies

W3C published today the report of the W3C Workshop on Web5G: Aligning evolutions of network and Web technologies, which was held on 10-11 May 2018, in London.

The report contains a summary of each session with links to the presentation slides. More detailed meeting minutes are also available^[1][2].

Network Operators, vendors, application developers, content provider and standard makers participated in this event which was designed to explore how the Open Web Platform could help drive the adoption of 5G innovations from the applications layer to the network level.

During the two days, participants reviewed opportunities that new emerging innovations and capabilities at the application layers can bring to the 5G network. The workshop concluded with the proposed creation of a task force of participants to explore how the 5G and Web communities might work in a productive and cohesive manner.

In particular, there was wide agreement on the benefit of developing compelling business and technical reasons and objectives to incentivize and drive a close collaboration among the W3C, 5G standard organizations (e.g. 3GPP), browser vendors, developers, equipment vendors and network operators. The goal is to create an environment conducive to the development and deployment of technologies that are supported by all the stakeholders in the ecosystem.

We thank our host, GSMA, and the Program Committee for making this event possible.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

Upcoming W3C Workshop on Permissions and User Consent

W3C announced today a W3C Workshop on Permissions and User Consent, September 18-19, 2018, in San Diego, California, USA. The event is hosted by Qualcomm.

The primary goal of the workshop is to bring together security and privacy experts, UI/UX researchers, browser vendors, mobile OS developers, API authors, Web publishers and users to address the privacy, security and usability challenges presented by a complex and overlapping variety of permissions and consent systems available for hardware sensors, device capabilities and applications on the Web.

The scope includes:

• user consent;
• bundling of permissions;
• lifetime/duration of permissions;
• permission inheritance to iframes and other embedded elements;
• relation to same origin policy;
• UIs and controls;
• interaction with private browsing modes;
• implicit permission grants;
• progressive permission grants;
• cross-stack permissions: how OS, browser, and web app permissions interact;
• permission transparency;
• relation to regulatory requirements;
• special considerations for systems that use the browser as a pass-through
• permissions/transparency/UI as it relates to display-less devices that connect to the Internet.

For more information on the workshop, please see the workshop details and submission instructions. Expression of Interest and position statements are due by August 17, 2018.

by Coralie Mercier via W3C News

W3C Invites Implementations of Payment Request API

The Web Payments Working Group invites implementations of an updated Candidate Recommendation of Payment Request API. This specification standardizes an API to allow merchants (i.e. web sites selling physical or digital goods) to utilize one or more payment methods with minimal integration. User agents (e.g., browsers) facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

W3C Invites Implementations of User Timing Level 2

The Web Performance Working Group invites implementations of User Timing Level 2 Candidate Recommendation. This specification defines an interface to help web developers measure the performance of their applications by giving them access to high precision timestamps.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

W3C launches Internationalization Initiative

The World Wide Web Consortium today launched the Internationalization Initiative to expand core work in further internationalizing the Web. “”Supporting the W3C Internationalization Initiative with funding or expertise is a vital way that our Web community creates the future of the global Web,” said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO. W3C thanks Alibaba, Apple, Advanced Publishing Lab (Keio University), Monotype, and The Paciello Group who have stepped up as Founding Sponsors. Read about W3C Internationalization and its Sponsorship Program and the press release and testimonials.

by Coralie Mercier via W3C News

ACT Rules Format 1.0 Final Working Draft

A wide review Working Draft of Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format was published today by the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG). This draft addresses all comments received on the previous drafts. Most importantly, “Composed Rules” was introduced, in addition to “Atomic Rules”, to replace “Rule Groups”. This draft is accompanied by sample ACT Rules that implement this rules format. Read about the the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

Draft update to Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA

The Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group has published a Working Draft of a revision to Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA. Since the last publication, the abilities of robots to defeat CAPTCHAs has increased, and new technologies to authenticate human users have come available. This update brings the document up to date with these new realities. For more information, see the blog post Updated and extensively revised “Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA” Published. Read about the Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

W3C Invites Implementations of Identifiers for WebRTC’s Statistics API

The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group invites implementations of Identifiers for WebRTC’s Statistics API Candidate Recommendation. This document defines a set of WebIDL objects that allow access to the statistical information about a RTCPeerConnection. These objects are returned from the getStats API that is specified in [WEBRTC].

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3

The CSS Working Group invites implementations of an updated Candidate Recommendation of CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3. This module contains the features of CSS relating to text decoration, such as underlines, text shadows, and emphasis marks.

CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News

First Public Working Draft: WebRTC DSCP Control API; MediaStreamTrack Content Hints

The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts:

• WebRTC DSCP Control API: This API defines a control surface for manipulating the network control bits (DSCP bits) of outgoing WebRTC packets.
• MediaStreamTrack Content Hints: This specification extends MediaStreamTrack to provide a media-content hint attribute. This optional hint permits MediaStreamTrack consumers such as PeerConnection (defined in [webrtc]) or MediaRecorder (defined in [mediastream-recording]) to encode or process track media with methods more appropriate to the type of content that is being consumed. Adding a media-content hint provides a way for a web application to help track consumers make more informed decision of what encoder parameters and processing algorithms to use on the consumed content.

by Xueyuan Jia via W3C News