WAI Interest Group (IG) Charter

The mission of the WAI Interest Group (WAI IG) is to provide a forum for reviewing, discussing, and providing input into deliverables being developed by WAI Working Groups, including accessibility aspects of specification reviews, research topics identified during accessibility reviews, and educational materials development; also for exploring web accessibility issues and solutions, and sharing information about web accessibility activities around the world.

The WAI Interest Group supports discussion of accessibility work in other Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) groups and in any W3C group.

Join the WAI Interest Group mailing list.

End date	31 March 2018
Confidentiality	Proceedings are Public.
Initial Chair	Katie Haritos-Shea (Knowbility)
Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 10)	Shawn Lawton Henry (5%), Judy Brewer (5%)
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: No teleconferences Face-to-face: Between none and two annually

Scope

The WAI Interest Group's scope of work includes:

reviewing and discussing deliverables being developed by WAI Working Groups;
providing input into specification reviews, research topics, and educational materials development;
exploring web accessibility issues and solutions;
sharing information and exchanging ideas about web accessibility activities around the world.

Success Criteria

Participation via mailing list subscription and postings from a broad range of areas, including disability communities, research organizations, industry, government, and education; from a broad range of roles, including developers, designers, project managers, policy makers, advocates, and web users with disabilities; and from a broad range of levels, from beginners to experts in web accessibility;
Mailing list discussion demonstrating awareness and use of WAI deliverables;
Constructive mailing list discussion of web accessibility issues;
Constructive feedback on WAI deliverables posted for review on the WAI IG mailing list.

Deliverables

The role of the WAI Interest Group is to serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas, including reviewing, discussing, and providing input into draft deliverables from WAI groups; to raise issues that become input to WAI groups; and to engage participation in the work of other WAI groups where possible.

WAI IG enables issue exploration and contributions to other WAI Working Groups' deliverables by members of disability communities, research organizations, industry, government, and others who have an interest in web accessibility yet may not have time to directly participate in Working Groups; or who may participate in one or more groups but wish to follow general progress of all accessibility groups at W3C.

The WAI IG's on-going discussion of technical and implementation issues related to web accessibility contributes to other WAI groups' deliverables. Also, WAI groups ask WAI IG for input on specific issues in order to get additional perspectives.

Dependencies and Liaisons

W3C Groups

The WAI IG provides a forum for review and discussion of draft deliverables from the following WAI groups:

Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group (APA WG) (formerly Protocols and Formats Working Group PFWG)
ARIA Working Group (ARIA WG) (also formerly Protocols and Formats Working Group PFWG)
Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG)

Participation

Participation in the WAI Interest Group is open to the public. There are no minimum requirements for participation in this group. Participants are strongly encouraged to take advantage of frequent opportunities to review and comment on deliverables from other groups.

The Chair may call occasional meetings consistent with W3C Process requirements for meetings.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list w3c-wai-ig@w3.org (archive). Specific documents under review usually have a designated mailing list for comments, which is included in the document itself and in the review notice.

Information about the group (documents under review, face-to-face meetings, etc.) is available from the WAI Interest Group home page.

Decision Policy

Consistent with its mission, this group is not a decision-making body, but rather provides a forum for discussion and advice on different topics relating to web accessibility.

Patent Disclosures

The WAI Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the WAI Interest Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Differences between this charter and the previous charter for this Group include increasing the role of this group in leveraging input into specifications reviews, research and development topics, and educational materials development.

Extended from December 31, 2017 to March 31, 2018.

$Date: 2018/02/14 16:51:53 $