[html4all] notes from the f2f

[Steven Faulkner]

Hi all,
I was able to attend the HTML working group face to face meeting,
which finished up this morning.

the nature of the meeting (unconference style) saw people break up
into groups to discuss particular subjects. these included ARIA and
Data tables.

html 5/accessibility related news i picked up from my time here.

Seems pretty much like ARIA will be usable with HTML 5, the issues
being debated are peripheral.

In the ARIA breakout group on thursday the heartening news from a guy
from microsoft (can't rememebr his name - josh has minutes of the
meet) was that ARIA support is going to be implemented in IE (when
unkown), the guy seemed quite unequivocal about it, his statement
appeared to catch aaron leventhal by surprise.

so fingers crossed.

a small group (me. josh and justin thorp (a top guy from the EO WG))
attended ben millards and james grahams breakout group on data tables.
It was interesting stuff.
ben has done a lot of work on data tables (in the wild) and JGraham
has built a cool test thing for showing the associations that are
derived using  various table algorithms
(http://james.html5.org/tables/table_inspector.html).

what struck me was that the proposed algorithm(s) do a good job of
associating headers and data within complex tables. Also  after doing
a quick check of both jaws and window eyes, neither appear to
implement the HTML 4 algorithm.

There was lots of other stuff going on, much of which went over my
head, but it was still interesting to watch the dynamics of the
various players in the group(s).

I made a point of introducing myself to people whom I had interacted
with in the working group (irc/email): ian hickson, james graham,
majiec, anne, henri, dan etc. The reaction from ranged from friendly
to rude, but mostly friendly,


i discussed my various people experiences with josh who introduced me
to to the term "autism spectrum" and i came to the conclusion that its
not worth worrying about those who can't act in a civil manner. But
meeting people f2f will help inform my ongoing interactions with them
on the WG.

Mike smith from the W3c (he is now the html wg technical contact) made
a point of introducing himself to me on the first day, he seems like a
really nice guy and he was easy to chat to.

Found dan conolly generally unfriendly and dismissive, which was
suprising, but from observing his behaviour over the time of the
conference, i didn't take it personally as he appeared generally
dismissive of anyone that he didn't rate.

A bright spot was that Anne and Ian hickson were both very personable.


-- 
with regards

Steve F