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193 lines
9.0 KiB
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<title>WAI History</title>
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href="http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/base.css">
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<h1><a href="/"><img alt="W3C" src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/w3c_home.png"></a>
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<a href="/WAI"><img alt="WAI"
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src="http://www.w3.org/WAI/images/wai-temp"></a></h1>
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<h1>WAI early days</h1>
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<p>By Daniel Dardailler (<a href="http://www.w3.org/2007/IntlRel.html">W3C Dir
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Intl Rel</a>, as of this writing).</p>
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<p>This is my account of the events and individuals that participated in the
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WAI set-up. Comments, corrections and additions always welcome. I still have
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all the emails related to these early dialogs, and lots of thread are also
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archived in W3C staff space.</p>
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<p></p>
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<hr>
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<p></p>
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<p>Web Accessibility as a W3C project was conceived in the <strong>Fall of
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1996</strong>, at the initiative of a few individuals from the W3C staff, and
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with the early enthusiast support of a much larger expert community (the
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pioneers in those years, e.g Trace, Rubinski). It took about 9 months to exist
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(i.e. official press release).</p>
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<p>For a couple of years, the W3C had been hosting a couple of pages devoted to
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Web accessibility for people with disabilities, thanks to the continuous effort
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of <strong>Mike Paciello</strong> of the Yuri Rubinski Insight Foundation, who
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was maintaining it on a voluntary basis. It consisted of references to external
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projects doing guidelines work (at Trace, UToronto, ICADD, etc). Dave Raggett
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was the W3C staff most involved in the technical side of things at that time,
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as HTML activity lead having worked on CALS. When I joined the W3C staff in
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July 1996, I was assigned to the security area and our Joint Electronic Payment
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Initiative, but I quickly started helping Mike with these pages.</p>
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<p>After some discussions with Mike during the summer of 1996, and more talks
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with Jim Miller, head of the W3C Technology and Society domain, my boss then,
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Tim and the W3C management proposed to our membership to move forward with a <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/Member/Newsletter/960913-F.html#Disabilities">real W3C
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project</a> in the area, given the <strong>lack of standard</strong>
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guidelines, and the divergence of individual initiatives that provided no real
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solution to users and programmers worldwide. </p>
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<p>Here's an extract from our member newsletter of September 1996:</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p><strong><em>3. Disabilities and the Web</em></strong></p>
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<p>by Tim Berners-Lee</p>
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<p><em>The emergence of the World Wide Web has made it possible for
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individuals with appropriate computer and telecommunications equipment to
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interact as never before. It presents new challenges and new hopes to people
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with disabilities.</em></p>
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<p><em>As part of its commitment to realize the full potential of the Web,
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the Consortium has been promoting a high degree of usability for disabled
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people, by following the development and encourage an ongoing discussion in
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the area. This limited involvement has been to host as a catalytic nucleus
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the disabilities page (linked from our home page) .W3C thanks Michael G.
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Paciello for his efforts in maintaining this page.</em></p>
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<p><em>Michael has proposed that a more extensive project be started, if
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there is sufficient provision of resources and enthusiasm by Consortium
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Members. Please indicate your organization's opinion on this matter with a
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mail to disability-response@w3.org</em></p>
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<ul>
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<li><em>Should W3C resources be spent on this?</em></li>
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<li><em>Would your organization possibly be prepared to provide effort, or
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funds, or to match funds from other sponsors?</em> </li>
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</ul>
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</blockquote>
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<p></p>
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<p>I had some past technical experience in computer accessibility from my X
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Window years, where I'd helped make various pieces of the Unix graphic toolkit
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layer (Xlib/Xt/Motif) more compatible with assistive technologies (<a
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href="http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/dacxmtg_ctg93/dacxmtg3.htm">DACX</a> or <a
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href="http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/x_win_andice/x_andice.htm">ICE</a>, Mercator
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project, with Bill Walker, Donna Converse), so I volunteered to lead this new
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activity (I was also the lead of the only existing "Initiative" of W3C,
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JEPI).</p>
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<p>At a January 6th 1997 meeting hosted by Tom Kalil and the U.S. Government at
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the White House (with representatives from academia, industry and funding
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agencies - see <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/access-brief.html#Annex">list</a>), a
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few of us from W3C presented a <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/access-brief.html">draft briefing
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package</a>, and after some constructive discussions, W3C was clearly
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designated by all as the <strong>ideal host</strong> for a new pro-active
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program in the area of Web Accessibility. For the anecdote, Jim, Mike, Dave and
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I worked most of the weekend at Jim's house in Arlington, Mass. to produce this
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draft, which contained the basic structure of WAI groups still present after
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many years of activities.</p>
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<p>At the 15-16 January 1997 W3C Advisory Committee Meeting, Jim Miller <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/Member/Talks/970116TnS/slide5.htm">presented our
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Accessibility plan</a> (a bullet in a W3C Member-only slideset) as an upcoming
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activity of the Consortium with lots of external funding.</p>
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<p>Here's the original text for those without W3C Member access:</p>
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<blockquote>
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<ul>
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<li><em>Briefing package being prepared by Daniel Dardailler and Mike
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Paciello (Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation). Should be available by the
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end of February. White House meeting provides a framework for an
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International Project Office with funding from a combination of W3C
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existing resources, U.S. and EC funding, and additional industry
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contributions. Estimated total cost is $1.3million/year for three years.
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</em></li>
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</ul>
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</blockquote>
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<p><strong>WAI</strong>, the acronym, was born soon after, in February that
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year, in email discussions with Mike Paciello.</p>
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<p>Five keywords were put forward to justify the <strong>choice of W3C</strong>
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as a host to the multi-stakeholder community: International, Normative,
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Consensus, Predictability, and Participation.</p>
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<p>It was clear at that time that the technical expertise was not all in the
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existing W3C communities and that a particular effort should be made to
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outreach and gather the experts (from academia, industry) with us around the
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table.</p>
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<p>In addition, it was also clear that W3C needed to do more than just fixing
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the technologies, its technologies, and that it should spent a lot of resources
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on <strong>education and tools</strong> for content providers.</p>
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<p>This was a clear challenge for the Consortium since it was mostly working
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with software developpers at that time, so a specific structure, the WAI
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<strong>International Program Office</strong> (IPO) was created to manage the
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extra funding, and the new kind of activities.</p>
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<p>The <a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/agenda">WAI official
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launch</a> occured at the Web Conference in Santa Clara in April 1997, and at
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that time, W3C had already received financial support and endorsement from US
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funding agencies, from the EC as well, and from various industry sponsors such
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as IBM and Microsoft. <a
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href="http://www.lazyka.com/linernotes/personel/LoughboroughBill.htm">Bill</a>
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was there!</p>
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<p>In May 1997, after closing on my security/payment expert role in JEPI, I
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organized the <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/970522/agenda.html">first series of WAI
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technical f2f meetings</a> in Sophia Antipolis in France. The first <a
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href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-wg/1997AprJun/0004.html">WAI
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public list</a> was also launched that month.</p>
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<p>More importantly. that same month, <strong>Judy Brewer</strong> was selected
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as WAI International Program office director. Judy came with a strong
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background in industry/disability community dialog, not to mention technical
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expertise in computer accessibility <em>and</em> management. WAI without Judy
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would be like a bike without a handle bar.</p>
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<p>The <a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/group/970805/agenda.html">August 1997 WAI
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Groups meeting in Cambridge</a>, Massachusetts, USA, was the real start of the
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WAI technical activity. At this meeting at MIT, a clear commitment by leaders
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in the field, like Gregg Vanderheiden, Jutta Treviranus, Al Gilman, Jon
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Gunderson, Jason White and TV Raman, made it obvious that W3C was the place to
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have a successful <a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI">Web Accessibility
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Initiative</a>.</p>
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<p>The rest is easier to <a href="events.html">track</a>.</p>
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<p>I left my technical leadership role in WAI near 2003 I think, to concentrate
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on W3C general management and liaisons. It has been the most rewarding job for
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me, mostly for the extraordinary individuals I'd met in this community (Bill -
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may his soul rest in Babylon forever, Grego, Wendy, Judy, Shadi, Gregg, Jason,
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Charles, etc, etc). </p>
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<p></p>
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<p><em>Author: <strong>DanielD</strong>. Last updated June 2009. Mostly written
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a few years ago</em>.</p>
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<p></p>
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<p></p>
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