Summary

First, could Fedora Accessibility Working Group join meetings with the Fedora DEI Team? Second, what would a 12-18 month vision look like for accessibility improvements in Fedora to propose for a Council Objective?

Background

First, the folks leading a new look at accessibility needs in Fedora are doing interesting work. It aligns with the goals of the Fedora DEI Team. It would be a win for us to team our efforts together and support each other in reaching project goals. Combining our meetings would bring a diverse group of people together to discuss common areas of interest.

Second, a Council Objective gives us a format to scope 12 to 18 months of work in the project. This could include an accessibility research review and dissemination of that research. An Objective would also help align Fedora contributors together on a common effort. We could propose this to the Council together with a logic model. The Objective would need to specify whether it would focus on Fedora Linux software accessibility, Fedora Community contributor accessibility, or both.

This ticket follows a discussion that @siddharthvipul1 and I were having in a check-in call.

Details

This issue is opened as a place to hold the discussion about joining our meetings and proposing a Council Objective. We need to engage with both teams on this approach as it could impact our workflows and reduce duplicative work.

Here is a hypothetical roadmap:

1. DEI and A11y WG join meetings together
2. Discussion about efforts to date, planned work, and project goals
3. Build A11y WG into the DEI Team documentation (e.g. a new docs.fp.o section, updates to Discourse tag description, project boards, etc.)
4. Identify a 12 to 18-month vision for accessibility efforts in Fedora, and identify outcomes, outputs, and inputs for this work
5. Propose an Objective
6. Launch the Objective and rally the community to support key roles of the Objective

Outcome

• The DEI Team and A11y WG team can work closer together and engage on related topics together.
• The Fedora Community is better informed about opportunities to collaborate on a11y topics of interest in Fedora.
• Make the first steps of improvement on accessibility across Fedora with a noticeable external impact.