add equity section

requirements/index.html

@@ -130,6 +130,33 @@ <h4>Maintenance</h4>
 							<strong>Governance</strong>: Utilize tools that allow interested parties to predict when issues important to them are being discussed. Maintain a backlog that reflects issues along with their status. </li>
 					</ul>
 				</section>
+			<section>
+				<h4>Equity</h4>
+				<div class="ednote">
+					<p>The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group wants to commit to a) improving equity of all types in our processes and participation and b) improving equity for the full spectrum of users with disabilities in content authored using WCAG3. Exactly what that will encompass and how it can be measured is under exploration and discussion.</p>
+				</div>
+				<p>The primary scope for equity in WCAG 3 is to address equity for persons with disabilities, including users with more than one disability. Work is under way in the Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies (FAST) to <a href="https://w3c.github.io/fast/#functional-needs">categorize functional needs</a>, including the intersection between different functional categories, to help achieve this. Efforts towards equity must also consider the spectrum of human experience and how it intersects with disability. This includes but is not limited to socio-economic status, sexual orientation, religion, race, physical appearance, neurotype, nationality, mental health, language, indigeneity, immigration status, gender, gender identity and gender expression, ethnicity, disability (both visible and invisible), caste, body, or age. This list draws from the <a href="https://www.w3.org/Consortium/cepc/#unacceptablebehavior"
+					>W3C's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct</a> (CEPC), and we intend to stay aligned with the CEPC.</p>
+				<p>The term “equity” refers to the ability of people with diverse characteristics to access and understand content and to participate effectively in processes. Web accessibility guidelines seek to increase equity for people with disabilities by ensuring supports are provided for people with different functional needs. Work towards equity considers three layers:</p>
+				<ul>
+					<li><strong>Equity in impact</strong>: WCAG 3 aims to improve accessibility of web content for users with diverse functional needs. The goal of equity in impact is to ensure that no user group with accessibility needs finds their needs overlooked or less well covered than other groups. This aims to ensure that sites conforming to WCAG 3 are equivalently accessible to all.</li>
+					<li><strong>Equity in process</strong>: The process of developing WCAG 3 requires equity to be an active part of the working group process. It is important to enable broad participation by seeking broad participation, welcoming contributors, respecting viewpoints, accommodating language fluency and comprehension differences, using accessible tools and providing reasonable support if needed, and supporting multiple modes of interaction and discussion. </li>
+					<li><strong>Structural equity</strong>: Inequity can be caused or reinforced by social systems, such as prevailing beliefs, laws and regulations, and institutional patterns. These constitute a context of equity challenges for the process and impact of WCAG 3 that need to be considered. While structural equity is outside the direct scope of W3C standards, the impact of WCAG 3 can be a part of structural equity solutions.</li>
+				</ul>
+				<p>“Equity” as a noun is a hypothetical or target state, not one that will necessarily be fully reached in practice. It is also a lens through which to analyze practices or outcomes.  Equity is distinct from <i>equality</i>, in that equity focuses on equivalent results, whereas equality only provides similar opportunities. An equitable practice may provide minimal supports for many users, moderate for others, and extensive for some, in order for all of them to be able to complete a task with comparable facility. Requirements for equity are informed by the nature of <em>inequities</em> that exist.</p>
+				<p>An “equity-centered process” aims to make meaningful progress towards the goal of reducing inequity. The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group’s participatory design approach requires involvement from people across the spectrum of functional needs, with appropriate supports for ongoing building of awareness, trust in each other, and ownership of personal responsibility in the process. It also requires accountability to the process and results, in the form of cyclical progress reviews and goal updates.</p>
+				<div class="ednote">
+				<p>Outstanding questions that need to be addressed include: </p>
+				<ul>
+					<li>How can we recruit more diverse people with disabilities in developing WCAG3? </li>
+					<li>What should WCAG3 Conformance be for various organization types? </li>
+					<li>How should Conformance satisfy varying or conflicting user needs and address equitable prioritization of guidance?  </li>
+					<li>How can equity issues in WCAG3 align with civil legislation? </li>
+					<li>In a W3C technical report, how far can we go to address socio-economic impact on people with disabilities? </li>
+					<li>How might principles of equity be raised proactively in the design of the Conformance model? </li>
+				</ul>
+				</div>
+			</section>
 			</section>
 		<section>
 		  <h2 id="design_principles">Design Principles</h2>