Audio WG recharter

[svgeesus]

New charter proposal, reviewers please take note.

Charter Review

Draft charter:

What kind of charter is this?

• Existing WG recharter

If this is a charter extension or revision, link a diff from previous charter, and any issue discussion:

diff from existing charter
diff from current template

Deliverables section will need to be regenerated once an updated CR for Web Audio 1.0 is published; this is blocked on PING re-review.

Adds new deliverable, Audio Device Client.

Horizontal Reviews:

• Accessibility (a11y)
• Internationalization (i18n)
• Privacy
• Security

Communities suggested for outreach: Audio CG

Known or potential areas of concern?:

Where would charter proponents like to see issues raised? (github preferred)

[r12a]

No i18n comments, other than that we encourage you to do self-reviews as well as ask for i18n to review the specs.

[michael-n-cooper]

APA WG would like to be included as a liaison, as there are issues with web audio and speech synthesis interaction which need to be sorted out.

[svgeesus]

Hi @michael-n-cooper , happy to add APA as liaison.

Could you point me to a GH issue about speech synthesis and web audio?

[nigelmegitt]

I would be surprised to find speech synthesis in scope, and note that it is a listed exclusion. However speech recognition processing should also be out of scope and is not listed. It should be added.

To add a small amount of detail to #200 (comment) I believe the significant issue is that there is no way to use the audio output from the (non Recommendation) Web Speech API as an input for processing in Web Audio. This is a significant issue, for example in the client side rendering of audio descriptions to make video accessible.

[svgeesus]

@nigelmegitt yes, speech synthesis is listed as out of scope, as with the previous charter. Good point about also making speech recognition out of scope.

Agreed, there is no way to use the audio output from Web Speech API in Web Audio. This was investigated and then closed by Audio WG. This is because Web Speech API relies on the underlying platform text-to-speech API, which typically does not have a way to output to an audio buffer; instead, it outputs directly to the platform audio output device. It could be raised as an issue on Web Speech API but due to the way that is specified, it would probably be hard to add this unless the underlying platform implementations also add this feature.

@michael-n-cooper is that the issue you were referring to, or another one?

[michael-n-cooper]

I'm not aware of a github issue related to speech synthesis and web audio. I meant "issue" in the old fashioned sense, something that needs to be talked about. We know that when there are multiple audio streams, they can interfere with each other, and speech synthesis users have an audio stream that author audio streams might be unaware of. Therefore if there is work on audio API, we'll need to be sure that it can be made aware of the speech synthesis and come up with ways for them to play nicely with each other. This issue will require exploration, which is why we simply request a liaison to APA to help avoid overlooking that. The specific change request will have to come after better understanding what Web Audio does and does not do through the course of the WG's work.

[plehegar]

This is blocked on WebAudio/web-audio-api#2061

[svgeesus]

@michael-n-cooper APA liaison added.

[svgeesus]

@nigelmegitt speech recognition added to the out of scope section

[svgeesus]

I notice that https://www.w3.org/2004/01/pp-impl/46884/deliverables no longer finds the Web MIDI spec, although it used to.

[plehegar]

bug report sent. In the meantime, you can use something like:
[[
Recent publication: 2015-03-17
Reference draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-webmidi-20121213/
Cfe: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/member-cfe/2012Nov/0002.html
from 2012-11-01 to 2013-03-24
Group charter: https://www.w3.org/2011/audio/charter/2011/
]]

[svgeesus]

Yes, I already had something like that in the charter. I was just noting, before I forgot, that the automated tool was not finding it.

[svgeesus]

@michael-n-cooper is a11y review complete? If so could you tick the box?

@wseltzer any comments on behalf of security or privacy? The charter is largely the same as the previous one, but using the latest template and with deliverables updated.

[michael-n-cooper]

Thanks. APA review is satisfied. However, Judy does not allow me to mark accessibility horizontal review as complete until she performs her own review. So over to @brewerj to complete.

[plehegar]

This charter is now under W3M review and will be sent to the AC for review next week unless new issues come up.

[svgeesus]

@michael-n-cooper thanks for the clarification, I was unaware.

[wseltzer]

Chartered: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-new-work/2020Mar/0003.html