7 November 2022: Celebrating new members, a11y survey, Pagure to GitLab, and a Council Objective

Hi folks! Thanks to the folks who attended our DEI Team meeting today on Monday, 7 November meeting. We discussed three tickets and celebrated the addition of two new members of the team. (Although “new” might not be the best way to describe these folks who have actually been around for quite some time!)

Here is the highlight reel of topics that came up in our discussion:

Welcome @isagordillo & csutherl

We formally welcomed the addition of new two members to the Fedora DEI Team: @isagordillo and Coty Sutherland! Both Isa and Coty have already been present in the DEI Team for quite some time already, having participated in many of our meetings, adding valuable inputs to our team discussion, and even helping wrangle events like Fedora Week of Diversity! :muscle:

This is more a formal recognition, but nonetheless, it is a good time to celebrate their efforts and participation with the team over the past many months. Welcome onboard both! :partying_face:

Fedora & Linux accessibility tools survey

From fedora-diversity#233:

@ekidney joined us for the first half of the meeting and we reviewed the plan for the Linux Accessibility survey. To reaffirm, we are in favor of this survey in the Linux distro space, especially for how it can inform work to improve accessibility in the operating system.

We covered a few points and shared feedback as summarized below:

  • The intention of the survey is study accessibility and accessibility technology from the user perspective instead of a contributor perspective. The survey would target users of accessibility features in Fedora Linux as well as any other Linux distro.
  • The DEI Team can help by sharing feedback and/or wayfinding around the Fedora Community to support in launching the survey.
  • A timeline for the survey launch was not yet defined, so we asked @ekidney to keep us informed as to when the survey will launch, so we can help with outreach and sharing in our personal networks and channels.
    • This ticket can be a place for updates or any questions along the process.
  • Privacy concerns and GDPR:
    • Some privacy legislation allows a person to request their personal data be deleted and removed from a web app or database. Fedora is compliant with this privacy legislation. In short, anyone with “write” access to the data should be documented or noted for contact if such a request is received.
    • Add a link to the existing Privacy Policy in the survey opening page.
    • Add a notice or reminder on the survey opening page about submitting Personally-Identifiable Information (P.I.I.) to the survey, how this data is stored and retained, who will have access, etc.
    • @sarah-thornton has a strong background in data privacy and security, and can be a good ally for identifying privacy and safety considerations in the survey.

Migrating from Pagure to GitLab

From fedora-diversity#241:

In the meeting, there was a general interest in exploring GitLab. The question asked by other teams also emerged in our call about how we would preserve the 7+ years of our team conversations and discussions here in Pagure. The data we have in Pagure even traces back to data from our Trac system in 2015 to 2016.

I am going to pilot a new documentation repository for our docs, but the question of whether we can import our issue history remains unanswered. However, as @sarah-thornton mentioned above, this could be feasible! See fedora-infrastructure#10979 to see if we can get a conversation started.

It also came up that our “Getting started” docs as a team could be improved to explain how to set up a Fedora-linked GitLab account. There is a special portal for signing into the Fedora Account System (FAS) from GitLab. This links your Fedora account to your GitLab account, and also grants membership to the Fedora organization on GitLab. Since this is a new step, it would be helpful for both old-timers and newcomers to know how to do this correctly.

In the interim, I am going to assign this ticket to me while I do the following:

  • Request a D.E.I. sub-group in the Fedora top-level GitLab group
  • Create a new “docs” repo, copy over the existing git repo here on Pagure
  • Update Fedora Docs tooling to use the new GitLab repo

Exploring an a11y Council Objective

From fedora-diversity#243:

We missed @ekidney for this discussion, but @sarah-thornton, @rikardgn, and I had a discussion about this concept, what an Objective could look like, and some places we could turn to inside Fedora as good starting places for possible output.

Some notes from our discussion are below:

  • Neurodiversity:
    • Creating a guidebook or collection of best practices for neurodiversity accessibility could be a useful deliverable
    • Mentoring and teaching would be an important part of building awareness for neurodiversity accessibility in Fedora Community
  • Fedora Docs & AsciiDoc:
    • AsciiDoc provides several different outputs for source content that might include more accessible formats for some readers. Are we publishing to these accessible formats or providing that option in the Fedora Docs?
    • Other open questions about Fedora Docs: Could we provide more accessible formats? Could we create inclusive practices for AsciiDoc writers? Could we suggest or make improvements to the Fedora Docs Antora theme? Could we experiment with alternate forms of output, e.g. man pages published in distro packages?
    • It would be worth including the Fedora Docs as a stakeholder in an Objective. We could collaborate on accessibility best practices and improving Fedora Docs.
    • @sarah-thornton can help connect us with others who are interested in standardizing accessibility approaches in AsciiDoc documentation sites. This would be a good opportunity to build something collaboratively before we standardize on an approach or practice inside of Fedora.
  • Platforms: An a11y survey should consider what platforms are targeted by accessibility. Is it only Linux desktop applications (e.g. GTK, Qt, etc.)? If yes, then we should target Linux platforms and those who use Linux on the desktop. Will the scope also include web content like our websites and documentation? If yes, then we should consider multiple platforms beyond Linux (e.g. Windows, macOS, Chrome, Firefox, etc.).

CC: @riecatnor

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