Minutes
IAB Teleconference

2010-07-07

1. Roll-call, agenda-bash, administrivia, approval of minutes

1.1. Attendance

PRESENT
  Bernard Aboba
  Ron Bonica (IESG liaison to the IAB)
  Ross Callon
  Spencer Dawkins
  John Klensin
  Olaf Kolkman (IAB Chair)
  Glenn Kowack (RFC Editor Liaison)
  Danny McPherson
  Jon Peterson
  Andrei Robachevsky
  Dow Street (IAB Executive Director)
  Dave Thaler
  Hannes Tschofenig
APOLOGIES
  Marcelo Bagnulo
  Aaron Falk (IRTF Chair)
  Vijay Gill
  Russ Housley (IETF Chair)
  Lynn St.Amour (ISOC Liaison)

1.2. Agenda

No agenda items were added.

1.3. Administrivia

No administrative items were discussed

1.4. Meeting Minutes

No meeting minutes were reviewed during this call.

2. Techchat on Realtime Applications for Hearing and Speech Impaired

Bernard led the board in a discussion of the changing technologies used for providing real-time emergency services to the hearing and speech impaired. He began with some background information on the social demographics of various countries, a majority of which are witnessing a steady increase in population age. Since most older people experience some degree of hearing or speech impairment, or other disability, it is expected that concerns related to technology and accessibility will grow in importance going forward.

Some of the first major legislation protecting individuals with disabilities was passed in the early 1970s. Since then regulations of various countries have evolved to ensure greater access to services by disabled individuals. Telecom services have been impacted, since many emergency services (such as 911, police, fire) have a telecom component. TTD, TTY, TRS, and related services initially leveraged POTS or dedicated (e.g., ISDN) infrastructure, but have been rapidly moving toward IP in recent years. Some of these dedicated services are now leveraging, or merging with, IP- native technologies such as email, instant messaging, and the web. In particular, VoIP-related mechanisms, such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), have become important in providing the next generation of accessibility services, and have therefore been referenced in various regulations and/or government policy documents.

The move to IP and mobile technologies introduces some challenges. For example, many of the legacy systems have a direct relationship between endpoint terminal and geographic location which may be less explicit in newer architectures. There are other challenges related to the operator identifying that the caller is disabled, the form of disability, possibility of asymmetric communication patterns (e.g. voice in one direction, video in the other), etc. Also, most of the legacy services were tied trough regulation to common carrier infrastructures, but newer ISPs (cable) and endpoint applications (skype) may not be regulated in the same way or enabled for these kinds of services.

The board discussed the evolving environment, some possible upcoming regulations, and the increasing importance of IETF technologies in this space: XMPP, SIP, GEOPRIV, DNS, SIMPLE, etc. One issue is that many government procurement processes require the use of “standard technologies”, but in some cases the IETF is not currently classified as a Standards Organization in the same manner as ANSI (for example). Still, IETF technologies have been directly cited for use in these systems. The IAB will consider any steps that may be necessary to bridge this gap – e.g., have the IETF categorized as a formal SDO. A recent example concerns the ACCESS board, which is involved in specifying requirements for such services within the US. Ross will draft a note to the ACCESS board clarifying the role of the IETF as a standards body, and will send the draft to the IAB for review.