Add bnjmnm as a provisional accessibility topic maintainer

Hi,

I am applying patch.

Kindly review the patch once.

Thanks.

I'll +1 myself on this, I appreciate the vote of confidence from @lauriii. There’s something I want to be sure to acknowledge: Having worked with the other accessibility maintainers, I’m quite aware their level of expertise currently exceeds mine, and this is something I’d be aware of in the role. I’m knowledgeable enough to have a good sense of what I don’t know, and quite happy deferring to senior maintainers in instances where that would be an issue. I'm actively working towards expanding my accessibility skills as this is a major area of interest for me. Among other things, I recently received CPACC certification and will soon be WAS certified as well.

+1! Yes please! @bnjmnm has been invaluable in helping improve the accessibility of Layout Builder, Claro, and Media Library, and having him as a topic maintainer would be like a superpower. The Media Initiative approves!

test in #2 had a random fail 🤦🏼‍♂️

+1 bnjmnm was great help improving accessibility for Layout Builder and working with the existing accessibility topic maintainers.

+1 @bnjmnm has deep a11y knowledge and has shown a real talent for thoroughly evaluating potential problems and areas for improvement!

The existing accessibility topic maintainers (@mgifford, @rainbreaw, and myself) had a meeting with @bnjmnm to discuss this.

Summary: we're excited to welcome @bnjmnm to the accessibility topic maintainer team!

Some of the things we talked about include:

• Ben's accessibility journey so far. He's a relative newcomer to the topic, and is at an early/rapid stage of the learing curve.
• Ben has more day-to-day practice with javascript than the current accessibility maintainers.
• The range of open accessibility issues in Drupal core, in both stable and experimental modules. (It's our hope that Acquia will commit some of Ben's paid-for time to accessibility work outside of the strategic initiatives.)
• Bringing another accessibility topic maintainer on board will allow each of us to focus on different areas.

Now, there's also a slightly awkward concern. There's a potential (or perceivable) conflict of interest. This looks a teensy bit suspicious on paper:

• The Claro team nominates one of it's own contributors as a new accessibility topic maintainer
• ... at a time when Claro will soon seek accessibility sigh-off to be marked stable.
• ... but the nomination, and the +1 comments so far, all come from colleagues at the same big company.
• I want to stress: we don't believe for one second that any anything untoward is actually taking place here.
• Rather, the concern is about protecting the integrity of the accessibility gate and project governance. It would be all too easy for the Drupal project to stumble into a silly situation like the Wordpress "Gutenberg is ready" release bombshell controversy.
• During our conversation, we were very relieved to hear that this problem had already occurred to @bnjmnm himself.
• For some additional context: in other initiatives, we've gradually increased the use of review from external accessibility expert teams. First with the UC Berkeley Web Access team's walkthroughs of layout builder and media library; and currently we have an exciting new partnership with the National Federation of the Blind for user testing of the Olivero theme. We haven't had anything like that for the Claro admin theme yet.
• Upshot: the four of us all agree that @bnjmnm shouldn't provide the accessibility sign-off for Claro.

So, we propose to add @bnjmnm to MAINTAINERS.txt using the "provisional membership" mechanism. To date, this has typically been used for adding core committers, and I think this will be the first time it has been used for a topic maintainer. Doing it this way has two benefits:

1. It formally addresses the potential conflict of interest concern mentioned above. (This is the boring sensible bit.)
   • The Differences between full and provisional core committers document is largely geared to the committer process. But if you substitute "topic maintainer" then some points translate well enough.
   • Specifically: "Consult with a full maintainer for the role before giving a signoff and document the joint signoff on the issue" and "Should not grant exceptions to documented policies without signoff from a full topic maintainer".
   • There's an opportunity to flesh out the of the "full vs. provisional" governance document with additional context for topic maintainers. Perhaps we'll do a retrospective on this.
2. It behoves the existing accessibility topic maintainers to provide mentorship for @bnjmnm. (This is the exciting fun part.)
   • As noted, @bnjmnm is at a steep part of the accessibility learning curve. We'll help him get further along, delegate some tricky issues, and involve them in the sign-off process. The key aim here is learning how to translate accessibility standards and practices to managing a big software project through release cycles.
   • We also discussed how to treat it as a co-mentoring relationship. I need more practice in modern Javascript techniques, as other parts of the JS modernization initiative will involve accessibility work. Firstly, the new menu components proposed in the DriesNote 2020. Secondly, completing our replacement of jQuery UI components, some of which were held up on accessibility grounds. These will both benefit from Javascript knowledge transfer from Ben to the existing accessibility maintainers.
   • The time frame for this isn't definite yet, but we imagine it will span a whole release cycle at minimum. So that would mean @bnjmnm shadows us through the major accessibility reviews and sign-offs from when the 9.2.x dev branch opens, to the stable 9.2.0 release. If all goes well, full membership could come in summer 2021. This seems to be on a par with the way provisional committers are introduced.

Next steps:

• @rainbreaw, @mgifford: if you like, please chime in here with your own perspective on the conversation we had.
• @bnjmnm:
  • Is this still alright with you? Chime in with your perspective on our conversation if you like.
  • Please review the Drupal core maintainers governance document, especially the bits which mention topic maintainers, and the frankly magnificent Responsibility assignment matrix.
• Appointing a topic maintainer needs BDFL approval. Assiging to Dries.
• Update the patch, for the provisional membership bit.

I'm fine with #9. I'm much newer to accessibility than the current maintainers, but I'm also confident that working closely with the them for a few months would provide the exposure I'd need to be comfortable labeling myself a maintainer.

I also think it's appropriate that I not provide accessibility sign-off for Claro issues. In addition to the reasons in #9, I also think that review quality is impacted when done by someone who has been heavily involved with the overall issue, not just the accessibility parts. It compromises the benefits of a "second set of eyes" since we're working with the first set of eyes.

A big +1 from me as me! Welcome to the accessibility team, @bnjmnm. Feel free to commit this.

Committed d145ac3 and pushed to 9.1.x. Thanks!