08:17, 16 December 2007
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"Many Web applications developed with Ajax, DHTML, and other technologies pose accessibility challenges. For example, if the content of a Web page changes in response to user actions, that new content may not be available to some people, such as people who are blind or people with cognitive disabilities who use a screen reader.
"Web sites are increasingly using more advanced and complex user interface controls, such as tree controls for Web site navigation. To provide an accessible user experience to people with disabilities, assistive technologies need to be able to interact with these controls. However, the information that the assistive technologies need is not available with most current Web technologies.
"WAI-ARIA addresses these accessibility challenges by defining how information about these features can be provided to assistive technology. .."
More details at the WAI page. Also see:
"How to Make Your AJAX Applications Accessible - 40 Tutorials and Articles"
Thanks to the FABULOUS Sharron Rush of Knowbility for sending me these resources per my question, "How accessible is Web 2.0?"
05:53, 13 December 2007
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I've been participating in
YahooAnswers, a free-for-all online forum where anyone can ask a question and anyone can answer it. As far as I can tell, it's used mostly by teenagers in the USA. I've been sticking with just one forum: community service (
Home > Society & Culture > Community Service). It hasn't taken long to become one of the top five answerers on the Community Service forum, based on points earned from my answers (both the act of answering and community members voting my answers as the best). Sadly, the same questions are being asked over and over and over:
- "where can I volunteer in my city/county?"
- "how can I volunteer overseas?"
- "how can I raise funds for such-and-such cause?" and
- "how do I know if a charity/nonprofit is legitimate?"
- questions about the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity
I rarely get to answer anything beyond this, in relation to community service. There's no frequently-asked-questions-and-their-answers section on the forum and no effort to build knowledge -- it's just the same questions over and over again. There's also a lot of desperate questions, such as those related to needing service hours BY TOMORROW. What I've learned from using this community:
- moderated online discussions with minimum standards for membership and posting are oh-so-much better than unmoderated free-for-alls
- any online community or forum should have an easily accessible and frequently-promoted frequently-asked-questions-and-their-answers section
- most teens and college students in the USA have NO concept of the costs around their participating in overseas service activities (security, transportation, supervision, etc.)
- most teens in the USA think nonprofit organizations/charities should be staffed entirely by volunteers, that people who get paid to work for nonprofit organizations or charities are taking money away from clients, and that nonprofit organizations should get all administrative items covered through in-kind donations (the electric company donating the cost of the electricity bill, a company donating office space and furniture, Xerox should donate copy machines and service, etc.) and never use financial donations for such.
In short... it's been an insightful but rather frustrating experience, and I think that, by the end of the year, I will have abandoned it. Would be nice if all the many organizations promoting teen volunteering would answer these questions, even for a while; it would give them quite an insight into how well their outreach efforts are working.
01:20, 7 December 2007
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Shakespeare in Russian, Lenin in Swedish and Agatha Christie in Chinese… these and many other great works that have been shared across cultures are documented in the
Index Translationum, the database maintained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The 75th anniversary of this comprehensive database listing the world’s translated works was celebrated earlier this month.
The index, which currently has some 1,700,000 entries listing more than 250,000 authors, contains cumulative bibliographical information on books translated and published in some 800 languages in about 130 UNESCO Member States since 1979. Updated every four months, it is now accessible online and used by librarians, archivists, researchers, editors, journalists, translators and others. The references registered before 1979 are available in the printed editions of the index, which are in all national depositary libraries and at the UNESCO library in Paris.
The index shows that the world’s most translated authors include William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Jules Verne, Vladimir Lenin and Walt Disney Productions. The most translated languages are English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Swedish, while the languages with the most number of works in translation are German, Spanish, French, English, Japanese, Dutch and Portuguese. Germany, Spain, France and Japan are the countries which carry out the most translations.
03:14, 5 December 2007
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The November 16, 2007 edition of the
Bersin Associates WhatWorks Talent Management blog has some really interesting points that volunteer managers need to read. In addition to its brief discussion of the values and career goals of different generations -- the Millenia (20s), Generation X (30s & 40s), Baby-Boomers (50s) and Silent Generation (60s+) -- there's also a discussion of the need to build internal social network systems within organizations. Such a system would be more than an internal directory of employees -- it also should provide profiles of employees that encourage cross-department collaboration, including identifying people for projects and new roles and allowing people to collaborate to solve discipline and function-specific problems (e.g. technical support, project development, customer service, public relations, etc.). It also offers some suggestions for platforms for such a system. But what's really interesting to me about this blog entry is that
it applies to volunteer management as well. Volunteer managers should see themselves as
talent managers, they need to be concerned with and respond to these generational differences among volunteers and staff, and they need to be thinking about a way to create
an internal social network for their volunteers, for all the same reasons!
03:38, 3 December 2007
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Despite the best efforts of many different people and organizations over the last 11 years, many volunteer managers -- maybe most -- have NOT embraced online technology to support their volunteers nor to grow professionally, and the few online discussions regarding volunteerism are remaining terribly basic:
- Volunteer managers who blog or produce podcasts are rare.
- Organizations that host dedicated online fora for their volunteers, allowing them to interact together, are also rare.
- Conferences and workshops focused on volunteer management might feature an introduction to online volunteering or an overview of databases to manage volunteers, but not much more tech-related.
- Online discussion boards for volunteer managers are largely unknown in the field and not used frequently.
- Online questions regarding volunteer management stick are largely the same basic subjects (how do I recruit volunteers? where do I find an example of such-and-such form?). Advanced online discussions about supporting and involving volunteers are rarely happening.
- e-Volunteerism, a site for the advanced discussion of volunteer management, often struggles to get really dynamic interaction in its online Keyboard Roundtables, and only a few of its subscribers make use of the reader response and author exchange features.
In its November Keyboard Roundtable,
e-Volunteerism explored why this might be. The Roundtable looked at three areas:
- The Basics: Why should volunteer managers interact online and how can they do it?
- Online Interaction: What works and what could we do to move interaction beyond the basics of volunteer management?
- The Future: Where is all of this leading?
To debate these points, e-Volunteerism pulled together some of its closest friends in the volunteerism world: Jayne Cravens (me), who the site designated as "the world’s leading authority on online volunteering"; Andy Fryar, fellow Keyboard Roundtable Convening Editor and founder of the
OzVPM eGroup (and whom I designate as a really nice dude); and Kristin Floyd, e-Volunteerism.com and Energizeinc.com’s Webmaster (whom I designate as oh-so-insightful and forward-thinking). Rob Jackson chimes in as well as the Keyboard Roundtable Convening Editor and founder of
UKVPMs, the eGroup in the United Kingdom (and yet another really nice dude). UPDATE: Susan Ellis of
e-Volunteerism felt this discussion was so important that she wanted to provide it to non-subscribers, and she's allowed the participants, including me, to publish a
PDF version of the roundtable on our web sites.
03:18, 30 November 2007
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Open University, where I got my MSc from, has a free open content initiative called OpenLearn. The more-than-40 units of study offered are spread across nine subject areas: Arts & History, Business & Management, Education, IT & Computing, Mathematics & Statistics, Science & Nature, Society and Study Skills & Language Learning. In short: these are free university courses online, except you don't pay... and you aren't graded. Only downside of OpenLearn: it requires that you use a latest web browser. So if you use an older operating system and cannot update your browser, you are locked out of many of the features (but not the reading materials).
I'm currently taking Achieving public dialogue (S802_1), which looks at active forms of involvement by the public in policy relating to science: how is the public voice heard and understood? What is public involvement of this type for and is the outcome in some way ‘better’ than traditional methods of policy making? What do phrases like "public consultation," "public engagement" and "‘scientific literacy" really mean? How do non-experts weigh the risks and benefits that science offers?
Why am I taking this course? Several reasons:
- I have a keen interest in the impact of rumor, myths and "urban legends" on development interventions, aid work and relief efforts, ways such have been addressed in various situations, and ways to prevent such from becoming a problem that defeats a much-needed program or activity.
- I'm always interested in improving my professional communication skills, and further professional development in general
- I know that any course associated with OU is of high quality and relevance
Join me?
23:36, 25 November 2007
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I'm looking for suggestions for a company to do my web hosting AND email hosting. I am looking to hear from actual customers who are satisfied with their service and want to recommend such -- not from companies themselves.
Some background: for many years, I paid a LOT of money to a web host that also provided me server space for my email addresses. The good part was that it was oh-so-reliable -- in 10 years, it went down *maybe* once for a significant period of time, and customer service was awesome (immediate and responsive). But I decided that the charges were WAY too much, and went looking for another web and email host. I went with an organization that was MUCH cheaper, and said to cater to nonprofits and small businesses. Sadly, while I've saved a lot of money, service has been awful ; my email or web site has gone offline at least four times in less than two years, most recently for four days, and customer service, when I can reach him (sometimes takes days), just shrugs and says, "Sorry."
Please contact me with your recommendations. Thanks.
07:59, 25 November 2007
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She has become known as the "Qatif girl", a reference to the largely Shia town in Saudi Arabia where she lives. In March 2006, when she was 18 years old and engaged to be married, she was at a mall with a close male friend. They were attacked by a gang of seven men. Both she and her friend were gang raped. Four of the attackers were convicted of kidnapping, but the court also sentenced the rape victim and her friend to receive 90 lashes each for the crime of "illegal mingling". In November 2007, the court INCREASED the woman's sentence to 200 lashes and six months in jail. It also banned her lawyer from the courtroom and took away his licence. The Saudi justice ministry said the sentence was justified because the woman was in a car with an unrelated man.
Yes, that's right: Saudi Arabia has jailed a gang rape victim, and will soon unleash a horrific physical punishment upon her. That a woman who has been raped should deserve any kind of punishment at all is hard for most of us to grasp -- that she will be further brutalized is incomprehensible and absolutely shameful.
The woman's husband has stood by her in a very public way; through CNN, he is appealing to the international media to increase pressure on the Saudi government to have the sentence reversed. He said "The court proceedings were like a spectacle at times. The criminals were allowed in the same room as my wife. They were allowed to make all kinds of offensive gestures and give her dirty and threatening looks." Yes, in the 21st Century, this kind of shameful behavior is happening.
There has been little response from the USA administration -- apparently, Saudi Arabia gets a blank check when it comes to human rights, but Burma better watch out!
You can read more about the story from Human Rights Watch. And you can take action by writing the Saudi Arabia Embassy in the USA, and telling them that such behavior is outrageous and shameful to Islam and humankind. Also, write your congressional representative and tell him or her that you expect MEANINGFUL action to be taken on their part to speak out about this outrage. Use respectful but FIRM language. Remember: silence means approval.
23:32, 14 November 2007
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According to this USA TODAY story, service club organizations are being forced to modernize and adjust to today's busy lifestyles to reverse membership declines. The nation's three largest — Lions Clubs International, Rotary International and Kiwanis International — are reducing requirements for meeting attendance from once a week to every other week or once a month. They're creating cyberclubs that conduct business strictly on the Internet and family clubs to involve parents and children. Pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners are being replaced by early-morning meetings at Starbucks and happy-hour gatherings at local pubs to adjust to young professionals' hectic work schedules.
01:54, 9 November 2007
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Tributes are pouring in for Reverend Chad Varah, founder of the
Samaritans suicide prevention charity. Varah died in hospital. He was 95. In 1935, Varah conducted the funeral of a 13-year-old girl who had committed suicide because, being uneducated about sex, she had experienced her first period and thought it was a symptom of a sexually-transmitted disease. Spurred by the girl's death, Varah resolved to promote sex education among young people and offer support to youths, views that saw him harshly criticised in the 1950s. Varah established the
Samaritans, which now has more than 200 branches in Britain and Ireland, in addition to some 200 so-called affiliated centres in 38 other countries, in 1953 "to befriend the suicidal and despairing." Since it took its first call in November 1953, it has grown to the point where it has nearly 17,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland and has received more than 53 million calls since it began centrally tracking figures in 1978. It was one of the first organizations to incorporate online "befriending" as well. Also, some corporations had their staff go through "befrienders" training, in order to deal with fellow employees and customers (
Samaritans volunteer counsellors "question gently, tactfully - without intruding, encourage people to tell their own story in their own time and space, refrain from offering advice and instead offer confidential emotional support, and try to see the other point of view, regardless of their own religious or political beliefs."
01:36, 7 November 2007
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"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., yesterday to Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan, regarding their company's involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist and their defense for their cooperation with the Chinese government to identify and silence dissenters. Journalist Shi Tao was sent to jail for 10 years for engaging in pro-democracy efforts deemed subversive after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities requested by the Chinese authorities in 2004.
Read the latest on Yahoo! (oh, the irony...).
01:33, 5 November 2007
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Living and traveling outside the USA for the last seven years has opened my eyes to the reality that the USA *cannot* sustain car-only lifestyles, that transportation alternatives to cars makes life better for EVERYONE (includin car drivers), and that we *must* start demanding such alternatives. I'm not for banning cars, but I am for supporting more options on how we get from point a to point b. And one of those alternatives is pedicabs (pedal-driven taxis). If the world is truly supportive of *free* markets, then USA cities need to stop trying to block the use of pedicabs. They work in cities all over the world, and they will work in places like New York City. Regulate them? Fine, but don't put an unreasonable cap on their number (325? come on...). It's time to stand up for small business, the environment and safety! Check out the
PediCab Blog. And get active on the local level. For instance, to support PediCabs and all bicycling in New York, see
Transportation Alternatives. To support PediCabs and all bicycling in Philly, see the blog for the
Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. Use
Google to find other bike coalitions and pedicab advocacy groups.
02:08, 1 November 2007
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International Volunteer Day, as designated by the United Nations, is
5 December. This is a day to celebrate volunteers anywhere in the world, engaged in activities they feel passionate about.
The World Volunteer Web is seeking stories, photos and videos relating to your volunteering. Please
visit the site for information on how to share your stories, photos and videos of volunteers (or your own self in actin as a volunteer!), as well as resources you can use to organize your own IVD event. Information is also available in Spanish and French. The World Volunteer Web is an initiative of the
United Nations Volunteers programme.
06:53, 29 October 2007
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Yahoo is about to upgrade My.Yahoo such that users of OS9 (such as myself), as well as users of other older systems, will not be able to access it.
I use My.Yahoo to track various keywords on newswires, various blogs and various RSS feeds. It's a rather essential tool for me. Therefore, I need to find an alternative to My.Yahoo that will work with OS9, and quickly, since this Yahoo change is happening any day now. If you are an OS9 user, please write me and let me know what you use as an RSS reader. Please note: The Google Reader doesn't support Mac OS9 either!
02:09, 24 October 2007
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Two of the most valuable things YOU can do to pressure Sudan to stop its government-supported massacres and mass rapes are easily dismissed as old-fashioned and low-profile. But, truly, they are the most effective things we can do. These are from the
Genocide Intervention Network:
- Write/Call/Visit Your Elected Officials
Tell your elected officials that you are a concerned voter who believes that your country should do all that it can to end the genocide in Darfur. For USA citizens, learn if your members of Congress have “made the grade”. GI-Net's Darfur Scorecard grades USA elected officials on their efforts to end the genocide. Ask your legislators to co-sponsor and vote in favor of pending Darfur legislation. Urge them to take a stronger stance in the fight against genocide. Use the information available on the Darfur Scorecard, and the legislative advocacy tool kit when you speak with your elected officials.
- Write to Your Local Newspaper
Help raise awareness in your community. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper about the genocide in Sudan, illustrate your concerns, and challenge others to take action. Learn more about how to write a letter.
07:18, 22 October 2007
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A new version of the free NOSI primer "
Choosing and Using Free and Open Source Software: A Primer for Nonprofits" has been released. This is a no-nonsense, easy to read report that helps nonprofits understand what free and open source software (FOSS) is, what options are available for their organizations, and how they can access support for using FOSS. The primer includes all of the basics, and also discusses how to look at TCO and strategic value in making decisions about FOSS. There are many case studies describing the use of various FOSS applications in the nonprofit sector. It also includes a live feed via API from
Social Source Commons of a particular set of 5 FOSS toolboxes: software for the server, for the web, and for the three flavors of desktops, Windows, Mac and Linux. You can read
this guide on the web or download it in PDF. NOSI is looking forward to your feedback and contributions; create an account on the
NOSI site to comment on the primer.
02:42, 8 October 2007
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Statement by Afghan Women’s Network
Women’s Political Participation Committee
October 07, 2007
Afghan Women are concerned on deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and loss of innocent citizen in suicide bombing
We women express our deepest sorrow and concern over the continuation of deteriorating security situation and offer our prayer to the soul of the women, children and men martyrs who have lost their life in scared month of Ramadan in face of ignorance and we the women of Afghanistan condemn the terrorists acts which is killing civilians and creating atmosphere of fear in our country.
We Muslim women want peace, peace that Islam prevails. We would like to clarify that no political agenda can justify killing of Muslims anytime, in particular in this holy month.
The holy Quran says killing of one Muslim is equal to killing a society and the holy Quran also states that every little thing that human being is doing will be accounted. This means, there is no in any possible way justification in the name of Islam related to the suicide attacks and killings of Muslims and innocent civilians. Hence these are all political acts that victimizes the people especially women and children of our war-stricken country.
We want all Afghans to work for peace, unity and respect of human values and let this country to build the starches of war together where and Afghan child, women and man live a dignified life as a Muslim.
We urge The Afghan Government that in any kind of peace negotiation with any party of concern should not undermine Afghan Women’s status and Human rights principles inscribed in the Afghan Constitution. And based on the Afghan constitution, principles of Universal Deceleration of Human rights and other conventions that Afghanistan is a member to, no accord in past and future should exempt anyone from human rights crimes
02:47, 5 October 2007
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Ubuntu is a free Linux-based operating system for IBM/Clone PCs (as opposed to Macs), and is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Windows. Released in October 2004, it has a strong focus on usability and easy installation, whether it be on a laptop, desktop or server machine.
The Register, a newspaper in the UK, recommends the
best books to guide you about Ubuntu.
02:42, 3 October 2007
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A researcher studying the use of Web 2.0 technologies said in
her report that most nonprofits that she reviewed, "are not taking advantage of easy-to-use social media tools effectively. For instance, only half of them have blogs, and only half of these groups allow comments on their blogs."
I've worked to promote nonprofit use of computer and networking technology since the early 1990s. I read this statement and just shook my head -- it is, in a word, insulting.
The author may see Web 2.0 tools as easy-to-use, but many, many people -- in fact, *most* people -- don't. I work in both the tech-savvy world -- which is, like it or not, relatively tiny -- and the not-so-tech-savvy world, which is very, very large. Many of the nonprofits I work with are ever-frustrated at the attitude and approach of those promoting Web 2.0. This statement is a perfect illustration as to why.
The author dismissed my comments. She asked on her own blog: "Does Jayne think that using a cell phone is difficult?" I responded: "Indeed, I do! For myself and many other people, a cell phone is not intuitive and we struggle with all the features. And it *regularly* happens that someone I know sells their most recent cell phone in order to downgrade to something more understandable (surely you have read the media articles on this phenom?)." Yes, others might find the cell phone easy to use, but I don't, and I'm not alone.
She further asked, "How about blogs?" I answered: "I have struggled *many* times to figure out how to comment on a blog -- it is not always obvious. And for users who aren't using the very latest operating systems and browsers, blogs can be completely inaccessible. Your own blog isn't accessible for the browser I use to search the web, so I had to try to use another browser; then the blog login page wouldn't recognize this browser, so I had to try a third -- all in all, it made your own blog *very* difficult to use, and took more than five minutes for me to finally be able to post this comment. In addition to my own experience, I've helped many nonprofit staff members and volunteers set up or comment on blogs -- they could not figure it out on their own. So, to myself and those people, what do you say? Rather than smirk that 'it's easy!', why not acknowledge the difficulties others may have that you don't? Why not acknowledge that, indeed, what's easy for you and other very tech savvy folks might not be for others?"
I stand by my original opinion: all Web 2.0 tools are NOT very easy to use, for many, many people. And nonprofits are at a particular disadvantage because unlike large corporations, they don't have the budget to upgrade their computers regularly to the latest and greatest computers and software, nor to hire staff who are dedicated to training other staff members on the latest technology or to publishing a blog and responding to comments. If tech advocates such as the author of this report can't acknowledge that Web 2.0 technology is, indeed, difficult for many, many people to use, and that nonprofits have a number of budgetary constraints that keep such tools out of their reach, then the digital divide will just keep widening.
