Are you blocking millions from your online efforts?
06:39, 18 May 2009
.. Posted in Communication, Outreach and General Mngmt.. Link
Networking/communications technology plays a central role in just about everyone's personal and professional lives, no matter where or how they live. Sadly, many businesses, governments, nonprofits and other organizations configure their online communications in such a way that not everyone can access it, preventing many people with disabilities, people using assistive technologies and people using older technologies from accessing the information. And that's several MILLION people.
Don't you want to reach everyone with your message? Don't you want everyone to be able to access your message, service and/or products?
Remember: many elements of design that make a Web site more accessible to people with disabilities ALSO enhance the functionality and visual elegance of the site for EVERYONE. The same techniques that help disabled users (including those who use assistive technology) also aid handheld and mobile users.
IEEE is hosting the "Accessing the Future Conference: A Global Collaborative Exploration of Accessibility in the Next Decade" to promote ways to make IT smarter -- more flexible, intuitive and adaptive. It's Monday, July 20 to Tuesday, Jul 21 at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, USA. Early bird registration ends May 29.
My favorite organization addressing this issue: Knowbility, based in Austin, Texas. Among their many activities, they host the best corporate volunteering event I've ever seen -- the best by far. It's the Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR). AIR matches volunteer teams of Web designers and developers with non-profit organizations to build Web sites that are accessible for people with disabilities. The web-building event happens in one day. Before the event, however, the volunteers receive advanced training on building accessible web sites, and they take this training back to their companies and into their daily work. Want to host an AIR event in your community? Visit the Knowbility web site and click on the appropriate link. And when you tell them you are interested in hosting your own AIR event, tell them Jayne sent ya!
