Dear Friends and Colleagues:
Since the discussion thread of browsers, web accessibility, and web page
design is the current topic of the day, I thought it might be helpful to
folks on this list to be aware of a few things that are going on within the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to promote the needs of people with
disabilities.
I suspect that most know that the W3C is generally understood to be the
core organization responsible for much of the direction (current and
future) of the Web. Additionally, the W3C is an organization of Web vendors
(150 or so), including Netscape, Microsoft, IBM, Digital, Sun, HP, and most
of the major players. The couple of points that I bring out below are an
indication of industry's support for accessibility.
I'll preface my statement by first telling you that I cannot provide
specifics at this time; however, things are progressing to the point that I
expect much of this will become public knowledge within 2 months; likely
sooner.
1. The W3C is currently working on a major new intitiative whose focus is
strictly to enhance the current Web infrastructure for people with
disabilities. The resulting initiative is strictly disabilities related.
2. This initiative involves 5 key areas: (list follows)
a) technology development (including HTTP, CSS, PICS, and PEP)
b) tool development (including authoring, rating, and application)
c) guidelines (providing a formal, internationally accepted set of
guidelines for web content creation)
d) education (formal program to raise awareness of accessibility, teach
good content design, use of tools, etc)
e) research and advanced development (user interface design, web
appliances, certification tools and labels, and standardization
3. This is an internationally funded initiative and, as a result, will not
just be concerned with accessibility needs of people here in the States,
but will truly be an world-wide initiative. Already formal support from the
EC, Pan-Pacific, Asia, and Australia has been expressed. As well, there is
strong support for this initiative where the US government is concerned.
4. There are no formal schedules yet; nothing in the sense of what gets
done first has been defined. Much of the scheduling/prioritizing will be
done in late spring/early summer of 1997, no sooner.
5. This initiative is based on the collaborative efforts of several
organizations, including industry, disability organizations, and
government. I dare say that it will ultimately become a landmark initiative
in the effort to promote accessibility for people with disabilities.
Over the course of the next few weeks, watch the W3C disabilties web page
(http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Disabilities/) for future developments and
announcements.
I suspect that this will raise a few eyebrows; no doubt it begs several
questions. Suffice it to say that this is as much as I can share at this
point. But I will do my best to keep you abreast of things as we flesh out
the final details of this initiative. Feel free to ask questions; I just
may not be able to answer all of them right now.
Regards,
Mike Paciello
-------------------------
Michael G. Paciello
Executive Director, Yuri Rubinsky Insight Foundation
E-Mail: mailto:paciello@yuri.org
Http: http://www.yuri.org/
Tel: +1 603 598 9544
FAX: +1 603 598 2839
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