Re: EOWG: Agenda for 9 January 2004 - Outreach Updates

Two events this week:

1. Yesterday we held a "Web Access And Inclusion For People With
Disabilities" seminar in Melbourne and Helen Petrie from City University in
London, UK, spoke about the large-scale study they have recently undertaken
for the Disability Rights Commission in Great Britain. We were very pleased
with the attendance considering it's the summer holiday season here - we
had around 120 people attending; standing room only. Unfortunately the DRC
have not released the report publicly yet, so Helen was not able to
elaborate on the recommendations, but her presentation generated a lot of
discussion from the audience. The Australian Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission have expressed interested at different times in
similar studies, so are hoping to learn from the UK study. (Helen's slides
are linked from the notice page -
http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/webaccessibility/workshops/0401-drc.html).


2. The Information Technology and Disabilities Journal ran two special
issues on Public Policy ( Vol. IX No. 1 October, 2003 -
http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itdv09n1/contents.htm and Vol. IX No. 2
December, 2003 - http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itdv09n2/contents.htm). This
collection of articles addresses the public policy aspects relating to the
emerging civil right of access to information. I had an article published
in the December issue co-authored with Oliver Burmeister from Swinburne
University - "Australian Experiences With Accessibility Policies Post The
Sydney Olympic Games".

Regards,  Andrew
_________________________________
Dr Andrew Arch
Manager Online Accessibility Consulting
National Information & Library Service, Australia
Ph 613 9864 9222; Fax 613 9864 9210; Mobile 0438 755 565
http://www.nils.org.au/ | http://www.it-test.com.au/ |
http://www.ozewai.org/

Member, Education & Outreach Working Group,
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/

NILS - A Joint Venture between the
Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind, The Royal Blind Society of NSW,
and Vision Australia Foundation.

Received on Friday, 9 January 2004 01:55:30 UTC