Local: Boston, MA 05/20/98 Web Service Accessibility: Disability Law

Apologies to those of you on this list who aren't local to Boston.

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Jessica Perry Hekman * http://www.arborius.net/~jphekman/
Composed with DragonDictate

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Subject: LOCAL: Boston, MA - BLU.ORG - 05/20/98 Meeting Topic: 
		Web Service Accessibility: Disability Law and Public Duties


Who: Boston Linux & Unix
What: Web Service Accessibility: Disability Law and Public Duties
Presented by: Lar Kaufman (lark@walden.com)
Date: 20 May 1998, Wednesday
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: M.I.T. Building 3-133

On Wednesday, May 20th, BLU.ORG will be presenting Lar Kaufman, co-author 
of "Running Linux", in another segment on the Internet and the law --
Web Service Accessibility: Disability Law and Public Duties

Lar Kaufman's presentation will discuss duties of WWW service 
and content providers using facilities accessible to the public
under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other relevant US 
statutes to provide reasonable accomodation for disabled 
individuals to internet services and information.  Those using 
the internet as a public facility in commerce, or benefiting from 
public funded research or facilities have a duty to make their 
services and published intellectual properties reasonably available 
to all users.  But doing so is beneficial to all internet users and 
service providers, not just the disabled user.

WWW technologies and Web administration practices that create
access barriers for disabled users include denial of text-based 
navigation aids, content framing, and exclusive use of proprietary 
data formats.  These practices and simple solutions (reasonable 
accommodation) are discussed.  Some tools and techniques for 
extracting information "trapped" in proprietary formats for your
personal and fair use is also discussed.

The costs of proprietary data file formats to all users of 
public resources will be discussed, and include bandwidth 
overhead of graphics transmissions and the concealment of 
information from limited "knowbot" search utilities, thus making
data less accessible to all.

Time permitting, the current lack of enforcement, software 
developer practices, monopoly and other economic pressures 
will be examined, and ethical and philosophical considerations 
discussed.
 
Lar Kaufman is a documentation consultant with some 17
years experience in computer and network documentation,
a law student at Boston University School of Law, and 
co-author of Running Linux, 2nd Ed. 1996, O'Reilly & Assoc.

*********************************************************************

The Boston Linux & Unix Group [BLU.ORG], is the successor to the Boston
Computer Society's Linux & Unix User Group. We want to promote the
awareness and use of Open Systems, and to educate the public and our
members about Open Systems.

Linux is a UNIX-like operating system built around POSIX standards.
- From its inception less than seven years ago, it was developed over the
Internet by a group of people who (for the most part) have never seen
each other, and now runs on an (estimated) 1,500,000 computer systems.
The operating system (and the source code for it) is free to anyone
who wants it. It has been ported to at least the following platforms:
Intel, SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PPC, and M68K. This is probably the largest
development project ever accomplished using the Internet.


For the latest information on this presentation, please see the URL:

        >>>>            http://www.blu.org/             <<<<
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


- -- 
*********************************************************************
Guy W. Bzibziak		- Boston Linux & Unix 		- BLU.ORG 
<guybz@world.std.com>  	  Astor Station		  http://www.blu.org
KB1CRY		  	  P. O. Box 230040



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