RE: Re[2]: about portal Disability.ru

Dear Pavel,

Thanks a lot again for all your information regarding Russian laws and the
state of web accessibility in RussiaDirector of Web Accessibility Initiative
of W3C organization, Judy Brewer, is very interested in your work, and would
like to ask you a couple of additional questions.



Below is the text of her response to my report on the web-accessibility in
Russia and Judy's and my questions in red

_______________________________________________
Natasha,

Thanks so much for compiling this info.

Please see a few questions in the text below.

FYI I'm copying this to wai-eo-editors instead of w3c-wai-eo so that it
gets logged properly.

At 10:02 AM 2/14/2003 -0500, LIPKINA,NATASHA (HP-PaloAlto,ex1) wrote:

>Russia
>
>There is a Russian governement law that stipulates that people with
>disabilities are entitled to live their life to full potential and that
>special means for achieving this goal should be developed  (Federal
>Government law 24.11.1995 #181-fz).  It is very general without any
>reference to the web accessibility.

Interesting -- could you provide a URI for this law? And a translation of
the name of the law into English?   

Ya videla kopiyu teksta zakona na Vashem saite. Suchestvuet li ofitsialnyi

pravitelstvennyi sait na kotorom mozhno naiti etot zakon?  Sushestvuet li
angliiskii perevod etogo zakona?  ili ?otya by

ego nazvania?

>There are no specific Russian government of industry standards for web
>accessibility.
>
>  <http://www.disability.ru> http://www.disability.ru is the portal that is
designed for people with
>disabilities providing various kind of information re government
>regulations, policies and everything related to this topic.  It was fo
>founded and developed by Pavel Lapin.

Could you provide us perhaps three or four specific links within his site
that contain documents either regarding relevant government regulations,
policies, or advice relating to Web accessibility or in general ICT
accessibility?

http://www.disability.ru/index.php?item=law
<http://www.disability.ru/index.php?item=law&part=181> &part=181  - esli est
eshe kakie-libo zakony otnosyashiecya
k etoi teme pozhaluista poshlite nam 

What we need, to be able to link to them from the WAI Policy page, is a
format roughly like this, in the section on Denmark:
 <http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/Overview.html#Denmark>
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/Overview.html#Denmark   - na etom saite Vy
uvidit primer toi informatsii kotoraya nam nyzhna.  Mne nuzhno tolko Russkoe
nazvanie - I perevedy sama esli net ofitsialnogo pravitelstvennogo saita s
perevodom
Note, for instance, that the documents are named first in English, and then
linked to (if English translation not available) from the appropriate name
in Danish. Please let me know if you have questions!

Should we include Pavel directly on this thread?   Pavel, Vy ne vozrazhaete
esli my vklyuchim Vas v nashy perepisku?

>Pavel has created his portal, gathered information regarding best practices
>and best devices for disabled developed world wide. Portal has been
>developed specifically for screen readers.
>He was able to solve the main problem: lack of communication between people
>with disabilities and lack of any organization for them.
>He created chat that is accessible by blind people. He claims that this is
>the only chat that is accessible in Russia and, as far as he knows, in the
>world.

There are some interesting accessible chat methods that have been developed
by other organizations, including the Assistive Technology Resource Centre
at the University of Toronto. Perhaps you might let him know.   Pavel, esli
Vas eto interesuet my mozhem poslat Vam informatsiyu

>At this moment, he is working on a new version of chat with the
>virtual keyboard.
>Additional links to his sites:Sites:   <http://flash.polarcom.ru>
http://flash.polarcom.ru
>Book1:   <http://www.piter.com/book_about.phtml?id=978531800621>
http://www.piter.com/book_about.phtml?id=978531800621
>Book2:   <http://www.piter.com/book_about.phtml?id=978594723484>
http://www.piter.com/book_about.phtml?id=978594723484

Okay, thanks, we may include that info on the links to other resources on
the following page
 <http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/#projects>
http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/#projects
though it may take a while before we start editing that page again.

>_________________
>Below is some information re state of Internet and web accessibility in
>Russia that can be of interest to you
>_______________________________--
>Some Russian stats:
>
>At the begining of 2003 year we have following results of interent metrics
>in Russia (there was calculation of people older then 10 years).
>1) Regular audience of internet in Russian is 5.1 mln users. It's 3.9% of
>all Russian population.
>2) Large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg have 3.6 mln audience. It's
>6% of their population.
>3) 78% of internet users visit web sites.
>4) 72% use e-mails.
>5) 21% communicate using ICQ.
>6) 51% use other internet services.
>7) In November & December 2002 average time of using internet by one user
>was 474 minutes per week. It's 10% more then in the begining of 2002 year.
>
>List of most popular web sites in Russia:
>- Yandex (search system & directory with useful free services
www.yandex.ru)
>have audience of 48.9% of total internet users.
>- Rambler (search system & directory www.rambler.ru) with 39.8%
>- Mail.ru (free e-mail www.mail.ru) with 31.7%
>- Mult.ru (cartoon flash film "Masyanya" www.mult.ru) with 9.9%
>- Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) with 8.6%
>- Russia-Online (internet provider & portal with services www.rol.ru) with
>7.6%
>- Lenta.ru (hot news, online magazine www.lenta.ru) with 6.9%
>- AltaVista (www.altavista.com) with 5.7%
>- Google (www.google.com) with 5.6%
>- Auto.ru (forum for car drivers www.auto.ru) with 5.3%
>
>The number of internet users in Russia are swiftly growing from year to
>year.

OK thanks this is interesting info.

>"In fact, there is a problem in Russia to create normal web site for common
>users :)

Then it would be a good opportunity for people in Russia to start thinking
about accessibility now, while there is relatively little Web development
compared to what there will be soon.

>Only 3...5 agencies can do normal web sites. So picture of web industry in
>Russia is:
>- 7...15 (may be a bit more) web sites which more or less comply
>accessibility standards
>- 100...150 web sites have normal/good usability
>- all other web sites have problems with usability & accessibility"

Thanks again,

Judy


--
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741     <http://www.w3.org/WAI>
http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C)
MIT/LCS Room NE43-355, 200 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA