Accessible Web maps

Dear Klaus and Reinhard,

Please forgive my reaching out to you so directly.  I have copied our mailing list so that the group knows of your work.

A member of our group (Robert Linder) was doing Web research on existing practice for accessible Web maps last week,
and he brought your W3C wiki page to my attention:  https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/wiki/Accessible_Maps

On behalf of our community group, I would like to extend an invitation to you both to join our group, should you be so inclined.

Your work in accessible maps is of particular importance to our activities.  We are trying to scope out and specify the
requirements and means to extend HTML (and by extension, browsers) to incorporate dynamic, accessible, responsive
Web maps and geographic features, which as your research above notes, have become more and more important for
users of both desktop and mobile systems.

I have heard that accessibility is not something that can be added to a Web site "after the fact", as an afterthought.  It would
seem that this must be doubly important for Web standards, and so we would like to invite you to add your perspectives
through contributions to our group, if you are willing: http://maps4html.org

Contributions to the group by all members are covered by the W3C licensing regime, as noted on the W3C Community and Business Groups
information page: https://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/cla/

We do most of our work on GitHub, through issues and documents, however some blogging and announcements are done from the group home page,
and invitations to meetings etc. occur on this mailing list.

Thank you for your interest in accessible standard Web maps,
Peter Rushforth

Technology Advisor
Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation
Natural Resources Canada / Government of Canada
peter.rushforth@canada.ca<mailto:peter.rushforth@canada.ca> / Tel: 613-759-7915

Conseiller technique
Centre canadien de cartographie et d'observation de la Terre
Ressources naturelles Canada / Gouvernement du Canada
peter.rushforth@canada.ca<mailto:peter.rushforth@canada.ca> / Tél: 613-759-7915