Re: Auto-wcag promotion and communication

I love that suggestion, thanks Katherine! How would we proceed?

On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 10:38 PM, Katherine Mancuso <kmancuso@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi -
>
> I've not really been engaged with WAI Engage yet though I monitor the
> public list - I haven't had the time, alas.
>
> However, I am involved with the WordPress Accessibility team (copying in
> Rian Rietveld & Joseph O'Connor)  - may I suggest we strategize together
> around any effort you'd like to make around creating or using an accessible
> WordPress theme and site for WAI Engage as part of OpenAIR?
>
> Working together could draw some excellent attention to the
> much-underrated work of both teams :-)
>
> Katherine
>
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Sharron Rush <srush@knowbility.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> Great comments Wilco and I think consolidation of the vision and
>> development of a unified communications strategy is really important and
>> will strengthen the work immeasurably.  Whether we present at CSUN or not,
>> it would be a great place to meet up in person since so many of us will be
>> there, so please count me in for that. And Katie, I will be at TPAC as well
>> so I can support you at that event as well.
>>
>> Additionally, if we decide to use the Wordpress site and develop a
>> stronger web presence I wanted to remind the group that it is OpenAIR
>> season, that time of year when teams of web professionals are competing for
>> honors in building accessible sites for nonprofit groups.  We could be our
>> own nonprofit project and benefit from the publicity of the AIR competition
>> - also get the whole AIR community involved in this effort. reliable
>> automated tools would be of great benefit to the teams.
>> www.air-rallies.org
>>
>> Best,
>> Sharron
>> --
>> Sharron Rush | Executive Director | Knowbility.org | @knowbility
>> *Equal access to technology for people with disabilities*
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Wilco Fiers <w.fiers@accessibility.nl>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the good meeting again. Sorry it was a bit chaotic, the calls
>>> are getting quite full. Maybe we should start working with a queue when
>>> we're on 6+ people. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today was what we
>>> should do about promoting and communicating the efforts of the group. I
>>> think we've been around long enough and created enough content that we can
>>> show people that we're serious about this stuff and that we're not going to
>>> disappear any time soon. So maybe it's time to get a little more organized.
>>>
>>> So there's a couple of things which I'd like to hear all your thoughts
>>> about.
>>>
>>> ---Website---
>>> The nice people of the W3C have been so kind to give us a Wordpress
>>> website. Up until now we've only done stuff on the wiki, but I think it
>>> would be good if we used this website as well as more of a calling card for
>>> what we do and why we do it. perhaps we could create a few pages on things
>>> like our goals, why we think this work is valuable, how people can use our
>>> work, what people can do to contribute, etc. Do we do anything with regard
>>> to news or things like that?
>>>
>>> ---Twitter---
>>> This was an excellent suggestion by Birkir. One way we can make our work
>>> more visible is through Twitter. There are a lot of professionals in our
>>> field that use Twitter, and this could be a great tool through which we can
>>> connect the work different organisations are doing, and of course our own
>>> work. So should we have a Twitter account? What should we use it for? Who
>>> should update it?
>>>
>>> ---Approach Tool Developers---
>>> We have been quite fortunate with the initial outreach we got when
>>> launching the group. W3C's announcement of our group got a few great people
>>> on our team who participate or have participated in projects related to our
>>> work. I think the biggest benefit this group can provide is that we collect
>>> all the things that have been used in different projects and share this.
>>>
>>> I've recently approached Jesse Beach, who I know through work with
>>> Quail. She is currently the main developer of QuailJS and she'll be joining
>>> us in the group. So are there other organisations / people we should try to
>>> connect with to see if we can collaborate with?
>>>
>>> ---Presence at conferences--
>>> Another important way to increase our visibility came from Birkir, who
>>> proposed speaking at CSUN. We can, for starters, announce our existence and
>>> explain the kind of work we are doing. But what other things would we like
>>> to tell the world? The obvious one is to help tool developers. But what
>>> about others? Are there broader themes we want to address and to speak
>>> about? And if so what kinds of place do we want to take these to, and who
>>> do we tell it to? Which breams me to the next point
>>>
>>> ---Vision---
>>> And here is one I'm sneaking in, because I've been thinking about it a
>>> lot and it has some relation to the subject. Do we all have the same idea
>>> of where to go with this group. I have a pretty good idea for myself where
>>> I'd like this group to go and what I'd like to achieve in the coming
>>> year(s).
>>>
>>> I think automation of accessibility could be a great way to make
>>> accessibility a more approachable subject for developers. I think
>>> currently, the way most companies do accessibility (if at all) is by having
>>> a team of dedicated accessibility experts audit their final project, or
>>> maybe they are included in the project and check the work at the end of
>>> each phase of the project.
>>>
>>> What could really help to improve this in my opinion is if these
>>> developers would use automated tools to audit their code, the same way
>>> they're using test suites, validators and linting tools. This hasn't really
>>> worked well until now I think, because tools developers have had a very
>>> hard time coming up with good tests. Which is where our work comes in of
>>> collecting all of their best ideas and combining them. If we can get that
>>> right, we might be able to break the 20% coverage barrier, and if we can
>>> get more reliable results, and help tool developers to better integrate
>>> their tools into the work flow of developers, we maybe could hope to
>>> improve web accessibility through that.
>>>
>>> So what do you think? Am I messing things, either in this idea for the
>>> group or in terms of our communication / presence?
>>>
>>> I'll be sure to dedicate a big chunk of next week's meeting to the
>>> subject. Looking forward to hear your thoughts.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Wilco
>>>
>>
>


-- 
Sharron Rush | Executive Director | Knowbility.org | @knowbility
*Equal access to technology for people with disabilities*