Missed Meeting- My comments

My apologies for missing today's meeting. Between the holidays and me
working out of the house, the "household chores" took up more time than I
alotted. Comments below.

>3. Discussion on presentation of WAI EO Resources & reorganization of WAI
>Home Page
>	- <http://www.w3.org/WAI> 

One of the things I noticed briefly, is that the latest version of the Page
Authoring Guidelines is not available at:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-WAI-PAGEAUTH/

or at least the changes from both November and December have not been
reflected in that particular document. Am I being silly or should the date
reflect the latest update and link to the "changes history" page?

>	- how can we get our resources more visible?

Go to as many pages addressing Web accessibility and asking them to link to
us. This includes disAbility user groups and resource sites.

>5. Web accessibility certificate program
>	- possibility of coordinating with a University
>	- offering to co-sponsor a training event also
>	- our priorities in this would be...?

I'm particularly interested in this issue because I see Web accessibility
as being good design, not something that "is good but doesn't have to be
done." It needs to be integrated into EVERY Web design course that exists
and we have to stop treating it like a seperate entity. We need to train
the next generation of designers to automatically create pages that are Web
accessible without thinking "I'm making accessible pages" but rather "I'm a
good designer."

Part of this is going to be working with the colleges and Universities but
the other part is going after Browser and Authoring Tool makers and have
them build-in accessibility to their software. I see excellent
possibilities between the Web Standards Project and WAI just because in
order for these companies to implement Web accessibility they first have to
implement full W3C recommendations....which is what the WSP is after.

On another note, the World Organization of Webmasters has just made a huge
deal with Prentice Hall to print our Webmaster Certification series that
goes along with the certification programs we are implementing at places
like Merrimack College, Northeastern University, Berkeley etc. I need help
in convincing my Executive Director that this needs to be done.


That's it for now.....I'll start becomming more active in the new year.
--
B.K. DeLong                  360 Huntington Ave.
Director                         Suite 140CSC-305
New England Chapter     Boston, MA 02115
World Organization        (617) 247-3753
of Webmasters

http://www.world-webmasters.org
bkdelong@naw.org

Received on Friday, 18 December 1998 10:18:01 UTC