Re: EOWG: Agenda for 7 November 2003 Teleconference

At 10:32 PM 11/5/2003 -0600, Shawn Lawton Henry wrote:
>Outreach updates (brief)

Not all that brief, I fear!

I gave the keynote address at the DRM (disability rights movement) Summit 
in Chalreston, SC last month and have finally recovered from the trip 
(pneumonia's a bitch!) and would like to report what I said in some detail 
because it speaks to the overall intent/purpose I hold to be part of EOWG 
(and WAI) scope/charter: the expansion of the notion of Web Accessibility 
to include (rather forcefully) access to the means of posting to the Web 
rather than the more traditional view of Web use as a passive experience 
much like that of being a member of the TV audience or the patron of 
(rather than a contributor to) the contents of a library.

I urged the leaders of the movement to detail their daily efforts because 
they are in the forefront of the overall human rights struggle. I 
recommended that everybody have their own Web presence - especially some 
easily used means of recording a journal of their part in this undertaking 
that aims to end war/hunger/discrimination/bigotry.

To this end I am working on getting "write access" to the Web as a 
trivially achieved thing - sort of an automated gift of a "blogging-like" 
Web presence essentially piggy-backed onto already-paid-for Websites. The 
examples to date are still fairly tediously hand-produced and are 
exemplified at http://webeone.org/geezer/ and http://webeone.org/rus/ which 
are very rudimentary starts. Although a great deal of detail awaits, the 
idea that anybody can have a "podium of one's own" has consumed so much of 
my time/effort that I must apologiz(s)e for my severely reduced 
participation in teleconferences and the drudgery of getting more of our 
wonderful documents written/improved/disseminated.

The work of WAI (and in particular EOWG) in making the Web more accessible 
has been very encouraging and "resultful" - the Web is a much friendlier 
place for PWD than we dared hope when we started a few years ago.

Keep on keeping on!

--
Love.

It's Bad Luck to be Superstitious! 

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