Report on Outreach

Educational Outreach:

This week I spoke to the Services to Students with Disabilities Advisory 
Committee of the California State University System.  This is the group 
of student services personnel together with students, faculty and 
administrators with a strong commitment to accessibility.  Most of them 
are not what we would call technical professionals.  They are disability 
experts, but they understand the law and follow technical trends.

I showed them around the WAI site and introduced them to the resources. 
  I also let them know about WAI IG and the need for the entire 
community in reviewing the documents of WAI.  Finally, I brought up the 
notion of establishing a network of faculty, students and staff with 
disabilities to act as a test base for projects like WSTF.

The CSU has one really interesting project.  It is the Center for 
Accessible Media.  Several years back (3 or 4) the California 
Legislature passed a law (AB 422) that required publishers to provide 
electronic text of all books that are used by disabled students in the 
state.  The law was diluted considerably from its original form, but it 
still does enable a significant database of textbook for use by 
students.  They are currently discussing their default text format and 
are interested in technical assistance.

The entire visit went well.  The committee did agree to use its contacts 
across the state to build a network to help with testing and commenting 
on accessibility issues, sites and software.

Wayne Dick

Received on Sunday, 7 November 2004 22:34:59 UTC