Outreach Update & "Retirement" Notice

Greetings, Judy, Shawn, My WAI & EO Friends 

 

This message is both an Outreach update due to my new status and my
official notice that I am retiring from the WAI. ...Big Sigh... I have
been very sick the last couple of weeks with pneumonia so I was unable
to get back to Shawn, Judy, and you all about my status.  I just
returned this morning to the office for the first time in 10 days. 

 

An article appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Ed on March 22 announcing
Michigan State University's entry into the new Kuali Project. I had
heard this was pending but was not sure how or when or how it would
affect me personally.  I now know that my unit has been redirected to
work about 50% of its time on that. Among other projects, it is
anticipated that my time is going to be dedicated to working on
accessibility and usability design and testing as well as communications
and documentation.

 

According to a report recently by Educause, the Kuali Project is an
effort to develop open source software for financial systems in higher
education. The original partners are Indiana University, the University
of Hawaii, the National Association of College and University Business
Officers, and the R-Smart Group. Michigan State and Cornell University,
San Joaquin Delta College, and the University of Arizona have just
joined that group.

 

Partners in the project have the opportunity to influence its
development. So any input for users on accessibility and usability I
believe will be key. The grant announced, totaling $2.5 million, comes
from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Software produced by the project
will be released in stages over the next two and a half years and will
be available for "free" to the collaborating institutions. In addition,
organizers said the software will be modular, allowing an institution to
install only the parts that it wants, without installing the whole
system.

 

I very much appreciate the opportunity to work with Web Accessibility
Initiative and the Education Outreach Working Group over the years. I
also enjoyed contributing to the renovation of the WAI Web site in the
last couple of years, particularly that a Web accessible site can also
be a visually pleasing site. 

 

Judy has been informed of the MSU status. I have it on good authority
that MSU is VERY supportive of Web accessibility and is supportive of
the W3C. I am still a very interested party to the WAI work and would
like to keep connected. However, due to time constraints, I will not be
able to actively participate in Working Group conference calls for the
foreseeable future.  I had hoped to stay on a bit longer but it was not
my choice to make. I go on to make history in another part of the
galaxy.

 

You all will remain a very pleasant part of my journey through cyber
space. &;-)

 

Cheers and Web Accessibly Yours,

 

Charmane