Re: [fron Henny] standards harmonization notes [RE: EOWG: Agenda for 2 March 2007 Teleconference]

Sorry I missed the call on Friday. Thanks for the information on 
international activities. There's a lot happening. I would just like to 
clarify about the WAB Cluster, SupportEAM and the CEN Workshop sponsored 
by the latter.

> - CEN Workshops
> 
> I was part of SupportEAM a while ago, along with Helle and Andrew but
> have heard little about progress since.
> - Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM) version 1.0 and future
>    http://www.wabcluster.org/uwem1/
> 
> There was a meeting with Braillenet regarding the UM just after we met
> in Boston. I was unable to go for personal reasons but there was
> discussion around what the UM is and how it can be adopted in Europe.
> - United Nations Global Accessibility Initiative on Technology

I think you are referring to the CEN Workshop. The partners in 
SupportEAM were [1]:
* Association BrailleNet (France) Coordinator
* Technosite (Spain)
* Bartimeus Accessibility Foundation (Netherlands)
* Dublin City University (Ireland)
* Universität Linz (Austria)
* Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Research & Development (Belgium)
* AccessInMind Ltd (United Kingdom)

SupportEAM was part of the WAB cluster, which produced the UWEM methodology.

The CEN/ISSS Workshop was on "Specifications for a complete European 
certification scheme concerning the delivery of a Quality Mark for Web 
Content Accessibility." [2]. RNIB (UK) and NILS (Australia) were among 
the paricipants in the workshop [4], and WAI was an observer.

After completion of the SupportEAM project, to move ahead with 
international implementation of the UWEM methodology and work toward an 
international certification for Web accessibility, Association 
BrailleNet (France) and Technosite (Spain) published a letter of 
understanding [3] to announce the start of their joint work on 
harmonisation of Web accessibility in Europe. This opens the way forward 
toward the creation of a European quality label for Web accessibility 
based on the UWEM methodology based on their existing labels.

Essentially, the methodologies are aligned with UWEM, so that any site 
awarded the Accessiweb or Technosite label, will also be eligible for 
the forthcoming European label. So far the partners are these two 
organisations although a number of others have committed to joining.

Braillenet has translated UWEM to French and has published a mapping to 
its Accessiweb methodology. Technsosite is currently finalising the 
translation of UWEM to Spanish and the mapping document.

[1] http://www.support-eam.org/supporteam/About_Supporteam/Partners.asp
[2] http://www.support-eam.org/supporteam/CEN_ISSS_Workshop.asp
[3] 
http://www.accessiweb.org/_repository/files/letter_understanding_BrailleNet_Teleservicios_11dec2006_en.txt
[4] 
http://comelec.afnor.fr/servlet/ServletComelec?form_name=cFormMembre&session_id=0.9716893547345158

best regards,


Alan Chuter,
Accessibility Consultant,
Technosite (Fundosa Group).
Email: achuter@technosite.es
Web: www.technosite.es
Tel: +34 91 121 03 35
Skype: achuter1

Received on Monday, 5 March 2007 09:28:34 UTC