Re: Introduction

Welcome, Eric!!  What a great introduction!  You have many valuable
experiences to bring to this work.  I am glad that Shadi was playing in the
woods and found you! ;-)


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 6:36 AM, Shadi Abou-Zahra <shadi@w3.org> wrote:

> Just to add that Eric is also one of the major contributors to the latest
> update to BAD that we carried out in 2009-2010:
>  - http://www.w3.org/WAI/demos/bad/acks.html
>
> Hmmm. Thinking of it, soon after that he decided to leave Vienna... ;)
>
> Best,
>   Shadi
>
>
>
> On 17.12.2013 13:06, Eric Eggert wrote:
>
>> Hi EOWG,
>>
>> I’m Eric Eggert and I’m new around here and will help Shadi compete the
>> WAI-ACT project. I was asked by Shawn to introduce myself here, so I’ve
>> written this little origin story:
>>
>> I’m originally from a small town in Germany, in the middle of the woods.
>> No, really[1]. And it was there where I first got in touch with a
>> wheelchair user, which was a boy who lived in the house next to my
>> parents. Sadly inclusion wasn’t really good back in the days, so we
>> didn’t share the school and he wasn’t allowed outside as often as we
>> would liked, which improved later.
>>
>> Later I became interested in programming, doing little apps like an
>> electric circuit designer[2] (in the non-famous language Profan²[3]) and
>> started to teach it to younger pupils in my school, as the informatics
>> education was very much sub-par. It was around the same time when I
>> started to think about the web and putting my stuff online so everyone
>> could download my apps and I become rich.[4]
>>
>> As I started to learn HTML I quickly discovered the so-called Web
>> Standards movement, which was awesome as it allowed me, the boy from the
>> woods, to communicate with people all over the country and later the
>> world. I joined the Webkrauts[5] early in the process and tried to
>> educate people about the web, starting with some presentations at
>> school[6].
>>
>> In May 2006 – after my A levels – I moved to Vienna to study media
>> informatics at Vienna university. As I joined the first BarCamp Vienna
>> and talked about Web Standards in Practice[7]. Out of that experience I
>> founded the Vienna chapter of the German WebMontag (Web Monday) events,
>> which was where I met Shadi for the first time. He subsequently
>> introduced me to the huge accessibility scene. I later (2008)
>> co-organized the Accessibility Day[8] here in Vienna and spoke there and
>> built the websites (2008–2010). In 2009 I was asked to host a panel on
>> national accessibility guidelines at the European Accessibility Forum in
>> Frankfurt[9].
>>
>> I moved back to Germany in 2010, still working as a freelancer as I did
>> from Vienna in the meantime. This time I chose the large Ruhrgebiet area
>> where I live now in the southern borrow of Essen called Kettwig[10].
>> Together with a group of enthusiastic people called BPSE (Best Practices
>> Stammtisch [Round Table] Essen) we wanted to try out how it is to take
>> part in the German web accessibility contest called BIENE[11]. It turned
>> out that we won a Golden BIENE in the end for our project Stiftung
>> Lebenshilfe Duisburg[12].
>>
>> In 2011 Sandra Kallmeyer[13], who worked with me the previous year, and
>> I started our small 2-people agency, with clients like the University of
>> Duisburg-Essen[14] and most recent OWB[15]. With OWB we had the first
>> really deep look at Easy Read German, which was a really fun and
>> insightful experience. Nowadays I try to close the perceived gap between
>> accessibility and developers, showing them that it is easy to make
>> better accessible web sites[16].
>>
>> Oh, I just noticed that this got really long. I guess all I wanted to
>> say is that I’m really excited to work with you all! If you like to find
>> me elsewhere on the internet my usual nick is “yatil”[17].
>>
>> I’ll now try to digest all those informations that Shadi threw at me.
>>
>> I wish you all happy holidays and a successful and accessible 2014.
>>
>> Best, Eric
>>
>> PS: Sorry for all those links, that’s probably from my blogging days :-)
>>
>> [1] https://goo.gl/maps/vGPjx
>> [2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/yatil/7240172864
>> [3] http://profan.de/
>> [4] I didn’t get rich, but you can find my inaccessible, frame site here
>> non the less. At least it already had alt attributes on the image map:
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20011127145742/http://www.innotic.de/
>> [5] http://webkrauts.de
>> [6] http://www.slideshare.net/yatil/web-17066984,
>> http://www.slideshare.net/yatil/vorteile-vonwebstandards,
>> http://www.slideshare.net/yatil/geschichte-undtechnologie,
>> http://www.slideshare.net/yatil/fehler-imwebdesign (I must have made
>> those around 2002, all in German, but you might recognise the guy in
>> that slide http://www.slideshare.net/yatil/web-17066984/7 ;-)
>> [7] http://www.flickr.com/photos/68548975@N00/256304756 (Yes, I wore
>> fancy shirts back in the days. Also I wear much more hair these days…)
>> [8] http://atag.accessiblemedia.at/2008/,
>> http://atag.accessiblemedia.at/2009/, http://atag.accessiblemedia.at/2010
>> [9] http://eafra.de, Me on tape: http://vimeo.com/3955327
>> [10] I made a lot of photos:
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/yatil/collections/72157624478231093/
>> [11] http://www.biene-award.de/english/
>> [12] http://stiftung-lebenshilfe.org/ – Especially note the animation on
>> the logo and on the navigation, I think I could do something like this
>> (but with CSS transforms, of course) for W3C, too ;-)
>> [13] http://instagram.com/screenorigami
>> [14] http://www.uni-due.de (Unfortunately the code was changed – and
>> made partly inaccessible – after the launch.)
>> [15] http://www.owb.de
>> [16] http://lanyrd.com/profile/yatil/
>> [17] http://yatil.net, http://twitter.com/yatil,
>> http://facebook.com/yatil, https://plus.google.com/+EricEggert – well,
>> almost everywhere ;-)
>>
>>
>>
> --
> Shadi Abou-Zahra - http://www.w3.org/People/shadi/
> Activity Lead, W3C/WAI International Program Office
> Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG)
> Research and Development Working Group (RDWG)
>
>


-- 
*Jan McSorley*
Accessibility Specialist

Digital Content Development
Assessment & Instruction
Pearson

D: (512) 989-5427
E: jan.mcsorley@pearson.com <philip.moody@pearson.com>

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