Introduction

Hi all

Joshue suggested I briefly introduce myself. Looking through the
membership list I find I already know or know "of" many of you. I
guess a11y is a small friendly world :)

My background is as a developer from embedded to web apps in fields
from mobile data (PMR) to education and commercial financial systems.
I've also worked on guidance in Open Development in the HE sector (OSS
Watch). My current interest and activity is in open access technology
for those with low digital literacy or cognitive disabilities. I'm
specifically interested in providing technology that allows easy
access to services and tools for everyday life. I see this as
increasingly meaning web technologies, both 'pure'  web accessibility,
good design principles and 'applied' in targeted web apps and [soon]
web components.

I've joined the cog a11y group as I'd like to contribute to these
generally underserved user needs through a11y specs and access tech.
I'm also involved in this area in two GPII projects lead by Gregg
Vanderheiden that is developing infrastructure for user a11y
personalisation of UIs. Finally, I looking at building on previous
work on a research project with Sheffield University for people with
dementia, porting it from Mozilla XUL to HTML technologies now these
are becoming so broadly applicable and powerful. Firefox OS is also
looking interesting in this space and I'm involved with one of the
volunteer programmes. So while I don't have so much coga11y user
domain experience  I hope to bring my technical skills and experience
from developing tools and components that address needs.

One idea that appeals to me is Steve Faulkner's recent success in
using a web component to act as a prototype and discussion point for a
new HTML5 spec feature. I think this model could be useful for getting
user feedback into later stages of the coga11y spec work, without the
requirement for specific browser developer support 1st.

Steve Lee
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com

Received on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 11:31:58 UTC