HTML Writers Guild's Accessibility Month

The HTML Writers Guild (http://www.hwg.org/) has designated
the month of April as Accessibility Month, as a special focus
on a very important issue that all web authors should be
aware of:  the need to design for complete accessibility.

During April, the Guild will be presenting a number of
special events and projects on the subject of accessibility;
the emphasis is on educating our membership and drawing
the attention of the web design community regarding the
importance accessible design.

Our most ambitious accessibility project has been launched
as part of Accessibility April; the "Accessibility Guidelines
Implementation project" (AGI for short).  AGI is a project in
which members of the HTML Writers Guild will work on using
the Web Accessibility Initiative's guidelines for web
page authors on existing or new sites, and provide feedback
and suggestions regarding both the guidelines, and other
accessibility issues.

The AGI project was announced in the Guild's monthly news-
letter that went out on Monday night; since then, we've had
over 60 web designers sign up and express their interest
in participating -- a great response, and they're still 
coming!

I'd like to invite the members of this list to participate
in the project.  We have two ways to participate -- either as
an implementor, or as an advisor.  Implementors are the
people who will be "beta testing" the guidelines, so to speak,
through using them on developing a web site.  

An advisor is anyone who has experience or expertise in
designing or using the web from an accessibility standpoint -- 
in other words, if you're an expert on accessible design, or
just someone with a screen-reader who is willing to look at
web pages, we'd be more than happy to have you help out our
less-experienced designers by giving critiques, encouragement,
advice, and hints.

If you're interested in participating in the project in any
way, please see:

     http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/projects/agi.html

During April we plan to have at least a few "accessibility
chats" -- interactive web/IRC chats in which Guild members can
talk to experts and others about the issues involved in making
pages easier to use by everyone.  This will probably happen
later in the month, as our new interactivity server will be
set up in the next week or so, but if you are interested in
participating, please drop me a note at kynn@hwg.org so I
can have you on my list of possible speakers/panel members.

Feel free to pass this letter along to anyone else, or refer
them to our web site, if you think they'd be interested in
working with us.  Thanks!

--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@hwg.org>
Governing Board Member, HTML Writers Guild
http://www.hwg.org
Education and Outreach working group member,
  Web Accessibility Initiative
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Received on Friday, 10 April 1998 10:59:11 UTC