Web Accessibility Event at Web '98: September 23rd, 1-3pm in Boston

Hi everyone,

Thought I would invite you to our first event dedicated to Web
Accessibility. Hope to see you there:

An event sponsored by Miller Freeman and featuring the topic of Web
Accessibility, will be presented on Wednesday, September 23rd, 1998 in room
108 of the Hynes Convention Center from 1p.m. - 3p.m. The New England
Chapter of the World Organization of Webmasters will host the event. Bruce
Alexander, Chairman of WOW's Web Accessibility SIG, will serve as moderator. 

The World Wide Web offers the promise of transforming many traditional
barriers to information and interaction among different peoples.  Therefore
it’s important to lead the Web to its full potential including promoting a
high degree of usability for people with disabilities. Several initiatives
are pursuing accessibility of the Web through five primary areas of work:
technology, guidelines, tools, education & outreach, and research &
development.

Speakers at the event include the head of the W3C Web Accessibility
Initiative, Judy Brewer. She coordinates five activities with respect to
Web accessibility: data formats and protocols; guidelines for browsers,
authoring tools and content creators; rating and certification tools;
education and outreach; and research and advanced development. 

Prior to joining W3C, Judy was Project Director for the Massachusetts
Assistive Technology Partnership, a U.S. federally-funded project promoting
access to assistive technology for people with disabilities. Judy has a
background in applied linguistics, education, technical writing, management
and disability advocacy. Brewer will discuss the various projects the
initiative has been working on including a draft of page authoring
guidelines. The guidelines will help Web developers insure their site’s
accessibility.

Also speaking will be Joseph Lazzaro, project director of the Adaptive
Technology Program housed at the Massachusetts Commission For The Blind in
Boston, and author of "Adapting PC's for Disabilities", Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company. His published articles have appeared in Byte, Time
Life, the New York Times, Computer Shopper, and other industry trade
magazines.

Lazzaro will focus on the power and pitfalls experienced by persons with
vision impairments when surfing the World Wide Web. He’ll briefly describe
the basic technologies employed by persons with vision impairments: speech
synthesis, screen magnification, and Braille displays and will describe how
these basic technologies can be used to read web pages using both text and
graphical browsers.

Also speaking will be a representative from Microsoft Corporation who will
discuss their efforts to make Internet Explorer more accessible to the Web
browsing public.

This event is open to the public. Afterwards, attendees may be interested
in browsing through the Web ’98 Exposition. A free pass to the Expo can be
gotten by registering online at
https://www.exporeg.com/Shows/WebEast/expo1.htm

Be sure to register now because registering for the Expo on-site will cost
$50.

This event is open to the public- free for members and $15 for non-members. 

--
B.K. DeLong                  360 Huntington Ave.
Director                         Suite 140SC-305
New England Chapter     Boston, MA 02115
World Organization        (617) 247-3753
of Webmasters
 

http://www.world-webmasters.org
bkdelong@naw.org

Received on Wednesday, 16 September 1998 09:43:21 UTC