FW: Universal Accessibility

FYI, here is what i have sent to the Webby Awards email list.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Robert C. Neff [SMTP:rcn@fenix2.dol-esa.gov]
Sent:	Monday, January 11, 1999 10:03 AM
To:	'webbysupport@vivid.com'; 'tiffany@webbyawards.com'; 
'rebecca@webbyawards.com'; 'randy@webbyawards.com'; 'dave@webbyawards.com'; 
'maya@iadas.net'
Subject:	Universal Accessibility

Appreciate your efforts on the Webby Awards; however, you are overlooking 
sites that are designed for Universal Accessibility.  Please consider a 
category for this as well as a weighted factor for the other categories. 
 Why?

There are over 35 million People with Disabilities (PWDs) and the web is 
becoming a "way to communicate with the outside world". With the web, PWDs 
are no longer  limited or "shut out", except when they cannot see or hear a 
web site - its useless.
Please remember, PWDs are using the web to work, for information and to 
purchase goods and services at both home and work.  What good is a site if 
it eliminates a target market for the business?

Communication is so simple but yet the web site is another area were we 
miscommunicate.  There are efforts by many groups to ensure information is 
made available to all!  As well as there are laws that offer protection, 
please refer to <http://www.eeicom.com/dcwebmasters/pwd/laws.html>.

Some of the efforts are being lead by the World Wide Web Consortium's Web 
Accessibility Initiative (W3C WAI), http://w3c.org/WAI/.  They have:
Education and Outreach Group <http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/>,
Draft Page Authoring Guidleines <http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-WAI-PAGEAUTH/>, 
and
Quicktips <http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/QuickTips>

To learn more about how to design sites for people with disabilities, 
please go to <http://www.eeicom.com/dcwebmasters/pwd/>.  There are many 
other resources and I have copied this message to other mailing lists in 
hopes that people will make their resources available to you.

I would also appreciate if you were to forward this message to the judges.

Please do not hesitate to contact me, if you have any questions at
office@webspots.net

Robert Neff

PS  You also need a government category for State, Local and Federal web 
sites.

Received on Monday, 11 January 1999 10:04:51 UTC