FW: [Fwd: Universal Accessibility]

YES! Our efforts have had some impact.  Please read the message from Maya from the Webby Awards.  Thanks to all who helped.

<start reply message from Maya Draisin, Managing Director, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences>

Robert,

Thank you for your message. I will add your category requests to our list
to be considered for 2000.  Starting in April we will evaluate all the
categories that have been recommended throughout the year and consider
obvious large categories that have developed in the last year.

Best regards,
Maya Draisin
Managing Director
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences



<Here is the original message that was sent>

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 Friday, 15 January 1999 08:04:00 UTC