1999 a Banner Year for Accessiblity

Dear Group,
I would like to put forth the observation that 1999 was an amazing year
in terms of accessibility of the Internet.  Was this year really great
-- or this progress part of the status quo?

Please add landmarks that I have omitted from this list.  I am sure that
a finalized version will get posted someplace appropriate!  Allow me to
start with the following:

02 Apr 1999    The Attorney General issued a memorandum to the heads of
all Federal agencies advising them of the requirements of Section 508
and providing instructions for conducting self-evaluations of their
electronic and information technology.  http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/508/

15 Apr 1999    HTML Writers Guild (HWG) launches AWARE (Accessible Web
Authoring Resources and Education) site.  http://aware.hwg.org/

05 May 1999    Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG) released
as W3C Recommendation.  The WCAG had an earlier titled of "WAI
Accessibility Guidelines: Page Authoring" and was first a W3C Working
Draft 03 Feb 1998.  Before that, the document was know as the "Unified
Web Site Accessibility Guidelines" and was hosted by the Trace Research
and Development Center.  The WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative)
officially began life 07 Apr 1997.  http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

28 May 1999    The Access plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 for
Windows released.  Utility aids with access to Portable Document Format
(PDF) files.  Other conversion options are available.
http://access.adobe.com

09 Jun 1999    CAST releases new version of Bobby (3.1.1), a web-based
tool that analyzes web pages for their accessibility.  Bobby was first
made available in September of 1996.  http://www.cast.org/bobby/

04 Aug 1999    W3C publishes "Accessibility Features of CSS".
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS-access

17 Sep 1999    W3C introduces the WCAG Conformance Logos.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG1-Conformance

21 Sep 1999    W3C publishes "Accessibility Features of SMIL".
http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL-access

26 Oct 1999    WAI "Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0"
released as W3C Proposed Recommendation (review period ended 23 Nov
1999.  First a Working Draft titled "WAI Authoring Tool Guidelines" 12
Nov 1998.  http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-AUTOOLS/

01 Dec 1999 W3C WAI "User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" last call
review period ends.  First public Working Draft announcement, 18 June
1998.  http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-USERAGENT/

24 Dec 1999    HTML 4.01 Specification released as W3C Recommendation.
W3C released the HTML 4.0 Recommendation in 18 Dec 1997 which included
many accessibility improvements.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/References/HTML4-access

Please correct any of my dates.
Bruce Bailey

Received on Monday, 3 January 2000 19:03:08 UTC