IWA Italy Accessibility Project

 From the IWA-HWG Newsletter; can be freely distributed.

--Kynn

New IWA Italy Activity Spotlights European Accessibility

IWA Italy (<http://www.iwa-italy.org>http://www.iwa-italy.org), the 
Italian chapter of the IWA-HWG under the leadership of Roberto Scano, 
has launched a new project to support the W3C's Recommendations and 
the Web Accessibility Initiative's Guidelines for Web Content 
Accessibility (<http://www.w3.org/WAI>http://www.w3.org/WAI). 
Coordinated by Miss Patrizia Bertini and with the support of key 
Italian accessibility resources such as Bazzmann.com, IWA Italy has 
formed a working group to create a new Web site, 
<http://www.webaccessibile.org>www.webaccessibile.org, that will be 
the starting point for Web accessibility information in Italian.

The webaccessibile.org site will support IWA members in meeting the 
Triple-AAA level of accessibility according to the W3C's Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines, as measured by accessibility tools such as 
Bobby (<http://www.cast.org/bobby/>http://www.cast.org/bobby/). The 
Italian chapter, supported by Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, will also 
promote a new tool for testing accessibility, called Torquemada 
(<http://www.webxtutti.it/testa.htm>http://www.webxtutti.it/testa.htm) 
that can be used for free international testing of Web sites' 
accessibility.

The success of webaccessibile.org will also support the creation of 
an international version at 
<http://www.webaccessible.org>www.webaccessible.org coordinated by 
Kynn Bartlett through the IWA-HWG AWARE Center. The AWARE Center will 
also be working with other accessibility groups and agencies on the 
creation of a Web accessibility syllabus and other standards for Web 
accessibility education.

IWA Italy members are working to support the Italian Public 
Administration in the creation of accessible Web sites: one of the 
first regional government sites in Europe to reach level Triple-AAA 
of accessibility will be the Regione Veneto site, created by IWA 
Italy members.

On 21 June 2002, IWA Italy held a meeting in Bologna to discuss 
accessibility and standards 
(<http://www.iwa-italy.org/about/bologna2002.asp>http://www.iwa-italy.org/about/bologna2002.asp), 
and will be presenting a workshop at an upcoming important even in 
Italy, Webbit 02 
(<http://www.iwa-italy.org/about/webbit2002.asp>http://www.iwa-italy.org/about/webbit2002.asp).

Accessibility is becoming very important for all Webmasters in Europe 
and elsewhere, especially for government and other public sites, and 
IWA-HWG is working to support our members in following the W3C's Web 
Accessibility Initiative guidelines and the HTML, XHTML, XML and CSS 
recommendations.

-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                 http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain            http://idyllmtn.com
Next Book: Teach Yourself CSS in 24       http://cssin24hours.com
Kynn on Web Accessibility ->>          http://kynn.com/+sitepoint

Received on Friday, 28 June 2002 11:37:23 UTC