WSIS & Micellaneous

Greetings,

This is my first posting to the WAI interest group mailing list, so if I seem a bit unfamiliar with how this group functions, please indulge (and let me know, of course).

1-  Wired.com article on ADA lawsuit concerning airlines and web services access :

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55708,00.html
2-  World Summit on the Information Society

I attended the GlobalCN2002 conference (www.globalcn2002.org/) last week in Montreal, Canada, organized by the World Forum on Community Networking which is a Civil Society pre-summit in preparation for the World Summit on the Information Society organized by the UN and the International Telecommunications Union (www.itu.int/wsis/) to be held in 2 phases (in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunisia).

From what I understand, this is a big deal but I'm still trying to sort it all out.  There seems to be a lot at stake.  During last week's event, all sorts of NGOs from all over the world were trying to get organized in spite of rules of procedure that make it very hard for organizations outside of government and business to participate actively in the discussions and opposition from certain countries to even having the Civil Society represented.

I also learned that the next Summit prepcoms are in Bucarest and Tokyo in November or December where content and themes will be discussed.  I believe it is *imperative* that accessibility be brought to the table and I have copied ICTA-North America (www.ictaglobal.org/)  about this.  From what I've been able to figure out through contacts during this conference, the need to lobby the GlobalCN people and other Civil Society players is great because so far, disability issues are not an issue at all.

The next GlobalCN meeting is in Melbourne in 2003 and they will be looking at youth, aboriginal (they used another word that I unfortunately cannot spell in English, my apologies if this term is outdated) and community development (last week, it was youth, gender and open source, etc.).  Shouldn't we push to put accessibility on the agenda as well ?

So basically, has anyone else heard about this and/or been involved in this process through local or regional bodies ?  I don't want to sound emotional but I'm a bit freaked out that I was the only one there for the disabled community last week (quite by accident, btw) and that no-one thought of including persons with disabilities in the discussions.  Or maybe it's just me ...

Catherine

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Catherine Roy
Conseillère
Formation & Développement de l'emploi
CAMO pour personnes handicapées
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c.roy@camo.qc.ca
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