Fwd: Proceedings Now Available for Web Accessibility Capacity Building Institute

Begin forwarded message:

From: Terry Thompson <tft@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Date: January 29, 2007 8:16:12 PM EST
To: EASI@LISTSERV.ICORS.ORG
Subject: Proceedings Now Available for Web Accessibility Capacity  
Building Institute
Reply-To: tft@u.washington.edu

Proceedings are now available for the Web Accessibility Capacity  
Building
Institute (CBI), held November 29 - December 1, 2006 in Seattle. The  
CBI was
funded by the National Science Foundation (cooperative agreement  
#0227995)
through the Northwest Alliance for Access to Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics (AccessSTEM), which is directed at the
University of Washington. The purpose of the CBI was to identify
accessibility problems and solutions related to emerging web  
applications
and the technologies used to create them, as well as to identify  
strategies
that lead to systemic change within higher education.

The ultimate goal of AccessSTEM is to increase the successful  
participation
of people with disabilities in STEM careers. To reach this goal, it is
critical that students with disabilities have full access to the  
software
and information used in their educational programs. Higher education
institutions are exploring and beginning to utilize rich media  
technologies
to improve functionality and usability of both academic and  
administrative
web services, but by doing so they may risk excluding students and  
employees
with disabilities. It is critical that accessibility be addressed  
early in
the development and deployment of web applications, including those that
utilize emerging technologies such as AJAX, Adobe Flex, and Adobe Flash.

Participants at the CBI included representatives from the World Wide
Consortium (W3C), IBM, Google, Yahoo, Adobe, and GW Micro, as well as  
27 web
managers and programmers from 11 colleges and universities, primarily  
from
the Northwest region of the United States.

The full proceedings, including a comprehensive summary of CBI  
presentations
and discussions, is available online:
http://www.washington.edu/doit/cbi/webaccess/proceedings.html

Terry Thompson
Technology Specialist, DO-IT
University of Washington
tft@u.washington.edu

Received on Tuesday, 30 January 2007 02:19:07 UTC