Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA)

aloha!

does anyone have any information they can share with the W3C community 
about the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA)

http://www.accessinteropalliance.org/

to quote from the AIA press release dated 2007/12/10:

<q 
cite="http://www.accessinteropalliance.org/newsevents/pr121007.html">
Industry Alliance Aims to Increase Accessibility, Interoperability and 
Innovation
</q>

so i was wondering how the AIA plans to work with other related fora,
such as the W3C/WAI, the Open Accessibility Workgroup at the Linux 
Foundation (http://a11y.org/), and the many other entities with which 
communication and harmonization of efforts is essential?

for example, how does the AIA view the work on IAccessible2 that is being
conducted at:

http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Accessibility/IAccessible2

will it sync with work on the Accessible Tool Kit/Assistive Technology 
Special Programming Interface (ATK/AT-SPI) framework, which has a mapping
to IAccessible2, as well as other platform-agnostic accessibility 
applications, APIs, or architectures?

http://accessibility.linux-foundation.org/a11yspecs/atspi/adoc/

all i know about the AIA, i've gleaned from their web site...  there is
a steering committee comprised of of 3: an Information Technology Member, 
an Assistive Technology member, and an at-large member...  the current 
composition of the AIA steering committee (through january 2010) is:

* IT Member: Andrew Kirkpatrick, Corporate Accessibility Engineering 
  Lead - Adobe;

* AT Member: Claudio Giugliemma, CEO - QualiLife;

* At-Large Member: Rob Sinclair, Director of Accessibility - Microsoft

QualiLife is an entity with which i am not familiar, but on their web 
site, they state:

<q cite="http://qualilife.com/home/index.cfm">
Our software technologies (Assistive Technologies) have been conceived 
and developed to fulfill the real needs of all people with physical 
disabilities, of any age, degree and type of disability. We provide full 
accessibility to all existing technologies in all fields, like: 
Telephony, Environmental control, Verbal and Written communication, 
Internet, fax, e-mail, SMS, DVD, Audio & Video, Virtual Reality, Business 
Solutions, Web, Games, etc.
</q>

and they do offer a very impressive array and scope of products, but they
do not seem to be a W3C member organization, or at least i could not find
them when i queried the member-confidential search facility using the 
option "All W3C" -- in fact, the only hit i obtained was a link to the 
minutes of a meeting (archived in member-confidential space, since it was 
at a member-confidential meeting) at which i asked if anyone was familiar 
with QualiLife...

can anyone shed any light on this initiative?  is anyone liaising with
AIA?

gregory.
--------------------------------------------------------------
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of
focus.                                           -- Mark Twain
--------------------------------------------------------------
Gregory J. Rosmaita: oedipus@hicom.net
   Camera Obscura: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/
          Oedipus' Online Complex: http://my.opera.com/oedipus
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Received on Wednesday, 19 December 2007 19:58:06 UTC