Re: Forming an Accessibility Steering Committee

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Hi All:

I just want to add a little more to where things are right now.  Here 
are a couple URLs where we've done a fair amount of formal work on the 
current and future goals for GNOME a11y:

  GNOME Boston 2006 Accessibility Summit:
  http://live.gnome.org/Boston2006/AccessibilitySummit
  (see also http://live.gnome.org/AccessibilityProjects)

  GNOME Boston 2007 Accessibility Summit:
  http://live.gnome.org/Boston2007/AccessibilitySummit

The Mozilla Foundation has also been very gracious in their support for 
work such as pyatspi, AT-SPI/DBus investigation, ARIA support in Orca, 
Collections work for AT-SPI, etc.  It's all very positive stuff!

For the cross platform and inter-community notions, I think we also need 
to be cognizant of the fact that there are other active forums in place. 
 For example, the Open A11y Group of the Linux Foundation 
(http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Accessibility) has served as a 
neutral place where members of the GNOME, KDE, and other communities 
have been coming together to discuss these kinds of things.  The 
AT-SPI/DBus work being done by Rob Taylor and Mark Doffman, for example, 
will be discussed in the Open A11Y meeting tomorrow.

I think a steering committee is a fine idea and I'm happy to help 
(perhaps lead?) the group.  For the committee to work best, I think it 
needs to include at least users and developers.  The users are key in 
helping set the direction of what we need to focus on -- much of Orca's 
success, for example, is due to the fact that users are directly 
involved.  Based upon the successes of the GNOME Boston Accessibility 
Summits, I also think that we need to keep focus on concrete, achievable 
tasks.

Will

PS - What I think we really really desperately need at the moment is a 
wordsmith/writer than can help us get the http://live.gnome.org/GAP 
pages in order.

Willie Walker wrote:
> I'll happily raise my hand.  Thanks!  :-)
>
> Will
>
> Brian Cameron wrote:
> > The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors recognizes the importance
> > of Accessibility in the GNOME desktop.  To help foster a more
> > clear and positive vision, the board thinks it would be helpful
> > to form an Accessibility Steering Committee.
> >
> > The purpose of this committee would be (in general terms)
> >
> > - Help oversee a11y issues with the GNOME desktop
> > - Identify ways that the GNOME Foundation can better promote a11y
> > - Recommend actions to the GNOME Foundation board.
> > - Serve as a more clear a11y leadership team
> > - Help to standardize free a11y interfaces so that a11y solutions can
> >    be best shared across desktops.
> >
> > I am wondering who in the GNOME a11y community would be interested
> > in being a part of this Committee.  Being involved would mean
> > having time to engage in discussions and related tasks.  It also
> > may make sense to meet for a phone conference on a regular schedule
> > (perhaps once or twice a month) if possible.
> >
> > Once we have identified who would like to participate in such a
> > Committee, we can work out the details.  Please respond if you would
> > like to be involved with the GNOME community in this capacity, and
> > any ideas you have on how this committee could work best.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Brian
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
> > gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
>
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