WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Proceedings Now Available for Web Accessibility CapacityBuilding Institute

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From: Terry Thompson
Date: Jan 29, 2007 6:30PM

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
<EMAIL REMOVED>