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Regarding the use of AccDC to advance accessibility within web technologies, and Accessible Innovation as a future engineering paradigm.

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From: Bryan Garaventa
Date: Jun 30, 2012 10:14PM

Hello,
Please forgive the cross-posting, I wish only to send this once for those interested in the advancement of accessibility within global web technologies, and to introduce the concept of Accessible Innovation as a pivotal engineering paradigm for the future.

Today, I have released the AccDC API as a free development resource for international businesses, organizations, and academic institutions wishing to incorporate Accessible Innovation within future web technologies.

"Accessible Innovation" refers to the creation of new technologies that include Accessibility as a core platform feature of development.

I've been working on this project since 2009, and have provided AccDC as a cloud service for anyone wishing to experiment with the API during the quality analysis stage of development. Now the project is complete, and AccDC is available as a free download from WhatSock.com.

AccDC is a scalable, cross-browser and cross-platform compatible Dynamic Content Management System that automates the rendering of dynamic content to ensure accessibility for screen reader and keyboard only users.

In essence, AccDC functions as a rendering engine, which acts as a conduit for the accessible processing of dynamic content.

This allows developers to build fully functional, scalable, feature rich, accessible user interface components that are encapsulated as AccDC Objects, which can then be freely distributed to empower the creation of fully accessible controls, widgets, features, and applications within future web technologies.

Additionally, AccDC can be used within mobile browsers such as the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices for cross platform compatibility, and can also be used within the web browser components of desktop applications for enterprise distribution.

By supporting and promoting the concept of Accessible Innovation as an engineering paradigm, we can significantly improve the accessibility of future web technologies for everyone.

This will positively affect the lives of hundreds of millions of disabled users who depend on virtual technologies for work, school, shopping, managing finances, paying bills, obtaining health care services, accessing news and media, making travel arrangements, and countless other tasks that are critical to a person's success, wellbeing, and livelihood.

Also, this is easy to achieve in a scalable manner.

For instance, the WhatSock Template Downloads are a collection of the most common interactive control types that cause critical accessibility issues for disabled Assistive Technology users. The difference being, that the WhatSock Template Downloads are fully accessible, scalable, fully customizable for any visual layout, and can be freely distributed as plug-and-play components for use in any web technology;
Including: lightboxes, banners, tooltips, popups, tabs, menus, treeview controls, drag and drop controls, auto suggestion fields, sortable listboxes, footnotes, chat dialogs, sliders, calendar pickers, accordions, carousels, slideshows, and wizards.

All that's needed is a bit of imagination, and you can use AccDC to build anything you wish.

As a friendly reminder, I am totally blind, so if you notice any visual issues, please let me know as soon as possible so I can fix them. Any other ideas or suggestions that you may have, are most welcome as well.

In the short term, I'll be posting future updates regarding AccDC at
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bgaraventa
So please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you would like to be notified when these occur. Having a LinkedIn group will be better for sharing related ideas as well as updates in the future however, so I'll be doing that soon.

Sincerely,
Bryan Garaventa