WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

RE: Knowbility

for

From: Jim Thatcher
Date: Feb 4, 2002 7:18PM

Yes, Scott, I think that that is a case of over-militance. The AIR Austin
program is a terrific example of people doing great work.

Just a brief encapsulation of what AIR (Accessibility Internet Rally) X is:

In city X high tech groups are paired with non-profit organizations. The
high tech group is given a day training on accessible web design (trainers
like Phill Jenkins, IBM, John Slatin, U Texas, Jim Allan, Texas School for
the Blind and Visually Impaired). Then the teams get together on a Saturday,
they have 8 hours to produce an accessible site for the non-profit. The
results are judged and there's a big party honoring the winners. They are
judged for accessibility. The winner is the most accessible site.

I have served as a judge for AIR Austin for the past couple of years. As a
judge, I spend the Saturday when the sites are being created answering
questions (and taking bribes) and then in the week following the event, the
judges evaluate all the sites created in the competition.

I suspect that Knowbility through AIR Austin has trained more web
developers, really trained them, than any other program in the country. The
high tech people LEARN web accessibility because they want to do a good job,
they want to win.

And just by the way, the non-profits win too, ending up with a quality web
presence.

Jim
<EMAIL REMOVED>
Accessibility Consulting
http://jimthatcher.com
512-306-0931

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]On Behalf Of
Scott Standifer
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 4:06 PM
To: WebAIM forum
Subject: Re: Knowbility


I'd be interested in hearing what others think of the AIR products from
Knowbility. I've looked at them a couple of times in the past and not
been all that impressed, mostly because the websites all heavily use
tables for layout control, far beyond what I felt was appropriate. But
maybe that's just me being overly militant.

Scott Standifer
Region 7 Rehabilitation Continuing Education Program
(RCEP7)
University of Missouri, Columbia


> Date: 4 Feb 2002 08:35:26 -0600
> From: "John Goldthwaite" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: Accessibilty training
>
> I found that Knowbility has good material on developing accessible
websites
> at
> www.knowbility.org - I wouldn't call it a course but almost.
>
> Knowbility runs the Accessibility Internet Rallies (AIR), an initiative
for
> raising awareness and rallying communities around IT inclusion. It's a
> one-day web competition that highlights the issue of access while
providing
> benefits for the whole community. Web consultants recieve training on
> designing accessible sites and then practise these skills in building a
> website for a non-profit organization.


---
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/



---
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or view list archives,
visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/