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Thread: information for non-profits
Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)
From: Glenda
Date: Mon, Sep 27 2004 12:44PM
Subject: information for non-profits
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Hi,
I am developing a mini-course "Web Accessibility: What
is This All About?", initially targeted to
decision makers of non-profits. The third ( and final ) lesson is
"<SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">How
can my organization implement a Web accessibility plan?" I have summarized
and massaged the process outlined in Chapter 11 of Constructing Accessible Web
Sites, and will use <A
href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/Overview.html">http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/Overview.html as
a recommended reading. However, my next section is regarding
non-profits that farm out their web development / maintenance to an external
source, ie a web design company, the pimpled face kid down the street or the
Executive Director's nephew looking for a class project. Remember,
non-profits generally have little or no money. How can such
organizations implement a Web accessibility plan when the site is done
externally? And when the individual negotiating the contract [assuming
there is one ] has no knowledge of HTML, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
1.0,etc etc etc? Can anyone here offer sample contract clauses and
such? Any suitable readings online? Looking forward to
hearing from someone here who can provide some suggestions.
Cheers,
<SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><SPAN
lang=EN style="mso-ansi-language: EN">Glenda
From: Iain Harrison
Date: Mon, Sep 27 2004 12:58PM
Subject: Re: information for non-profits
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Monday, September 27, 2004, 7:52:34 PM, glenda wrote:
> However, my next section is regarding non-profits that farm out their web
> development / maintenance to an external source, ie a web design company,
> the pimpled face kid down the street or the Executive Director's nephew
> looking for a class project. Remember, non-profits generally have little or
> no money.
> How can such organizations implement a Web accessibility plan when the site
> is done externally? And when the individual negotiating the contract
> [assuming there is one ] has no knowledge of HTML, Web Content Accessibility
> Guidelines 1.0,etc etc etc? Can anyone here offer sample contract clauses
> and such? Any suitable readings online?
The basic starting point is to choose a competent web design
company. Sadly, that rules out 99.9% of the ones in the business.
And, no, I'm not kidding.
How about requiring that the site is fully standards-complaint and
meets WAI AAA standards as a basic specification?
Doing it properly cost no more: in fact it can cost far less,
particularly if you factor in the server cost savings from lean,
clean code.
I've never been impressed by the "we have no money" arguments. Do
these non-profits use lighting collected by mirrors under
streetlamps, or do they expect to pay the rate their utility
supplier charges? The latter, of course. So why don't they want to
pay the price to have professional-looking web sites?
--
Iain
From: Susan R. Grossman
Date: Mon, Sep 27 2004 1:05PM
Subject: Re: information for non-profits
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Glenda,
http://www.techsoup.org, especially for non-profits had offered an
accessibility forum about 2 years ago (though all still valid despite
the age) and will be offering another one in January (I'm the forum
leader for the upcoming one). They have an article originally written
for librarians on how to develop and plan their accessibility that would
probably be real helpful to you, though it doesn't talk about
contracts. I do small sites for non-profits and I point them to this
article before we start our discussions just so they know why talking
accessibility with me and training thiner volunteer web people on it is
so important.
http://techsoup.org/howto/articlepage.cfm?ArticleId=549&;amp;cg=searchterms&sg=accessibility
After they read this article, I point them to this one and then we
discuss a written assessment that they write (with my help) and it is
appended to the contract.
http://techsoup.org/howto/articlepage.cfm?ArticleId=393&;amp;cg=searchterms&sg=accessibility
By having the client work themselves on their ADA assessment (with help
of course) and making it part of the contract both sides feel
comfortable with their final outcome.
Hope this will be some help to you. If any of this is what you're
looking for, I'd be happy to discuss the format of the assessment
documents/contract addendum.
Susan Grossman
glenda wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am developing a mini-course "Web Accessibility: What is This All
> About?", initially targeted to decision makers of non-profits. The
> third ( and final ) lesson is "How can my organization implement a Web
> accessibility plan?" I have summarized and massaged the process
> outlined in Chapter 11 of Constructing Accessible Web Sites, and will
> use http://www.w3.org/WAI/impl/Overview.html as a recommended reading.
>
> However, my next section is regarding non-profits that farm out their
> web development / maintenance to an external source, ie a web design
> company, the pimpled face kid down the street or the Executive
> Director's nephew looking for a class project. Remember, non-profits
> generally have little or no money.
>
> How can such organizations implement a Web accessibility plan when the
> site is done externally? And when the individual negotiating the
> contract [assuming there is one ] has no knowledge of HTML, Web
> Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0,etc etc etc? Can anyone here
> offer sample contract clauses and such? Any suitable readings online?
>
> Looking forward to hearing from someone here who can provide some
> suggestions.
>
> Cheers,
> Glenda
From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Mon, Sep 27 2004 1:07PM
Subject: Re: information for non-profits
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> Remember, non-profits
> generally have little or no money.
Many don't. Many do.
For those that don't, with a little give and take, they can often find very
willing design firms willing to do the project Pro-bono. Just FYI...
> How can such organizations implement a Web accessibility plan when
> the site is done externally?
Simply make it a requirement?
> And when the individual negotiating the
> contract [assuming there is one ] has no knowledge of HTML, Web
> Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0,etc etc etc? Can anyone here
> offer sample contract clauses and such?
I don't think it'd take too much to add into the contract verbiage
pertaining to the fact that all finished web files must meet basic
accessibility guidelines. Ideally, these would be guidelines that the
non-profit has written up.
-Darrel