About the IT Accessibility Work Group
This Work Group's mission is to raise awareness by offering quality workshops, formulating and communicating best practices and collaboration with the other Work Groups, CIO/OFT, and other state entities and external stakeholders. Accessibility issues are omnipresent and impact all New York State residents who now or in the future will face technology barriers based in physical and economic limitations. The Work Group encourages and invites the state workforce to actively participate in our workshop sessions which are beneficial to both technical and non-technical employees.
- Web 2.0 and Accessibility (White Paper - published March 2010 - PDF format)
- Mission & Goals — See what the Committee is all about
- Meeting Schedule — Our meetings are open to anyone who would like to help – or just learn more – about accessible IT
- Committee Activities — See what we've been up to and what we have planned in the future.
- List of member organizations — These are the organizations who have made a commitment to our cause
- Credits — The people responsible for this site
History
Since its inception in November 2003, the Work Group has provided standards-based training and informational opportunities to thousands of individuals, and has partnered with the NYS Forum Webmasters' Guild to provide a number of educational opportunities for state web developers. The Work Group is a key source of advice for the development of state policies designed to reach the goal of access for everyone, and very successful in its various projects through the present.
The Work Group also functions as a resource for the state web development community as a whole, providing consulting services on an as-requested basis. Working with the NYS Office for Technology (CIO/OFT), members of the Work Group have also consulted with State agency web developers to find solutions to problems experienced in applying the policy to real-world situations. NYS CIO/OFT is a New York State agency that provides statewide technology direction and centralized technology policies and services to other New York State government entities.
The Work Group partnered with the Guild to publish a white paper, Mastering the Web Revolution in New York State Agencies. This landmark document outlines some of the obstacles we currently face in staffing web development positions in agencies, along with specific recommendations for future improvements.
One of the improvement opportunities identified in the white paper, developing a validation tool to test web content for conformance with New York's hybrid web accessibility guidelines, was undertaken in 2006. Members of both the Guild and the Work Group worked on this project, which debuted on January 1, 2008.
In 2004, Committee Co-Chairs Debi Orton and Mike Short were given an Award for Excellence in Government Information Services by the Forum's Executive Committee. In 2005, the Forum was named to the Advance America Honor Roll based on the work the Committee has done to improve the accessibility of State government web sites.
The Work Group added a new Corporate Co-Chair in 2005, Lisa Hebert Ryan from MicroKnowledge, Inc. Ms. Ryan was succeeded in this position by Laura Edlund of AT&T in October 2007.
In 2009, after five years as co-chairs, Debi and Mike decided to retire from their leadership positions of this Work Group. Assuming their roles are incoming Co-Chairs are Joel Obuchowski from the New York State Insurance Department, and Estelle Council from the New York State Division of Parole. Debi and Mike remain as members of the Work Group to consult during the transition. Laura Edlund continues working as the Corporate Co-Chair of the Work Group.