IT Accessibility Work Group Initiatives and Accomplishments

IT Accessibility was formed to raise awareness of accessibility issues with the technology community, to encourage the development of sensible policies to address these issues, and to provide the technical training necessary to implement the policies.

2009-2010 Accomplishments

Outreach

  • 508 Refresh: Submitted comments to US Access Board to address questions related to the proposed rulemaking for Section 508.
  • OFT Consultations:
    • NYS Standards change to 508 - Policy Comparisons: NYS-P08-005 v. Section 508 and WCAG 2.0
    • State digital/eGov strategy initiative
  • NYS Validation Tool: Sought support for continued funding. Efforts are still underway.
  • OFT Wiki - contributed to these discussions:
    • Does NYS need a Web 2.0 Policy and, if so, what should it contain?
    • Draft Enterprise Policy

Training

  • Web 2.0 and Accessibility:
    • Produced and submitted to the Forum "Web 2.0 and Accessibility" white Paper-January 19, 2010.
    • Presentation and JAWS demonstration for Webmasters' Guild on "Accessibility for Web 2.0 Social Media" - February 5th 2010.
    • Panel discussion for Emerging Technologies Seminar on "Web 2.0 - Answering your Questions" - June 22nd 2010
  • Presentations:
    • "Accessibility for Web-Delivered Training" - September 25, 2009
    • "Writing for the Web" in November 12, 2009 and March 8, 2010.
    • "Creating Accessible PDFs" - May 12, 2010.

General

  • Miscellaneous:
    • Best Practices: Engaged companies to provide Accessibility best practices in the use of products: CAPTCHA, WebEx
    • Over 25 instances of consulting with state agencies and vendors regarding NYS accessibility requirements.
    • 11 issues of our monthly newsletter.
    • Resources Web site updates

2010-2011 Projected Initiatives

Outreach

  • Continue to provide agency consulting services.
  • Leverage The Forum's MetroNY initiative to work with NYC agencies/contractors
  • Continue to find ways to collaborate with other Forum Work groups, CIO Council and OCIO/OFT in providing Stakeholder input on initiatives that impact Accessibility.

Training

  • Accessibility 101
  • Accessible Application Development
  • HTML 5 Update
  • Program on Turing Tests and Accessibility
  • JQuery/WAI-ARIA (with Web Guild)
  • Search Engine Optimization (with Web Guild)
  • Update course curricula and other materials on our resource site to reflect policy and standards changes and expand to include social media (2)
  • Recruit new trainers and familiarize them with the curricula (3)

Leadership

  • Recruit for successor corporate co-chair.
  • Continue to advocate for a centralized statewide validation tool (4)

Publications

  • Update Resource Web Site content and its overall design
  • Continue to publish monthly Newsletter

Policy

  • Continue to assist in evaluating and contributing to draft legislative language in support of establishing a state IT Accessibility law.

Research

  • W3C standards Watch: HTML5 (1)
  • Section 508 rulemaking
  • Litigation and Legislative Watch