Virtual F2F
Recent events have assured acceleration of the development of conferencing
systems utilizing interactive media (e.g. voice, text "chat", mutually editable graphics displays).
The opportunity to assure inclusion of WAI concerns in this process might
be siezed so the message: "retrofitting's a bitch" will be part of the
Universal Design principles used when the soon-to-be expanded capabilities
are at an early stage.
Proposals
- Nothing about us without us
- In the DRM (Disability Rights Movement) this is a "buzzword" for
situations wherein the affected clientele are used symbolically without
direction from those most affected. The "we know what's best for you"
effect.
- Conformance
- All tools designed/used for videoconferencing, cyber-meetings,
teleconferences, chat encounters must be conformant to WAI guidelines
and W3C technical recommendations.
- Outreach
- The inevitable proliferation of means to minimize the concerns about
cost/safety of F2F (face-to-face) encounters attend to
accessibility/inclusion matters.
- Design
- The expertise of our members/experts be used as input to as well as
review of proposed systems. Even to the extent of
political/policy/regulatory processes.
Procedures
- Documents
- Some sort of "white paper" publicizing awareness of and input for the
soon-to-emerge emphasis on utilization of the Web to host these
efforts
- Guidelines
- Ferreting the appropriate sections of existing guidelines to
demonstrate that we've already done much of this.
- Outreach
- Trumpeting the benefits of inclusion and our experience with its
assurance.
Harvey's End Note Examples
Future conferencing will increasingly depend on video connection and
interactive drawing (virtual whiteboard) capabilities.
Accessibility aspects of video conferencing and virtual whiteboards
include:
- Provide aural description of whatever is purely visual.
- Train participants to use the descriptive techniques as now used
with descriptive video.
- Consider speech to text to transform words into text for
alternative display. These include braille, enlarged text overlay
layer under user control, or alternative display for visual.
- Integrate pre-existing textual sources with visual and generated
text material for merged description.
[Harvey Bingham]