[3] in Software Accessibility Project email archive
Software accessibility guidelines
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kathleen Cahill)
Thu Oct 12 14:09:21 2000
Message-Id: <200008011511.LAA16577@melbourne-city-street.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 11:13:21 -0400
To: usability-team@MIT.EDU, swrt@MIT.EDU
From: Kathleen Cahill <kcahill@MIT.EDU>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Resent-To: swaccess@nemesis.mit.edu
Resent-From: Jean Foster <jfoster@MIT.EDU>
Hi team members,
Since the inception of the Web Accessibility Guidelines last year, I have
wanted to also work on a project to develop a Software Accessibility Policy
and
Guidelines for any software that is purchased or developed at MIT for
institute
wide use. So now that we've had a year to see how the Web Accessibility
project has worked, I 'd like to begin work on this piece.
I'd like to enlist the help of any or all of you to meet approximately 2-3
times to work on this. I see the major tasks as:
1. Formulating a policy that is consistent with MIT's legal obligations
2. Developing guidelines -- perhaps a few tiers of guidelines, with Tier
1 being "Essential" and Tier 2 being "Helpful". There may also be
instances when there is no accessible alternative, such as molecular
modeling software that is not usable via the keyboard.
3. How to incorporate these guidelines into existing I/S guidelines,
such as
Software Release and IT Architecture guidelines.
4. How to publicize and make developers or purchasers of software
aware of
these guidelines, as well as provide training and documentation on this
topic.
Many of the SW Accessibility Guidelines are similar to web accessibility
guidelines. See an example of the Dept of Educations' S/W Accessibility
Guidelines at http://gcs.ed.gov/coninfo/clibrary/software.htm
My hope is to recruit some developers and members of other processes in I/S so
that a wide range of perspectives will help shape a thoughtful and useful
policy. If you have ideas for me as to who else might be good to have on the
team, that would be great.
Thanks. Perhaps we could touch on this at next week's Usability Team meeting
if there is time on the agenda.
Kathy
Kathy Cahill
MIT ATIC lab 11-103
253-5111
kcahill@mit.edu
