Mark A. Fairfield, LCSW, BCD
Los Angeles, California
April 25, 2008

Background

At the end of the last millennium, the U.S. Surgeon General reported that culture is a concept not limited to patients; clinicians view symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments in ways that sometimes diverge from their clients’ views, especially when the cultural backgrounds of the consumer and provider are dissimilar. “This divergence of viewpoints can create barriers to effective care. Clinicians and service systems, naturally immersed in their own cultures, have been ill-equipped to meet the needs of patients from different backgrounds and, in some cases, have displayed bias in the delivery of care" (Surgeon General’s Report, 1999).  

To the dozens of supporters who have found us here, thank you! To our hardcore advisors and leaders who have come here to vote, thank you also. This process has been an amazing journey for the Amoration/ManorMeta team; as this project has gone underground for the last few months we haven't been out there talking about the detail development work happening behind the scenes at AMO Studio. Thanks for keeping us in the spotlight and helping us to find new partners, supporters and friends from Japan to Israel!

Disabled computer users often regard their browsers as a lifeline to the world.  But during last year's natural disasters, it became very clear that the lifeline was tenuous - perhaps broken entirely - as so many relief sites were not accessible to those who need them most.  To help people with disabilities find what they need more easily, Google Labs released a new product yesterday.  Called Accessible Search, it optimizes pages based on some key accessibility features, including alt text, keyboard navigation, simple language and so forth.  The idea is to save blind users the wasted time and frustration of trying to get information from inaccessible sites. To see how your standard search stacks up against the accessible searc, try out this comparison tool

It's 50 short minutes with Angela Glover Blackwell but the issues she brings up -- race and poverty and creating spaces for conversation and demonstrating change -- take much more than 50 minutes.  We can use the session space -- Conversation with Angela Glover Blackwell -- to keep asking questions and try and move the conversation into Next Actions.

OK, I know, I should have been paying attention earlier.  If I wanted accessibility sessions I had my chance to suggest themes, questions and topics...right?  But as I look through the sessions for the latest in accessible blogging tools, content management systems, fundraising software, do I really find....nothing?! absolutely nothing about accessibility?

Nothing on accessibility at the coolest nonprofit tech conference ever? 

How could that be?  I admit that I am a bit cocooned.  I spend 90% of my time with people who know tons about accessibility...people like John Slatin, Jim Thatcher, Molly Holzschlag, Kelsey Ruger, Glenda Sims... or with people who want to know more about accessibility, like the participants in AIR programs, Access-U and CalWAC. But am I really so sheltered? so deluded?  Does the rest of the world really care about access to the web for 55 million Americans and 750 million people worldwide...not at all?!