This is part of an ongoing Voices from the Community series of blog posts culling popular topics of interest from the TechSoup Community Forums and other online channels.

In response to NetSquared's July Net2 Think Tank on the topic of Building a Culture of Accessibility, I've compiled some of the suggestions and discussions from TechSoup's Accessible Technology and Public Computing forum.

Opening Hearts and Minds

In the old days, we used to talk about accessibility as something we added to our websites. Today, the conversation has shifted towards making our websites accessible as a key requirement of the development process - for complex reasons and with complex benefits. From providing accessible content for people with disabilities, to creating fully usable functionality, to support for multiple languages, we wanted to learn about the benefits people are creating using web and mobile technology.

In the old days, we used to talk about accessibility as something we added to our websites. Today, the conversation has shifted towards making our websites accessible as a key requirement of the development process- for complex reasons and with complex benefits. From providing accessible content for people with disabilities, to creating fully usable functionality, to support for multiple languages, we want to hear what’s going on in the innovative world of accessibility!

Please share your ideas about making web and mobile efforts accessible to a wide range of users, as part of this month’s Net2 Think Tank!

The digital divide includes the tech design divide that keeps people who are using assistive technology or who have disabilities from being able to use web sites, software and other tech tools. But making your web site and other online services more accessible isn't just a nice thing to do: it makes a web site more accessible for potential customers, clients and donors, and demonstrates an organization's commitment to usability and accessibility to everyone. In addition, for a designer or programmer, knowing how to make a web site fully accessible makes you more competitive in the job market.

I recently connected with Sachin Malhan, CEO and co-founder of inclusive planet, an online platform that enables people with print impairments to find each other, connect, interact, build communities, and share accessible content and solutions. Started in India, this project is rapidly growing to be a world-wide resource for the visually impaired to both learn and interact.

Implementation of web accessibility can seem excessively complicated. In reality, the best accessibility practices dovetail with good overall usability, and are easy to implement via standard tools such as templates and cascading style sheets (CSS). This session will cover topics such as understanding the difference between various accessibility guidelines, avoiding common accessibility errors, when (and when not) to rely on automatic accessibility checkers, and unexpected populations that benefit from accessible websites.

This free webinar is best suited for individuals with some knowledge of HTML coding who are involved with ensuring that their organization's website is accessible.

Details

Net2 called it a "huge experiment," and we took it in that spirit when we posted our ATSTAR program as a candidate - thanks for the opportunity to jump in with you! I am sharing results so far and would love to hear from others who posted projects.

I ran across information on a recent United Nations accessibility review of 100 different Web sites from 20 countries around the world.  Their grade?  Big Fat F for Failure

Only 3 of those 100 actually made a decent score, which is just pathetic.  Specifically:

1. German chancellor's site: http://www.bundeskanzlerin.de
2. British prime minister's site: http://www.primeminister.gov.uk
3. Spanish government site:  http://www.la-moncloa.es/default.htm

Jim Fruchterman was named a MacArthur genius yesterday.  You can find links to his blog and to a couple of bloggers who know him at my blog, studio 501c.