The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative (A&I) has planned an event called “Developing with Accessibility,” at the FCC’s headquarters on September 6 and 7, 2012. The event is designed to spur increased collaboration on accessibility solutions among developers from industry, consumer, and government sectors. The event will encourage the use of accessibility APIs (application programming interfaces), as well as publicly available data sets, in order to build accessible apps for mobile phones and websites. A key objective is to promote the concept and practice of developing applications with regard for generally-accepted accessibility guidelines, thereby maximizing their usability for everyone, including persons with disabilities.
The event will offer training on development topics, in-person collaboration on programming projects, and professional networking among developers. As important as the actual event itself will be collaborative activity in electronic spaces before, during, and after the event. Rather than limit this to accomplishments that can be achieved during a single, in-person event, this Developer event is not intended to be an end in itself, but will instead serve as an organizing opportunity to create mechanisms for ongoing collaboration among developers who are interested in building accessible technology solutions.
It is also a goal of the A&I to make smart use of new media tools to create electronic spaces for such collaboration. We encourage others to also activate online collaboration spaces associated with this effort. To this end, we suggest use of a particular abbreviation, “DevAcc,” as an electronic tag that facilitates searching and coordination toward these objectives.
Please pre-register for the event by sending your name, affiliation, and contact information to devacc@fcc.gov by August 31, 2012. Also send disability accommodation requests to FCC504@fcc.gov.
If there are particular ways that you’d like to participate, or related activities that you’d like to inform us about, also feel free to write to devacc@fcc.gov.
The meeting site is fully accessible to people using wheelchairs or other mobility aids. Open captioning and assistive listening devices will be provided on site. Other reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities are available upon request. Include a description of the accommodation you will need and tell us how to contact you if we need more information. Make your request as early as possible. Last minute requests will be accepted, but may be impossible to fill. Send an e-mail to: fcc504@fcc.gov or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (TTY).
The general session of the event will be webcast with open captioning at http://fcc.gov/live
IMPORTANT ACCESSIBILTY LINKS:
Accessibility and Innovation Initiative: http://www.broadband.gov/accessibilityandinnovation
Accessibility Clearinghouse: http://apps.fcc.gov/accessibilityclearinghouse/
Implementation of the Communications and Video Accessibility Act: http://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/cvaa.html
For more information, visit http://fcc.gov/disability
Source: GAATES
