International FSG Accessibility Meeting Announcement

[Janina Sajka]

FSG Accessibility Workgroup International Meeting 2005 Press Release
Thursday, December 9, 2004

The Free Standards Group (FSG) today announced an international meeting of
experts on open source computing platforms to further ongoing research,
engineering, and standardization efforts in support of comprehensive computer
access for persons with disabilities. Funded with a grant from the U.S.
National Science Foundation (NSF), the meeting will be hosted by the
Archimedes Project at the University of Hawaii during the week of January 24,
2005. Live video streams via the Internet are planned.
 
The meeting is intended to discuss accessibility support and reach consensus
on a common layer of standardization that can be deployed and maintained on
open source technology platforms such as Linux.   These standards can serve as
the basis for future collaborative development of multiple accessible products
that are cost effective, interoperable and heterogeneous.  Invited
participants will include developers, marketers of free and open source
technologies, academic and corporate researchers, and user communities. 

The objectives of the FSG's Accessibility Workgroup meeting in Hawaii include:

o To achieve consensus on standards that can be adopted to support 
accessibility in the near term. The FSG's Accessibility Workgroup is 
currently preparing specific proposals that will be presented at the meeting;

o Agree on engineering research and development that must yet be 
performed in order to
support all persons with disabilities;

o Identify areas where future targeted research on disability access 
issues is required before engineering solutions can be put forward; 

Individuals and organizations interested in participating should contact
Janina Sajka, the Accessibility Workgroup's Chair, at
janina at freestandards.org.  The Home Page for this meeting, including both live
and archived broadcast streams, is: http://a11y.org/f2f.html

About the Free Standards Group

The Free Standards Group is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to
accelerating the use and acceptance of free and open source software by
developing and promoting standards. Key Free Standards Group projects include
the Linux Standard Base (LSB), OpenI18N, LANANA and the new Accessibility
Workgroup. Supported by leaders in the IT industry as well as the open source
development community, the Free Standards Group fulfills a critical need to
have common behavioral specifications, tools and ABIs across Linux platforms.
More information on the Free Standards Group is available at
http://www.freestandards.org.

CONTACT: janina at freestandards.org

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Chair
				Accessibility Workgroup
				Free Standards Group (FSG)

janina at freestandards.org	Phone: +1 202.494.7040

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Chair
				Accessibility Workgroup
				Free Standards Group (FSG)

janina at freestandards.org	Phone: +1 202.494.7040