[Accessibleweb] Building an accessible design learning community

[Richard B. Ells]

While recovering from excess turkey consumption, I found myself browsing various accessible design advocacy sites and social networking sites. The combination started giving me ideas. Some links to articles are at the end of this message.

Many of the accessibility sites saw the pathway to compliance leading through regulation and stronger enforcement. 

The social networking articles on the other hand talked about activities defined and nurtured through user interaction and participation. This kind of knowledge and process creation through social networking seems to be fundamental to the whole social networking phenomenon.

What got my brain working was realizing that many people think our emphasis on "standards" is exclusively about regulation. Actually standards in accessible design is more about the internal consistencies and structures that make Web technologies work together. XML, a language for writing languages such as XHTML, is the classic example. XML was not created as a regulation, it was created to enable stuff to work together better. Using XHTML in a structured, semantic way enables effective use of CSS to control layout, look, and feel. It also makes your scripting work better.

Of course, the European's delight in voluminous regulatory definition might have blurred the distinction a bit. 

What I am getting at is that developing expertise here at the UW in accessible design might be effectively approached as building a social network of people working with Web technologies to communally address a shared goal of inclusive, efficient, reliable design of Web sites and services.

Policy and regulatory standards are essential and need to be better defined here at the UW, but I am thinking the real work in making accessibility happen lies in the area of "knowledge and process creation through social networking" I spoke of before. 

So I recommend more messages to this list about your thoughts, more blogs about your work and cogitations, more capacity building institutes, more stuff on the wiki, and more presentations about our work and thoughts to each other. Think deep listening, networking, and synergy.

Thoughts?
 
Some articles:

Social Network Analysis
http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000006.php

This Is How The Web Gets Regulated
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/thisishowthewebgetsregulated/

The Future Web2.0 Social Experience
http://webdesignfromscratch.com/future-social-web-experience.php



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     Rick Ells
     Senior Webmaster
     UW Technology
     206.543.2875
     rells at u.washington.edu
     http://staff.washington.edu/rells