Monday July 10, 2006

U.S. Access Board advisory committee members named

The United States Access Board is "an independent Federal agency devoted to accessibility for people with disabilities." Created in 1973 to ensure access to federal funded facilities, its purview has expanded with passage of Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to include telecommunications accessibility; and further expanded with passage of the 1998 ammendments to Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to include federal purchases of "electronic and information technology". Pursiant to that expanded purview, the Access Board has developed a set of Telecommunication Act Accessibility Guidelines and a set of Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards. For technology companies like Sun, it is these latter guidelines that have been a major force and organizing principle for much of our technology accessibility work.

Both Section 508 (of the Rehabilitation Act) and Section 255 (of the Telecommunications Act) specify that the technical accessibility guidelines/standards developed by the Access Board be periodically updated. Earlier this year that Access Board issued a notice that they were forming an "Advisory Committee for Refresh" of both the Section 508 standards and the Section 255 accessibility guidelines. Here is the formal notice in the Federal Register (and also the PDF version).

The Access Board has now announced the composition of the Advisory Committee (and also published this in the Federal Register - with the PDF excerpt here).

My understanding is that there will be around a half-dozen multi-day meetings, open to the public, with the first one at the end of September this year. Earl Johnson, the founder of Sun's accessibility team, was Sun's representative to the first Section 508 advisory committee. I'm looking forward to picking up that mantle when these meetings begin later this year.

P.S. It is interesting to note that three of the members of the Access Board advisory committee - IBM, the Paciello Group, and Sun - are also members of the OASIS ODF accessibility subcommittee. Likewise, a slightly different three of the members of the Access Board advisory committee - Adobe, IBM, and Sun - are also members of the Free Standards Group Accessibility Workgroup. I'm looking forward to some cross-pollination between these three groups... (2006-07-10 14:25:13.0) Permalink