Proposal:Create an accessibility committee

Status (see valid statuses)

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The status of this proposal is:
Request for Discussion / Sign-Ups

Strategic Priorities

This proposal is associated with the bolded strategic priorities below.

1. Achieve continued growth in readership.
2. Focus on quality content
3. Increase Participation.
4. Ensure that the underlying project infrastructure is secure, stable, and sufficient to guarantee the permanence of the projects and support ongoing growth.
5. Encourage Innovation

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Summary

Create a committe in charge to keep the accessibility at the top level on the Wikimedia projects.

Proposal

I think the success of Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects is in part due to its high accessibility. It uses only very common standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It works pretty good in a text browser, or in embedded devices, or with an old computer, which is not true for other popular sites like Facebook, MySpace or YouTube.

In the continuation of the Usability Initiative (which focus on the page layout), I find it would be useful to create an accessibility committee. Its role would be to keep the Wikimedia projects running on 99.9 % of the computers by advising and helping the local communities and developers for the current technologies like CSS, HTML and JavaScript and for the new or uncommon technologies like the Ogg reading or Java integration. This committee could be composed by developers (Wikimedia developers or not), designers, accessibility experts (whose some could be hired by the Foundation)... and could be at a Foundation-level or at a Meta-community-level (in which the Foundation is involved).

Such a committee could nominate sub-committees in charge of the accessibility for deaf and visually impaired communities, another for the text-to-speech project, another for a daily advise for the Wikipedia templates or site-wide JavaScripts...

An accessibility committee could federate local active projects like en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Accessibility and fr:Wikipédia:Atelier accessibilité and support them if some changes on the software are needed/proposed. It could also facilitate the creation of local guidelines on projects which don't have it.

Motivation

The accessibility of the Wikimedia projects should increase or at least not decrease; the Foundation aims to disseminate its contents around the world.

Key Questions

1. What disabilities would such a body cater for?
2. Would disabled users be included in the committee?

Potential Costs

Possibly an accessibility expert

References

Proposer: ~ Seb35 [^_^]

• Category:Proposals for improving accessibility
• meta:Usuability group and meta:Wikipedia accessibility
• en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability
• en:Computer accessibility, en:Web accessibility, and en:Wikipedia:Accessibility

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal talk:Create an accessibility committee.

Want to work on this proposal?

1. Lecartia 05:21, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
2. hopiakuta DonFphrnqTaub Persina 16:00, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
3. .. Sign your name here!