In Paris for the First European eAccessibility Forum

27 January 07

It’s going to be a whirlwind trip on the train, but should be interesting nonetheless.

Next Monday, 29 January 2007, the First European e-Accessibility Forum will be taking place in Paris, and I’m happy to say I’ll be attending. The opportunity for me is rather unexpected, but my job is behind it so I’m on the train to Paris Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, I’m also on the return train within an hour after the conference as I have meetings to attend back here in Strasbourg the next day.

It’s unfortunate because later in the week the French Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication is having their Annual Conference 2007 as well, and being I’m a member of STC and the French Chapter but have not had any real involvement yet, it would have been a good opportunity to meet some personalities I’ve corresponded with online, and learn a few things too.

The accessibility conference should be quite interesting. The impetus for it comes from the June 2006 symposium in Riga, Latvia, where the European Commission unanimously approved a Ministerial Declaration (pdf file) to fully implement accessibility provisions in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and that such provisions should be shaped and supported by both voluntary industry commitments and new legislation from the commission itself down to local governments of member countries.

The declaration is a concise and informative document of 46 measures in just 7 pages, and after reading it I’m inclined to think that despite the persuasive data and admirable objectives set forth, it will nevertheless be a challenge for the EU to achieve all it aims for. The objectives are merged with those already considered for the i2010 agenda, and thus the i2010’s timeline as well. Those of us in the Web side of accessibility, which is a big piece of the eAccessibility pie, know that the general trend for accessibility adoption (thus compliance), whether encouraged by honorable designers or demanded by recipients of design services, is a slow moving train.

At any rate, the conference in Paris is bringing an interesting group of people together, including representatives from big-name companies (Microsoft, IBM, Adobe…), the W3C‘s Web Accessibility Initiative, celebrity names like Chris Heilmann from Yahoo (contributing author to one of my favorite books in 2006, Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance), and accessibility associations like BrailleNet, who are one of the principal organizers of the forum, and also the folks behind AccessiWeb, which is the leading torch for Web accessibility guidance/compliance in France.

We’ll see how it goes.