This year, Ohio Linux Fest will be held in Columbus, Ohio September 28-30. I initially thought about proposing my "A11y: Its about you!" talk, but after reading the OLF website, knowing their interests in promoting open A11y, and seeing how people commented about a11y at Indiana Linux Fest last weekend, I thought... Why not go for something bigger this time? Go for the bang!
My proposal: 1. We set up a very large booth that isn't focused on any one organization, but rather on open a11y in general. Booth staff would include reps from GNOME, Mozilla, FSF, Oracle, etc. Hands on demonstrations of what our software can do. 2. Propose more advanced talks, such as "How you can test to ensure your software is accessible," or "how to deploy a11y software in your environment." (I get asked this a lot!) My "It's about you!" talk really is more an introduction/marketing talk. It's good, but doesn't do enough to get more people to pay attention to a11y in their own development. 3. Organize a hacksession, perhaps either one of our traditional "fix what's broken in a11y" events, or "fix what's accessibly-broken in non a11y-software." OLF has a community day on Friday which is more focused on workshops and whatnot. An ideal day to set up hacksessions before the main event on Saturday. I think given the combined resources of the various organizations and that a number of a11y contributors live somewhat close to Ohio, we could make a good go of this. And potentially make this a blueprint for organizing similar events around the world. Getting more people aware, interested, and involved, is a good thing, IMO. It would also create an opportunity to invite local agencies, school districts, etc. that work with people of various abilities. A plus for us to demonstrate our awesomeness to target audiences, and a plus for the event host to increase attendance to their show. I'm not proposing we do this instead of traditional dotOrg booths. For example, if GNOME community plans to have a booth, they should still do so. But we would be creating a traveling "A11y Center" of which GNOME would be a "consortium" member. Frankly, I think this would be a more likely success-story outcome than at places like CSUN conference. Thoughts? Bryen M Yunashko _______________________________________________ gnome-accessibility-list mailing list gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list
