Dave Winer says:

We all hope our houses don't catch fire, but when they do, we're damned happy we don't get an argument when we call 911. Why should cancer, diabetes and heart disease be any different? I don't get it.

Indeed. And I don't get it either.

Dave said a bunch more than that though (read his full entry).

BOSTON, Mass—February 27, 2008 — The GNOME Foundation is running an accessibility outreach program, offering USD$50,000 to be split among individuals. This program will promote software accessibility awareness among the GNOME community as well as harden and improve the overall quality of the GNOME accessibility offering.

The program is sponsored by GNOME Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google™'s Open Source Program Office, Canonical, and Novell. This is the second in a series of outreach programs coordinated and run by the GNOME Foundation.

"I'm excited about the GNOME accessibility outreach program because it continues the promotion of compelling accessible design as part of the mainstream developer culture. We believe the set of tangible and achievable tasks outlined will help improve the already good accessibility offering of the GNOME desktop," said Willie Walker, Senior Staff Engineer of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

GNOME Outreach Program: Accessibility starts accepting applications on March 1st and will run towards the end of the year. There will be two tracks to the program: In the first track accepted individuals will work towards accomplishing one of the major projects nominated for the program, earning US$6,000 and can take up to six months to complete the task. The second track will reward contributors US$1,000 for fixing five bugs out of a pool of accessibility bugs nominated by the program judges.

Individuals interested in participating in the program should check out www.gnome.org/projects/outreach/a11y. More information about the program may be found at the same location.

Read the full announcement at:
http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/gop-a11y.html

Will thinks that if we write the developers of websites whose content is inaccessible (or a challenge to access), those developers will fix their problems. I used to believe that as well. It may take a village to raise a child, but unfortunately it seems to take lawsuit in federal court to raise awareness. But seeing as how Will is Orca project lead whereas I am a humble community contributor, and seeing as how I have taken to mumbling the words "crappy markup" in Will's general direction as I continue my work on Orca's support for Firefox, I suppose the very least I can do is give his idea a shot.

Today's note went to Safeway.com via their online suggestion form:

Dear Safeway.com:

I'd like to bring to your attention the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative. There you will find a number of resources which you can take advantage of when evaluating your site's content for accessibility. In particular, please see Guideline 1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.

1.1 Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content). This includes: images, graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets and programmatic objects, ascii art, frames, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds (played with or without user interaction), stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video. [Priority 1]

For example, in HTML:

• Use "alt" for the IMG, INPUT, and APPLET elements, or provide a text equivalent in the content of the OBJECT and APPLET elements.
• For complex content (e.g., a chart) where the "alt" text does not provide a complete text equivalent, provide an additional description using, for example, "longdesc" with IMG or FRAME, a link inside an OBJECT element, or a description link.
• For image maps, either use the "alt" attribute with AREA, or use the MAP element with A elements (and other text) as content.

At the bottom of your site you have an imagemap:

<map name="links">
<area alt="" coords="0,0,48,28" href="javascript:loadframesetpages('','http://www.vons.com','0','','')">
<area alt="" coords="48,30,124,0" href="javascript:loadframesetpages('','http://www.dominicks.com','0','','')">
<area alt="" coords="193,0,124,33" href="javascript:loadframesetpages('','http://www.randalls.com','0','','')">
[...]
</map>

Because your alternative text is an empty string, the items within your imagemap are inaccessible to users who are blind. Providing the name of the store (alt="Vons") should resolve this problem.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter!

Here's to hoping...

• Hello Kitty Online (via Webware)
• Why Dogs Bite People (via Rich)
• Death by Frozen Poop

I've been an on-again/off-again member of AER (Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired) for a decade or so. The reason for my fickle membership has been that I just don't see much benefit from being a member, especially now that my focus is 100% on assistive technology -- an area which should be much more of a focus in AER given that AER is basically THE organization of the profession and that one's ability to live and work independently as a person who is blind depends significantly on having access to and skills in the use of AT.

As a result, I tend to renew my membership when doing so will get me discounts on conferences I need to attend or a reduction in fees when I'm applying for re-certification. At least that was before I received this "AER-GRAM":

***URGENT! CANCELLATION NOTICE!***
***IMMEDIATE REPLY REQUESTED!***

THE AER BOARD OF DIRECTORS, IN COMPLIANCE WITH OUR ORGANIZATIONAL BYLAWS, MUST TAKE FINAL ACTION CANCELLING YOUR MEMBERSHIP UNLESS THE MEMBERSHIP DUES BALANCE SHOWN BELOW IS RECEIVED PRIOR TO JANUARY 31, 2008. FAILURE TO MAKE PAYMENT OF YOUR AER MEMBERSHIP DUES WILL PROMPT US TO REMOVE YOU FROM AER'S MEMBERSHIP ROSTER.

WE URGE YOU TO GIVE THIS MATTER YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. PLEASE REMIT THE ENTIRE BALANCE DUE IN THE ENVELOPE PROVIDED. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS LETTER, PLEASE CONTACT AER AT (877) 492-2708, EXT. 202.

Any lingering questions I did have about the value of being a member were just answered.