[wilhelmtux-discussion] FYI Ein interessanter Artikel zu barrierefreien Webseiten

[Claude Almansi]

"Myriam Rita Schweingruber" <schweingruber at pharma-traduction.ch> wrote on Friday, July 09, 2004 8:15 PM:

>Unter den Tagesberichten der ETH-Life findet man diesen interessanten Artikel

>http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/articles/tages/accessibility.html

>es geht um barrierefreie Webseiten für Behinderte, wie es ein neues
>Bundesgesetz seit Anfang Jahr verlangt.

Thank you so much, Myriam. Now let's see if the federal web accessibility team for government sites will come to the seminar on Sept
21, mentioned in the article (see http://www.weboffice.ethz.ch/news/workshops/2004 ) .

The website of this federal web accessibility team http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/webforum/ is not very promissing. Especially not
http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/webforum/d/aktivitaeten.html with all its PDFs and without any activity showing since February.

They have money problems, granted. The budget for the maintenance all the 430'000 www.admin.ch pages was meagre to start with and
got almost completely scrapped this year: from CH.fr 58'000 per year down to CH.fr 18'000 -  and web accessibility represents only
5% of this budget, i.e. CH.fr 900.- per year (1)

This is an indication of the importance our government gives to the application of the dispositions concerning websites in art. 10
of BehiV www.admin.ch/ch/d/sr/151_31/a10.html  (quoted in the ETHZ article).

I wonder about absence of any mention of the http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/webforum/ site of the federal web accessibility team in the
ETHZ article, though: they do have links to Access for All and Design for All (2) , who both collaborate in the federal
accessibility team. But nothing about the federal team.

(1) Maybe this figure could be used in a catchy title line?  From an e-mail by Ms Marie Moya, head of the "Section information et
communication" of the federal administration to ADISI, May 11, 2004.  This e-mail was an answer to my forwarding her an e-mail from
Michael Burkes, head of the ISOC Disability chapter (whom I had Cced in a previous correspondance with her), where he offered to
help (May 06, 2004):
"We can offer whatever help she needs through http://www.isocdisab.org or http://www.icdri.org.  In fact Cynthia Waddell who is
heavily involved in both areas is working with the UN and other international groups on Policy issues, and we can  round up a
plethora of resources for anyone who needs them!
Let us know,  I have copied Cynthia on this message. I am always happy to
help the Swiss!"
Ms Moya's e-mail was a polite turning down of this offer: the budget cut meant that she couldn't afford involving another, albeit
free (non paying) resource.

(2) Design 4 all and Access 4 all are having a workshop on accessibility  too, on Aug. 20 in Luzern
http://www.design4all.ch/01-workshop.html - but whereas the ETH workshop is free, this one has a 180.- registration fee, i.e. 1/5 of
the above-mentioned budget of the federal web accessibility team, so I doubt the team will make it.

Alles gutes

Claude

Claude Almansi
claude.almansi at bluewin.ch
www.adisi.ch