Summary

Leading Accessibility Organisations Launch International Development Consortium

Australia, Europe, Japan and United States form the Web Accessibility Tool Consortium (WAT-C) to create real time web and software accessibility analysis tools via General Public License (GPL).

Author: Steven Faulkner

Today, organisations representing four continents announced the official launch of the Web Accessibility Tool Consortium (WAT-C). The new consortium is developing a series of browser-based web accessibility analysis tools under a general public license agreement.

By harnessing the passion, knowledge, and creativity of this international group of web accessibility practitioners, stated Steven Faulkner WAT-C founder, We have a unique opportunity to provide tools to promote the understanding and development of an accessible web.

WAT-C is a collaboration of some of the world's leading accessibility practitioners. These developers of free web accessibility testing software & services include:

The consortium will promote and pursue software development goals including:

There is an international movement to harmonise divergent web accessibility guidelines, such as WCAG by the W3C, Section 508 in the US, and JIS in Japan, Makoto Ueki of Infoaxia and co-founder of WAT-C. We want to support this process through international collaboration in the development of tools to help all web developers produce accessible websites.

WAT-C will shortly release an updated version of the Web Accessibility Toolbar for Internet Explorer, and recently announced the release of a Colour Contrast Analyser utility. Toolbar versions for Mozilla/Firefox and Opera are in development.

Contacts

Steven Faulkner
Accessible Information Solutions
steven.faulkner@nils.org.au
www.accessibleinfo.org.au
Makoto Ueki
Infoaxia, Inc.
info@infoaxia.co.jp
www.infoaxia.co.jp
Mike Paciello
The Paciello Group
info@paciellogroup.com
www.paciellogroup.com

Category: Accessibility.

Comments

  3. [web-accessiility-tool-consortium.php#comment3]

    Is there an official reason why you're not working on authoring tools? Are they not "accessibility tools," or is the name of the group unintentionally misleading? If you want to work solely on automated testing tools, fine; it even gives you a better acronym (WATT-C). But I think you should not be so limited.

    Posted by Joe Clark on

  4. [web-accessiility-tool-consortium.php#comment4]

    Hi Joe,

    Is there an official reason why you're not working on authoring tools?

    The short answer is that I don't know. I'll put the question to the group, and let you know. I would like to work on creating authoring tools, but I'm not sure if it's in the scope of the group, in which case a name change may be appropriate. I'll let you know.

    Cheers,

    Posted by Gez on

Comments are closed for this entry.