IX Jornadas Sidar - Conclusions

Charles McCathieNevile - 'chaals'

Vice-presidente, Fundación Sidar

(Standards and Specifications, Opera Software)

e-mail: charles@sidar.org
Web: Fundación Sidar
Blog: Out of the Way

What is Sidar?

Seminario Iberoamericano de Discapacidad y Accesibilidad en la Red

• A community forum about Web Accessibility
• 9 years old
• 1000 active participants
• A series of mailing lists and an annual conference

And Fundación Sidar - Acceso Universal?

Supporting the Seminar

• Maintaining the infrastructure
• Organising the Jornadas
• Consulting - teaching, evaluation, etc.
• Providing a telephone number, postal address

A non-profit foundation located in Madrid, Spain

IX Jornadas

• A physical conference every year
• Alternating between Europe and Latin America
• A lead-up event for IT4All this year
  • Hosted here the first half of the week
  • Participants from many countries

IX Jornadas - the Conclusions

• In English, Español, Português. (Français prochainement)
• 3 major areas
  1. Accessibility of content and services
  2. Assistive technology access
  3. Support Services
• Continuous user involvement

Key area - evaluating accessibility

• Standards (W3C-based) are critical
• But not enough
  1. State of the art moves faster than standards
  2. Tool development and familiarity is vital
  3. Localisation takes further time
• Users know what happens to them - vital feedback

IX Jornadas - Online

• The Jornadas were posted into real-time chat
• Archives of the discussion and presentations

  - http://jornadas.sidar.org/2005/

Eskerrik Asko - Many Thanks - Merci Beaucoup - Muchas Gracias

--chaals