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RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind, London, UK) is developing a "strategy for information superhighways". The purpose of this is to define what RNIB can do to help blind and partially sighted people gain the greatest possible benefit from electronic media.
Since it is clear that the Web is the most important manifestation of 'the new media', one of the central strands of the work is to influence the development of the Web to ensure that it remains accessible to visually impaired people, and that it becomes more, and not less accessible.
To date, best results have been achieved by approaching individual publishers, and simply pointing out to them that their sites are potentially of great benefit to blind people if they take some simple measures, which in no way sacrifice the quality of their site design, in fact, in line with the principles of universal access, they usually enhance it for everyone.
Along with this approach, which has had notable success with, for example, the Times and Telegraph newspapers on the Web, RNIB is keen to do everything possible to influence any standards which may determine the direction and eventual accessibility of the Web. Since the concrete is still wet, now is clearly the time to move, and it is to learn how RNIB may best participate in the work already in progress by organisations such as Webable, Trace and WGBH, as well as the Access Project and INCLUDE in Europe, that RNIB is represented here.
These are some of the questions RNIB is grappling with, and raises at the workshop in hopes of gaining a better understanding of the global arena, in order better to contribute to any moves as part of concerted and coherent action.
For further background on RNIB, and an embryonic section on accessibility, see the RNIB home page.
Peter Bosher,
Project Manager (Information Superhighways)