NCDAE Webcast - Accessibility and the Open Source Content Management Movement
Overview
The following archive is from a webcast held August 30, 2006.
Education communities are giving open source content management systems, and course management systems, much attention. As the cost of proprietary systems soar, some eye open source solutions. However, the same requirements must be in place for accessibility in these systems, as with any other tool. Is it really possible to have hundreds of developers adding new functions into a system in a way that leads to accessibility? NCDAE is please to offer a Webcast on this important topic in the hopes that it will shed light on accessibility efforts in this open source movement.
The panel discussed the strengths and limitations of accessibility in the open source movement and look to the future of these tools with accessibility in mind. Those interested in selecting content management systems or those involved in development within the open source movement will find this webcast interesting. The format allows questions to the panel.
NCDAE has started a fact sheet detailing accessibility in Content Management Systems. We hope to expand this resource based on comments we receive. If you would like to propose updates to this resource, or if you would like to share your experiences with a specific CMS, please refer to this resource.
Archives
The archives for the audio broadcast from Wed, October 26, 2004, entitled Research and Development of Accessible Technologies are available below.
Windows Media Player
Quicktime
TranscriptDownload Media Players:
Panelists
- Cyndi Rowland of NCDAE
- Jonathan Whiting of NCDAE and WebAIM
- Alexander Limi, a founder of the Content Management System Plone.
Resources from Alexander Limi
The following links and comments are from a message Alexander Limi sent to us after the webcast:
- The Connexions project at Rice University is realized using Plone. MIT OpenCourseware is also using this system, according to the people from Rice.
- Video of Richard Baraniuk from the Connexions project explaining what the project is about (unfortunately there is no captioning here, and I don't know how accessible their Flash video player is - but give it a try, it's a great talk, 18 minutes).
- If you want to help out and provide feedback for Plone, the user interface mailing list can be reached at: ui@lists.plone.org
- The subscription page, if you want to subscribe to the mailing list. I encourage everybody that has the interest in making Plone's accessibility even better to participate. There is a lot of wisdom out there from people using assistive devices that we'd love to improve Plone for.
- We are in the process of bootstrapping a dedicated accessibility team and mailing list for Plone with our good friends from NHS (National Health Service) in the UK.
As I explained in the interview, the challenge is generally not a technical one - it's a cultural one, and the more help we can get from people that are willing to test, the better we can make Plone. We have already made accessibility a priority in the project, and would like to get more input from the people using it day to day to make it even better.