AccessComputing News

The national Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT) has been recently established to focus on the following under-represented groups: African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, and people with disabilities. CMD-IT is comprised of corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits. Its mission is to ensure that under-represented groups are fully engaged in computing and IT, and to promote innovation that enriches, enhances, and enables these communities.

Do you know which college degrees are in high demand? In a recent survey* the top ten in-demand college degrees reported by respondents are:

The next wave of HTML, called HTML5, is in development by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). HTML5 is an important step for web accessibility, because it is the first time that people with disabilities have been included in the web language development process from the beginning. Two very different cultures are learning how to work together, and it's both exciting and frustrating.

This summer, KUOW (Puget Sound Public Radio) broadcast my interview with Jeannie Yandel. We discussed universal design and its benefit for everyone, including people with disabilities. The segment, "Web Accessibility for Everyone" is no longer available, but the transcript is available at sp1ral.com/2009/08/interview-transcript.

In summer 2009, a dozen students attended a five-day Web Accessibility Workshop to learn how to evaluate the accessibility of websites and computer applications. Wendy Chisholm was the instructor. The students spent time discussing what it means for technology to be accessible and developed a set of criteria to measure the accessibility of a website. After measurable criteria were determined, the students learned about a variety of tools that are used to determine accessibility.

The Alliance for Access to Computing Careers (AccessComputing) has funds available to support training, experiential learning, and information technology (IT)-related activities nationwide. The goal is to increase the number of people with disabilities, including post-9/11 veterans, successfully pursuing computing careers.