Announcing AEGIS - a =?windows-1252?Q?=8012=2E6m_investment_?= =?windows-1252?Q?in_open_source_accessibility?=

[news 28]

I am *very* pleased to share with you news about the AEGIS project, a

€12.6m investment in accessibility, with the vast majority of it focused

on open source solutions.

 

Rather than repeat here all that I have written about AEGIS already, I

will instead invite you to read about it in my blog:

http://blogs.sun.com/korn/ or check out the AEGIS website at:

http://www.aegis-project.eu/

 

I have worked in the field of accessibility for nearly 17 years, and on

open source accessibility almost a dozen of those years. In that time,

open source accessibility has become a deep and abiding passion.

 

I'm very proud that the techniques we have pioneered in the open source

community have since been adopted by Apple with the Macintosh &

VoiceOver, and are being adopted by Microsoft with UI Automation. These

same techniques are enshrined in the report a 42 member committee

delivered to the U.S. Access Board earlier this year (and which at this

very moment being reviewed by them as they work on their refresh of the

Section 508 accessibility standard). And these techniques are at the

core of the AEGIS project.

 

With AEGIS, over the next 3.5 years we will attempt to bring

programmatic accessibility more fully to the web, and to the mobile

world. With AEGIS we will also address a number of issues that still

remain in accessibility on the open desktop. And while we're at it, we

will bring a bunch of new and talented people into the open source

accessibility community (you should start seeing them showing up on our