Re: Forming an Accessibility Steering Committee

[Jason White <jason jasonjgw net>]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 07:34:29PM -0800, Peter Korn wrote:
 
> This is definitely useful.  But cost is not the only key 
> dimension/differentiator.  Taking control of ones own destiny is 
> another.  Jan Buchal has spoken eloquently on the free-as-in-freedom 
> aspects of open source accessibility.  

Correct. Free as in freedom, as Richard Stallman puts it, is the most valuable
aspect. I think there is more work to do among those committed to
accessibility in shifting from advocacy to direct participation in the
communities responsible for developing free and open-source software.
Fortunately, there is much more such participation now than there was ten
years ago, thanks to the efforts of many people; but this is one area in which
there could still be further improvement.

At a personal level, I don't enjoy advocacy work and tend to avoid it, which
is why all of my contributions have been to standards committees and free and
open-source software communities where everyone is collaborating to create a
piece of software or a standard. This is a very different mode of
participation from trying to convince corporations or governments to adopt
(or, more often than not, retract) a policy. In essence, doing real
development work is much more interesting than trying to persuade other people
to do it.