Seven partners are involved in Support-EAM from seven different countries in Europe:
The BrailleNet Association (www.braillenet.org) was set up in 1997 to develop the potential of the Internet for visually impaired people, in three main domains: information, education and culture. It has currently around 50 organisation members, spatial associations, schools, industrial companies.
In the field of Web Accessibility, particularly, BrailleNet has been campaigning for a better accessible Web for all, writing and disseminating documents such as guidelines targeted toward Web designers. BrailleNet co-operates with the INRIA, one of the leading organisation of the W3C-WAI, and takes an active part in dissemination and outreach actions of WAI in Europe. BrailleNet helps organisations that commit themselves in the improvement of Web sites for their accessibility: for instance, BrailleNet brought its expertise to the newspaper " Le Monde ", to the Web services of the Prime Minister, of Ministry of Equipment, Ministry of Health, Hachette Multimedia for its encyclopaedia,... BrailleNet has created the AccessiWeb quality label (www.accessiweb.org)
BrailleNet is taking part in the WAI-TIES project as subcontractor, involved in the following actions:
Also, BrailleNet has set up an Internet server, Hélène, for the organisations producing books in alternate formats (Braille, large print). Organisations that have been certified get an authorisation for a secured access to source files. Hélène contains both literary and school books in French. The files are provided by publishers who have contracted with BrailleNet (www.serveur-helene.org).
BrailleNet explores the potential of structured electronic formats and ways to produce automatically accessible books for visually impaired readers.
Contact:
Dominique Burger, President of the Association BrailleNet.
Pierre GUILLOU, Web Accessibility Department Manager in BrailleNet.
Technosite (www.technosite.es) specialises in integrated e-business and Internet solutions, consultancy on project strategy, management and execution, design of technology solutions, systems integration, hosting and housing, website design and production, documentation, content management and usability and accessibility.
Technosite is a member of the Fundosa Group, part of the ONCE Foundation. ONCE is the Spanish National Organisation of the Blind, and the ONCE Foundation is a cross-disability non-profit foundation funded by ONCE.
Technosite has developed and manages Discapnet (www.discapnet.es), a web portal specialising in disability issues and resources. Discapnet is funded jointly by the ONCE Foundation and the European Regional Development Fund. Discapnet has consolidated its position as the most important Spanish language disability portal, and makes a major contribution to the access of disabled persons and their organisations in the Information Society. Discapnet has a projected budget of € 12 M for the period 2000-2006 and employs a full time staff 18.
One of the most important lines of business for Technosite is improving the accessibility of Information Society services. It specialises in usability and accessibility evaluation of telematics services and devising solutions to overcome barriers.
Over 70% of the staff of Technosite have some kind of disability, giving the company a unique awareness of cross-disability issues in the workplace. Technosite designs and develops online services that are accessible and easy to use for all, based on the application of the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and collaboration with the CIDAT (Research Centre for Assistive Technology Applications) of the ONCE. Technosite participates in Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) working groups. It also participates actively in the EDeAN network of centres of excellence in Design for All promoted by the European Commission and the evaluation and certification methodology being developed by the EuroAccessibility consortium.
In 2003, Teleservicios has provided a number of training courses on accessibility awareness and design techniques for the Spanish Ministry of Work and Social Affairs for personnel in public administration.
Contact:
Blanca Alcanda, General Manager of Technosite.
Alan Chuter, Web Accessibility consultant with Technosite.
The Bartiméus Accessibility Foundation is a leading, independent centre of expertise in the accessibility field for companies, government bodies and other social institutions and organisations. The Accessibility Foundation provides advice, research services, training and an evaluation scheme (www.design4all.org) to policy makers and webdesigners. Currently we are working on a national accredited Quality Mark for accessible websites actively involving all stakeholders. We are technical helpdesk and project partner of the Dutch National Accessibility project "Drempels Weg." Within the Drempels Weg Project we have done thematic benchmarking of websites and we have also evaluated and advised more than 80 of the Dutch top-100 companies on the accessibility of their web related products and services. Also within this project we provide the training for webdevelopers and policy makers. Accessibility is part of the Dutch National Center of Excellence and member of the eAccessibility Expert Group advising ESDIS. We have advised Eu on techniques and methodologies for evaluating web accessibility and for benchmarking. Accessibility was responsible for the first book (worldwide) on accessibility, the official Dutch translation of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) accessibility guidelines, the curriculum, and other W3C documents. We also helped to produce the Drempels Weg brochure, a comprehensive brochure about web accessibility evaluation. Accessibility closely monitors the rapid developments taking place in digital technology in order to maintain its level of expertise in the field and therefore its ability to inform others.
Accessibility is a Member of the W3C and active in different working groups. Currently we are developing a usability lab and testing protocols for specialised usability testing with users with disabilities. We launched the soundgame Drive together with the Utrecht School of the Arts where we are implementing accessibility as an integral part of the curriculum. Also we have built up extensive expertise in evaluating and benchmarking the accessibility of educational software and E-learning.
Contact:
Eric Velleman, Director of Bartimeus Accessibility Foundation.
Dublin City University is a public university institution established by act of parliament. The student enrolment is approximately 9,500 across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in scientific, engineering, business and humanities disciplines. The Research Centre for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE) is a national research centre, established at DCU in 1999 under the Higher Education Authority's (HEA) Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions. The eAccessibility lab, is affiliated with both RINCE and the School of Electronic Engineering at DCU. The lab has been responsible for research involving large scale automated web accessibility evaluation. It normally has a human resource complement of 4-6 affiliated researchers, together with lab space, workstation, and server computer facilities.
Contact:
Dr. Barry McMullin, Director of the eAccessibility Lab.
The institute was established in 1991 at the University of Linz as a model project which offers support services for students with disabilities. The main part of the support activities is related to the preparation of studying materials such as books, lecture notes, slides, exercises, contents of the blackboard and so forth for print disabled students in accessible formats. In 1995, the model project was established as the "Department Computer Science for the Blind". In 2000, an Austria-wide institute was established as a co-operation with five Austrian universities (University of Linz, Vienna University of Technology, University of Vienna, University of Graz, University of Klagenfurt). Because of a new university law, the institute works autonomously again since 2004.
Research and teaching is oriented towards ICT for people with disabilities, Assistive Technologies and their application and therefore also toward eInclusion. More specific aspects are:
IS has been involved in more than 25 national and international projects related to R&D in this field. The institute is involved in the Austria-wide production of teaching and learning materials for blind and visually handicapped students in primary and secondary schools. IS is also involved in teachers education, especially concerning IT usage in integrated education.
Staff of the institute has been working for several years as evaluator and reviewer for the European Commission.
Contact:
Klaus Miesenberger, Director of the Institute "Institut integriert studieren",
Daniela Ortner, Research assistant at "Institut integriert studieren".
Founded in 1425, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) is the oldest university of the Lower Countries and largest Belgian university. It has over 26,000 students and its Applied Sciences Faculty is actually a Technical University in its own right. KUL has a long track record of research work and its members participate in almost every regional, federal and European research programme.
The Electrotechnical Engineering Department (ESAT) of the KUL has currently a staff of over 300 researchers. Its main activities include control theory, circuit development, multimedia research (document, image and sound processing), applied electronics, informatics (cryptography, accessibility by persons with a handicap) and power engineering.
The Research Group on Document Architectures (DocArch) was formed in 1991, and its knowledge was then based on electronic document conversion research in the 1980s. It is now active in the modelling of information (hypertext and multimedia) in structured documents, and on the applications, such as high-speed document transformations, stemming from this approach. Currently the Research Group is focusing on navigational aspects in large document collections and gaining information from these collections through RDF and Topic Maps technology.
The DocArch group also is an internationally acknowledged expert in the field of making information accessible for visually impaired persons, and uses this expertise for the production of accessible electronic documents (books, newspapers in Daisy format). KULRD-DocArch was also a founding member of the EuroAccessibility consortium (April 2003).
The Research Group on Document Architectures established its knowledge base through many activities of which only a few can be mentioned:
Jan Engelen, Professor at the Research Group on Document Architectures.
For a number of years Accessinmind Limited has specialised in evaluating websites (both Public and Private Sector) for conformance against WAI Guideline - developing related methodologies, techniques and tools.
Contact:
Alistair GARRISON, Managing Director of Accessinmind Limited.
