Brian
Following our phone conversation, here is a brief bit on us and our
systems manager Paul Dilley witll also send you his interests.
Paul and I set up dis-forum in 1994 and it is fair to say that it
accepted as essential to disability support staff in universities.
The Web could improve some aspects like the archive.
We are natuarlly interested in access to the Web by disabled people,
though as I said, I expect the technology exists to do this. What
does not exist is the standard to which page designers should work to
avoid excluding all manner of individuals, blind deaf etc.
As chair of the national federation of access centres, I have links
with thirty technology support units in the uk from Plymouth to
Aberdeen. About ten are in HE, the rest in FE. So any projects to
look at implementing standards would have both centres bright enough
to contribute to the designs and others techy enough to test
implementation.
As a self funding unit, we would have difficulty spending large sums
on foreign travel, though if the opportunity arose, I might ask the
senior management if they could help out- for the reputation's sake!
As I stressed, we are a service delivery unit rather than a research
unit. Though Paul could do either and would certainly be capable of
working closely with any research group on putting their ideas into
practice.
Dave Laycock MBE
Head of CCPD, Chair of NFAC
Computer Centre for People with Disabilities
University of Westminster
72 Great Portland Street
London W1N 5AL
tel. 0171-911-5161
fax. 0171-911-5162
WWW home page: http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccpd/
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