[Athen] [ATHEN] The John Slatin Fund Accessibility Project

[Ron Stewart]

What a wonderful Idea! 

John was a creat inspiration and friend to many in the field and I for one
was sorrowed by his passing.  Many a fine evening was spent in the Broker
Inn at AHG with John, glass of Merlot in hand, conversing on the meaning of
live in the access world.

I would strongly encourage the ATHEN membership to participate as life lets
you.  Perhaps the ATHEN student scholarship should be named to commemorate
John's work as well? 

Ron Stewart

-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 5:40 PM
To: 'Access Technologists in Higher Education Network'; 'Alternate Media'
Subject: [Athen] The John Slatin Fund Accessibility Project

As many of you know, John Slatin passed away last week, and in celebration
of how his life has touched so many of us in the accessibility arena a
project is being launched that will both honor his memory and assist his
family with significant expenses that remain from his long illness.  There
is a new project designed to help.

The basic idea is this.  
1)	We get accessibility experts to volunteer a few hours of time to
perform a brief accessibility review of a company or organization web site.

2)	We get companies to sign up.  They will contribute a minimum of
US$500 to "The John Slatin Fund".
3)	The expert and the company are paired and the review takes
place, spreading the word on accessibility.
		
This review will not be comprehensive but serve to provide an organization
with enough information so that they can understand what the strengths and
weaknesses of their site are and what course of action is recommended.  Some
site owners may need a more rigorous audit in order to completely understand
all accessibility issues, but such an audit is out of the scope of a review
that takes 3-4 hours.  This is intended as an introduction to accessibility
for the site owner who is interested in learning about this important topic.
Accessibility experts will need to conduct a short review, using
combinations of tests to provide a document with an overview of
accessibility to the site for users with various disabilities.

What we need is for people who are willing to donate a few hours of their
time to sign up as reviewers, which you can do at 
http://www.knowbility.org/business/john-slatin/volunteer.php. 

In addition, we ask that everyone help spread the word about this project to
help us get companies interested in an accessibility review to sign up and
to donate to The John Slatin Fund.  If you have a blog, please blog this
project.  A short description:
---
The John Slatin Fund Accessibility Project matches accessibility experts
with companies that would like a brief review of their site for
accessibility. In return, the site owner is asked to contribute a minimum of
$500 to The John Slatin Fund. The John Slatin Fund was established to help
John's beloved Anna offset the medical expenses incurred during John's long
illness. The goal of this project is to raise $25,000 for that purpose.
Learn about the project and sign up at
http://www.knowbility.org/business/john-slatin
---

This is a project developed and managed by friends of John. All proceeds go
directly to John's family.  Please join us in honoring John and helping his
family.


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