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WAI-DE (DE 4105)- Project Reference Guide


This document gives information about the WAI-DE project. It is both a guide for people tracking the project from a management point of view and the home page of the project for its participants/partners.

Introduction

WAI-DE is a European Commission Telematics project whose goal is to improve the Accessibility the Web for People with Disabilities, and which is closely related to the W3C WAI project for Europe. It can be seen as a funding arm for the overall W3C WAI project, with a specific European mission.

Daniel Dardailler (W3C/INRIA, danield@w3.org) is the Project Coordinator and W3C/INRIA is the Prime Contractor.

He is the primary contact for the Commission (email is preferred), his non-electronic address and telephone are .

W3C/INRIA
1004 Route des Lucioles - B.P 93
06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex
France
Tel: +33 4 92 38 79 83
Fax: +33 4 92 38 78 22

ICS/FORTH is an associated contractor, and there are 4 sub-contractors: BrailleNet, EBU and RNIB (for W3C/INRIA) and CNR (for FORTH). All the partners are non-for-profit organizations.

The project runs for 18 months and has 5 Work Packages:

There is no Intellectual Property Right associated with this project. All the deliverables are for general Public access.


Timeline

(Note: this timeline doesn't include all the events, just the management events)


Steering Committee

WAI-DE has a Project Steering Committee that consists of the two main contractor managers, together with least one representative of each associated contractor and a Quality Panel representative. It is responsible for the overall strategy. It also has specific responsibility for ensuring that recommendations of the Quality Panel are adhered to by the Workpackage managers doing the technical and awareness developments and dissemination.

Besides face-to-face meeting, WAI-DE Project Steering Committee meets electronically under the alias: wai-tide@w3.org

The following people are on it:

This electronic mailing lists and a Web site, hosted at W3C, are used as the day-to-day management vehicle.

W3C acts as the overall project management contact and is responsible to communicating the reports and deliverables to the Commission.

Reports and deliverables will preferably be made available to the Commision using Electronic Mail and Web downloading site.

The Steering Committee or a subset of it (the W3C sub-contractors for instance) also meets using Phone conference falicities provided by INRIA W3C at the number: +33.1.49.57.40.52, or +33.1.49.57.71.59.


Online documents

Technical annex of the contract (DE4105) signed in December 97:

Also useful is the Part B (Proposal description) of the original technical proposal (Jul 97), which details each workpackage (the figures are sometimes obsolete)

The original Final Report of the project is available online (from Sep 1999).

The revised Final Report of the project is available online (from Feb 2000).



Partner infos

World Wide Web Consortium

BrailleNet (BN) Backgrounder

BrailleNet is a french consortium whose mission is to to promote the Internet for social, professional, and school integration of visually impaired people. Its objectives are to improve Internet access for visually impaired people, develops pilot web site, containing specific services, explore tele-working and education thru Internet and disseminate result of work to end-users.

The BrailleNet consortium regroups INSERM (French National Institure on Medical Research), EUROBRAILLE (first maker of Braille terminals), AFEI (specialized in the formation of visually impaired people), CNEFEI (specialized in the formation of teachers), ANPEA (National Association of Parents of Visually Impaired Children), FAF (Federation of Blind and Visually Impaires in France).

BrailleNet web site is http://www.ccr.jussieu.fr/braillenet

European Blind Union (EBU) Backgrounder

EBU is a non-governmental and non-profit making European organisation, founded in 1984. It is the principal organisation representing the interests of blind and partially sighted people in Europe with membership made up or organisations of and for visually impaired (VI) people in 43 European countries. EBU has formal consultative status as the co-ordinating NGO for the visual impairment sector on the European Disability Forum in Brussels.

EBU web site is http://www.euroblind.org

Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) Backgrounder

RNIB is the largest organisation in the UK looking after the needs of visually impaired people, with over 60 services. Current reappraisal of its work has led to services being increasingly considered in terms of supplying the needs of visually-impaired people at every stage of their lives and in various aspects. The organisation employs around 2500 people based throughout the UK, of whom 7% are visually-impaired. RNIB has already been involved as a partner in the CAPS (136/218) and Harmony (1226) projects.

RNIB web site is http://www.rnib.org.uk

Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (ICS/FORTH) Backgrounder

Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH, Greece), is a centre for research and development monitored by the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Technology (General Secretariat of Research and Technology) of the Greek Government. The Institute of Computer Science, one of the seven institutes of FORTH, conducts applied research, develops applications and products, and provides services. Current R&D activities focus on information systems, software engineering, parallel architectures and distributed systems, computer vision and robotics, digital communications, network management, machine learning, decision support systems, formal methods in concurrent systems, computer architectures and VLSI design, computer aided design, medical information systems, human-computer interaction, and rehabilitation tele-informatics. ICS-FORTH has a long research and development tradition in the design and development of user interfaces that are accessible and usable by a wide range of people, including disabled and elderly people. It has recently proposed the concept, and provided the technical framework for the development of unified user interfaces, that are adaptable to the abilities, requirements and preferences of the end user groups.

ICS/FORTH Web site is at http://www.ics.forth.gr

National Research Council (CNR) Backgrounder

The National Research Council (CNR, Italy) is a government research organisation (staff of about 7000), which is involved in activities addressing most disciplinary sectors (physics, chemistry, medicine, agriculture, etc), in cooperation with universities and industry (one of its tasks being the transfer of innovations to production and services).

CNR Web site is at http://www.cnr.it