Weekly Report: Trying to Catch Up
Chris Hofstader
1. The googlegroups interface is a real drag with Safari and
VoiceOver. Can someone else please add Jamal if he's not already
there and Sina Bahram as well. Sina will be helping us with IT issues
and is a real smart graduate student at NC State. I put their
addresses in the CC line on this email.
2. The "Fruit Basket" collection of example programs, long considered
oneof the most valuable resources in the world of programming with a
vision impairment (they demonstrate how to code UI elements even if
you cannot see them) needs a new home very soon. As per last week's
email, have we added Drupal accounts for Jamal and I? Sina, currently
the custodian of this very educational suite of programs should also
be added so he can maintain our downloads page (maybe pages in the
future) and help us with some of the hard IT problems as we move
forward as he is a an expert level web guy who has volunteered to take
on a lot of the IT efforts - not just blindness but anything we work on.
3 I think we should do a call to get those of us who do already know
each other acquainted. It may be worthwhile to schedule a monthly
call but, for now, Sina and Jamal don't know any of the Trace people
(except Gregg of course) and we should probably have a connectivity
bridge with the BSO people doing RTF stuff. It would be great to have
Jim at the "get to know you" meeting but with his schedule we
shouldn't make it a requirement but someone from BSO should probably
be on the line.
4. My document outline is moving forward slowly but reasonably good
clip. GV and Jamal should expact Draft .5 sometime next week.
5. We should start to assemble our group fundraising list. We don't
want to contact them yet but getting the list in order so it's
prepared when we are ready to launch a campaign will be helpful.
Likewise, we should start assembling our list of prominent supporters
- people and organizations who either make big contributions and want
to be acknowledged or are well known in the BLV community and adding
their name will attract others to either join our ranks or contribute.
This activity is a lot more delicate than one might think as we need
to thread the needle between ACB and NFB. These membership
organizations have been known to oppose initiatives just because the
other supports it (look at the accessible money battle where NFB
lobbied for it and it failed, a decade or so later ACB lobbied for it
and NFB denounced the effort for no reason discernable to most
observers other than ACB was behind the newer legislation. The ACB
backed bill did pass and was signed by President Bush. Some people,
Dean Blazie for instance, are tightly identified with NFB and may turn
off ACB people (Jime has already contacted Blazie about RtF and Dean
will support us).
That's all I can think of for this week. I'll try to do the weekly
reports on Fridays but they may slip into the weekend depending upon
my load.
cdh
Admin
you on board!
-Becky