Introductions: Greg Gay

[Greg Gay]

Thanks for the welcome Mike. I'll spend some time with the heuristics
documents over the next couple days.

About AChecker, that happens to be another project I am leading. I
inherited it from Chris Ridpath a couple months ago, though we have not
done any further work since then. We have a  development project planned
for the fall, which will involve creating a php version of the checker,
and fixing a few bugs in the Java version.

greg

Michael S Elledge wrote:

> Hey Greg--
>
> Welcome aboard! It will be great to have you part of Fluid. You might
> want to start out by looking at the heuristics checklist we're
> developing for evaluating tools, which can be found at this url:
>
> http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Consolidated+Checklist
>
> Our approach (at this point) is to provide a checklist that can be
> used by non-experts to review a tool's usability, with non-technical
> accessibility aspects thrown in. This will be supplemented by a more
> technical review by a member of the team familiar with adaptive
> technology (JAWS, ZoomText, maybe Kurzweil 3000) and accessibility
> checkers (like aChecker).
>
> Please feel free to jump right in and offer suggestions.
>
> Mike
>
> Greg Gay wrote:
>
>> Hello All
>>
>> I'd like to introduce myself to the list. I am Greg Gay, a project
>> coordinator of 10 years at the ATRC. My office is right around the
>> corner from Colin's, The two main projects I currently run are the
>> ATutor project, and the ATRC web accessibility evaluation and design
>> services, both of which I think can bring much knowledge to this group.
>>
>> ATutor is an open source Learning [Content] Management System (an LMS,
>> but with content authoring and management capabilities). One of its key
>> strengths is accessibility, having been built from the ground up with
>> accessibility in mind. A big reason why it was created comes from a
>> couple studies I lead back in 99/00 which looked at the accessibility of
>> popular online learning systems. The first was a technical review with
>> WCAG 1 as the standard, and the second was a user study in which users
>> from various disability groups participated in a 6 week online course,
>> each week presented in a different LMS. All the systems at the time
>> failed dismally. So, my pet project I'd started back in grad school
>> (where I studied cognitive science), for delivering my own online
>> course, ended up at the ATRC, and now it's used all over the world, and
>> available in 30 or so languages. I could talk for hours about the design
>> and intricacies of the system, but you can find out about all that
>> yourself on the ATutor Web site.
>>
>> ATutor (http://www.atutor.ca <http://www.atutor.ca/>)
>>
>> Before ATutor (and still) I began running the “WebSavvy: Inclusive Web
>> Design” services at the ATRC. Most of my background in Web accessibility
>> has come through leading this group: designing accessible Web sites;
>> performing accessibility conformance evaluations; as well as
>> participation in the development of WCAG 1, and now WCAG 2. I'd be
>> willing to make this expertise available to the group when accessibility
>> of Fluid features is being considered.
>>
>> Which brings me to the main reason for joining the group. Mellon has
>> requested that ATutor participate in Fluid to expose the Fluid community
>> to ATutor, and to offer it as a model of accessible development
>> practices in action. In particular Mellon has asked that we get involved
>> with the User Experience research currently underway. We can help with
>> the accessibility piece of these reviews, plus we'd like to throw ATutor
>> into the mix of systems being reviewed. So, we're looking for a group to
>> put ATutor through the “UX Walkthrough” process.
>>
>> I'll do my best to make myself available for accessiblity or LMS related
>> dicussions, and follow the developing threads as time permits. As you
>> might imagine, ATutor, not to mention Websavvy, is already a full time
>> job. I am though, looking forward to becoming an active member of the
>> Fuild community.
>>
>> greg
>>
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>>
>>
>>   
>