Boston-IA Presents a Talk on Section 508 Refresh, October 22

Share news about your local events that have accessibility on the menu! Here’s a tip from the Boston, Massachusetts area submitted by our SIG member, P.J. Gardner, Information Designer and Web Accessibility Consultant.

If you live in the greater Boston area, please consider attending the following event on the “New Section 508″!

I thought I would personally invite you to the next meeting of Boston-IA, an organization “Making Internet Accessibility Mainstream”. Also feel free to pass this notice along to any colleagues you think might be interested.

The meeting will be held at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, October 22, 2008, from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.

The talk is entitled, “The New Section 508: Modeling Usability, Interoperability, and Harmonization”.

Our speaker is Mike Paciello, President of the Paciello Group, a member of the STC AccessAbility SIG, and co-chair of TEITAC (Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee)–the U.S. Federal “Section 508 Refresh” committee charged with revising the Section 508 and Section 255 accessibility standards.

The first version of Section 508 was published on December 21, 2000, and the new version was submitted for approval on April 3 of this year. Come to this meeting to find out what the new standards will look like.

Any company or organization that wants to sell information technology products to the U.S. federal government–or that has a customer with such a requirement–is governed by Section 508. Section 255 governs communications products.

If you have any interest whatsoever in making electronic information accessible, this is the meeting to attend!

Registration

Please pre-register by October 20 at http://www.boston-ia.org/meetings/registration.html, or by sending an e-mail
to: registerlist @ Boston-IA.org.

The meeting is free for Boston-IA members, and $15 for all others. New members can join Boston-IA for a pro-rated fee of $25 and attend all remaining meetings in 2008 for free. (Boston-IA memberships are renewable each January for $50.) Support Boston-IA by becoming a member now!

We hope to see you there!

Best Regards,
P.J.