Accessibility

For some time now the Mozilla Foundation has been involved in supporting efforts to make Firefox and other Mozilla products more accessible to people with disabilities; see for example my blog post on Mozilla and accessibility. This document builds on the ideas in that post to propose an overall vision and strategy for possible efforts to improve the accessibility of Firefox and other Mozilla-related software and the web in general. Note that the ideas expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Mozilla Foundation. It’s up to the Foundation board and to the new executive director to decide whether and how to implement this proposed strategy. Also note that my comments are primarily concerning the Mozilla Foundation; however the Mozilla Corporation has also taken some great steps to support accessibility (for example, hiring Tim Keenan to work full-time on accessibility QA and evangelism) and no doubt will do more in future. ...

I previously blogged about the Mozilla Foundation and the CSUN conference on information technology and persons with disabilities. As noted in the post the Mozilla project and Firefox are really gaining traction with people concerned about web accessibility, thanks to the hard work of people like Aaron Leventhal. Inspired by Aaron’s recent interview in the online publication Voice of the Nation’s Blind, I want to take a broader view and present my thoughts on why accessibility is important for the Mozilla project, the role that Mozilla and Firefox might play in the world of assistive technology (AT) as it evolves, and what the Mozilla Foundation might do to help this process along. ...

Last week on behalf of the Mozilla Foundation I attended the 21st Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, sponsored by the Center on Disabilities at California State University, Northridge, better known to all and sundry as the CSUN 2006 conference or just plain “CSUN”. The CSUN conference is the premier conference for people interested in the topic of software accessibility and “assistive technologies” in general. This was the first year that the Mozilla project had a formal presence at the conference, and it turned out to be a “coming out party” for the Mozilla project’s accessibility activities in general and for accessibility support in Firefox in particular. This post provides an in-depth report on our CSUN experience. ...

UPDATE 2023-03-27: This page is obsolete, as it refers to a prior version of this blog. However, it may be of historical interest. I’ve tried to make this site accessible to as many people as possible; here I describe the accessibility features of this site. (This statement is based on Mark Pilgrim’s accessibility statement.) If you have any questions or comments about the accessibility of this site, feel free to email me at the address found elsewhere on this site. ...