The WC3‘s Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force received a presentation about a project called the “Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure” (GPII), from Gregg Vanderheiden, on March 31, 2014. Quoted below is a project description.

“The purpose of the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure (GPII) is to ensure that everyone who faces accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy, digital literacy, or aging, regardless of economic resources, can access and use the Internet and all its information, communities, and services for education, employment, daily living, civic participation, health, and safety.

As our countries build out their broadband infrastructures to ensure that broadband reaches everyone, it is important that ‘everyone’ includes people with disability, literacy and aging related barriers to Internet use. We need to be sure that we don’t stop at just connecting people to the Internet – but that we also see to it that they can actually use it, and benefit from all that it has to offer.

The GPII would not create new access technologies or services, but would create the infrastructure for making their development, identification, delivery, and use easier, less expensive, and more effective.  Like building a road system does not provide transportation but greatly enhances the ability of car companies and others to do so — and provides an infrastructure that car companies themselves cannot do. The Internet is the infrastructure for general information and commerce. The GPII enhancements to the Internet would provide the infrastructure to enable the Internet to be truly inclusive for the first time.

GPII is a paradigm shift.  The GPII will, for the first time, introduce automatic personalization of user interfaces and user context adaptation based on user preferences.  Each information and communication technology (ICT) device will be able to instantly change to fit users as they encounter the device, rather than requiring users to figure out how to adapt, configure or install access features they need.  It also introduces a system of shared components and services to reduce cost, increase interoperability, and foster innovation.”

The “GPII is a project of Raising the Floor, a consortium of academic, industry, and non-governmental organizations and individuals.”

Retrieved from http://gpii.net (Published June 30, 2010).

Note: No endorsement of the Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure and Raising the Floor is intended or implied.

A new task force has been formed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to develop accessibility guidelines for people with cognitive disabilities. It is led by Lisa Seeman, a long-time expert and advocate. Task force members are well-known experts from all over the world.

I am a member, an “Invited Expert”. My current, primary responsibility is to create and manage volunteer research groups of people with disabilities and others. I participate in the weekly conference calls of the task force, which so far have consisted of brainstorming sessions, presentations, and organization by Lisa of the task force’s work. Our first teleconference occurred on January 20th of this year.

The task force is known as the “Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force (Cognitive A11Y TF)” of the Protocols and Formats Working Group, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group.

I plan to publish, to this blog, the information I can share about the task force’s work.