What Accessibility Means:

Introductory Statement to the Seminar

December 16, 1998

María Cristina Sará-Serrano Mathiason

President of Associates for International Management Services

Dear Friends,

On behalf of Associates for International Management Services I would like to welcome you to Accessibility 1998, an exploration of how to use the Internet.

I think we all have become part of the Internet culture and that much of what we will be covering will not be completely new. We are focussing, however, on something that is essential if the Internet is to live up to its promise: accessibility.

As a person with a disability, this is something very personal.

I am not very technologically-inclined, but I discovered that the Internet provided me with a set of tools that could help get past some of the limitations caused by my disability.

In the summer of 1995, I was preparing to go to Beijing to participate in the Fourth World Conference on Women as part of an NGO delegation. A few weeks before we were due to leave I broke my leg and could not travel. I was obviously very disappointed. But Clint Rapley suggested that I go to Beijing via the Internet.

And I did. I could log on and get up to date news about what was happening. I could view pictures that were posted. If I had wanted to, I could have sent e-mails with comments.

In the process I learned how to "surf" the Internet. Technology made Beijing accessible for me, and in fact, for many other persons with disabilities.

If I think back, Beijing was only three years ago, but technology has moved on. I bought a Macintosh Powerbook instead of an airline ticket. Our first Powerbook had 5 megabytes of RAM and a hard disk that could store 40 megabytes of information. Its modem could communicate at 14.4 Kilobytes per second.

My Powerbook was stolen last summer and we replaced it with the machine that we'll be using today. The new machine has 64 MB of RAM, 2.5 gigabytes of storage and a 56 K modem. The browser, as you can see, can transmit videos live.

Technology moves very fast indeed.

I learned about how to surf by trial and error. And I must admit that I am a consumer rather than a producer on the Internet. In fact, I am one of your consumers.

For that reason, I am personally concerned that the United Nations space on the Internet be accessible. I mean this in two senses: that the United Nations sites contain the information I need and want, and that it is easily available to as many persons as possible.

Putting this seminar together, we have tried to look at what you might need in terms of concepts and tools, to make your part of the Internet accessible. My associates and I have drawn on their own experience to design the presentations for today and the follow-up over the next four to five months. I want to introduce them to you.

Chuck Kuhlman, who has spent much of his career working with telecommunications will take you through the basics of the underlying technology. Chuck is also concerned with the way information is organized and will be taking charge of that aspect.0

John Mathiason will discuss policy issues and uses of the Internet. I should tell you that John became interested in Internet policy as one of the consequences of the Beijing Conference. He saw the Internet as a means of bringing the United Nations directly to the people and thereby strengthen the organization.

Matt Bonham came at the Internet from a different direction. He was concerned with finding ways to link students and scholars with each other for training and research and so he developed programs of distance collaboration. His own school has branches in Washington, D.C. and New York City as well as Syracuse, and he has collaborators all over the world.

Leo Valdes came at the Internet from the technological side, but became very convinced that accessibility was a key. He has been behind the design of the Social Policy and Development Web Site, which is very accessible both in terms of the information they contain and the ease of use.

The seminar is very much a joint effort and I hope that you, as producers for the Internet, will benefit from it and, thereby, people like me, who are your consumers, will also benefit.

Thank you.

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