Hi. I need your help. I would like to search for sponsors for a project which shall increase the accessibility and usability of the Mediawiki user interface for blind screen reader users. I collected my first thoughts at http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Accessibility_and_Wikis
I would be glad if some of you could post comments, suggestions or useful links to the talk page.
For example: I would like to learn why it is not possible to use the Mediawiki extension from reCAPTCHA for Wikipedia. This would allow the use of an alternative audio CAPTCHA, but there are surely important arguments against this idea.
Don't worry, I am not an accessibility hawk. I just want to inform about the needs of blind Wiki users.
There should be lots of potential sponsors for the suggested accessibility/usability development project. If one or more parties would give money, a professional Wiki programmer could be hired to optimize the monobook CSS and JS for screen reader software. After that, the results and experiences could be used for a screen reader skin or gadget for the MediaWiki software. Organisations and companies such as the Mozilla Foundation, the GNOME Foundation, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Canonical, Novell, Google and many other parties already support open source accessibility projects.
Why shouldn't we find similar help for MediaWiki and thereby for the great and well known Wikipedia? The costs would be low and the benefits significant. The WikiMedia Foundation and the global blind community will surely appreciate sponsored accessibility improvements.
I would like to search for sponsorship opportunities for such an development project. I don't want the Wikimedia Foundation to pay for anything, but I need interest and supporting words from Mediawiki experts first. Accessibility improvements for blind users could be used as another argument for the PR of Wikimedia Foundation and thereby for future fundraisings. What do you think?
Best regards from Germany, Per