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