Hi, As pointed out in Debconf wikipage[0], accessibility is one of the 9 prioritary items for picking a Debconf venue. Although I don't agree it should be the 9th item on that list, lets take this page as a little "provocation" for this email. [0] http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/PriorityList First, how is the accessibility status on DC9? The only information I could get was from Joerg's blog[1]. [1] http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/11/28/ftpmaster-meeting-in-extremadu.html Last DC we experienced some issues on this. As far as I know, it was a mix of many things, which involved lack of communication, registration deadline problems, delays on getting some local information etc. In order to not have these kinds of problems in DC9, I would like to volunteer in this field this year. My proposal starts on penta. Like we have a "food" combobox (for regular, vegan etc), we should have something similar for special needs*. For now I can cite these ones (taken from wikipedia): - special needs on mobility access - special needs on hearing access - special needs on sight access - others * I have no formal experience in this subject, so please be free to fix any politically incorrect terms here, ok? After having people registered, a group of volunteers, which can include mainly local, but also remote helpers, would: - agree to assist individually one or more attendee marked as needing help on penta - ask them about their special needs - interact with the local team / help them to get things done - give feedback to the attendees (sending them pictures, measures etc) - compile all this information in order to get a checklist for next DCs Note that it's very important to give all the information as detailed as possible for people with special needs. When people go to DC, as you know they are usually far from their doctors in the case of emergencies, far from their infrastructure, from their family etc. It's a pain when someone arrives and realizes that s(he) will spend weeks in a place where (s)he will have difficulty getting food, walking around, sleeping, hacking, going to the bathroom, interacting with others and so on. That's why I believe we need a small team dedicated to take care of these issues. It's very stressfull for the "regular" local team people to be aware of all these details. If there is no objection to this, I would ask someone that has worked on penta to help me out. Also, I will try to organize the stuff in Debconf wiki and ask for remote/local volunteers. Regards, -- Tiago Bortoletto Vaz http://tiagovaz.org 0xA504FECA - http://pgp.mit.edu GNU/Linux user #188687
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