[Accessibility-testing] June plans

[Jason McIntosh]

On May 28, 2019, at 3:40 PM, Jason McIntosh <jmac at jmac.org> wrote:
> 
> I continue to plan to make that happen on June 3, which is a week from yesterday! This will involve me, as a first step, putting the report at its permanent home on the iftechfoundation.org website, and then updating other pages on that site as appropriate in order to link to it. I’ll update this list as that happens.

Just letting y’all know that this process is underway, as of yesterday. I co-manage the IFTF website the rest of the IFTF board, so making changes to it requires a group feedback-and-approval process, and that takes a little time. I don’t plan on making any noise in public until the IFTF website is updated, and linking to the report’s new, permanent website. I hope for that to happen sometime this week, if not today, and I’ll keep this list updated.

This is also the right time to say something a little bittersweet: This program will end, and its committee will officially disband, upon the publication of the report. IFTF’s Accessibility Testing Program was an ad-hoc program from the start, with a single, deliverable goal, rather than an ongoing mission; its fate to dissolve upon publication was made explicit in its charter, as written in 2016 (https://iftechfoundation.org/documents/access-committee.pdf).

This does *not* mean the end of IFTF’s interest in IF accessibility! I fully intend to put some follow-through energy into encouraging more conversation and work around the report, after it goes public, and it’s entirely likely that a new IFTF program will arise from that — but it’ll be a new program, with its own chartered mission and committee membership. (And that membership might indeed overlap with this committee’s membership, depending upon folks’ time and interest!)

The program’s own webpage will remain permanently online at its current location (https://iftechfoundation.org/committees/access/), only with its verbs changed to past tense, and a link to the report added. It will also appear in a new “Past programs” section on IFTF’s programs listing. So, beyond your named credit in the report, evidence of your membership in the program’s committee will remain online.

I intend to keep this mailing list active indefinitely, as well, and I intend to use it to share publications and mentions of the report and related material over the rest of this summer. But until then, let me take this opportunity to say how proud I am of the work that this committee has accomplished. Over the last two and a half years, you have all contributed to this new effort to make interactive fiction better and more accessible for everyone, and I feel extremely grateful for it.