This website explains how this organization gathers information for neighborhoods in Fredericksburg, Virginia so that they can respond to issues affecting them as a united front. They deal with issues relating to housing, transportation, and economic development. They aim to improve the quality of life for Fredericksburg residents while maintaining its character and livability.
This website is another one for Fredericksburg Neighborhood Coalition that also discusses what the coalition does and some of the issues they want to resolve. People can also get the most recent news through this site as well as donate to the organization. This website helped me evaluate the site because it has a lot of the same information and discusses the same issues.
This is an article from the Free Lance Star guest column where a member of the coalition is discussing how they put signs up around town opposing the city’s proposed ordinance. This ordinance is allowing an apartment, called an (AUD), to be added to most single-family detached homes. This website helped me evaluate the site because if a real person is posting through the local news paper about the signs they have been putting up and the issues they have been trying to resolve it makes the website more credible.
The internet is for everyone, providing access to information, communication, and opportunities regardless of background or purpose. In this post I will discuss why and how openness and accessibility help provide the internet for all
Openness
Why the internet should be open
Internet openness is crucial because it preserves freedom of expression, fosters innovation, provides access to extensive information, encourages diverse idea exchange, drives economic growth, enables global cultural exchange, facilitates connections, ensures transparency, supports human rights, and promotes global collaboration on critical issues.
How we can make the internet open
By making all work available to the public
Encourage others to create and share work
Accessibility
By definition accessibility on the internet refers to ensuring that websites, applications, and digital content are designed and developed in a way that allows people with disabilities to use and interact with them effectively. This includes considerations for individuals with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments, aiming to provide equal access and opportunities for all users.
Why should the internet be accessible?
The internet should be accessible to ensure that everyone, including individuals with disabilities, can fully participate in the digital age and access its benefits.
How can we make the internet accessible
To make the internet accessible, websites and digital content should follow accessibility standards and guidelines, ensuring compatibility with assistive technologies and accommodating various disabilities.
Click this image for w3.org’s intro to accessibility on the web
You want to make open content on the web so that everyone is able to post and interact with others through various platforms and so that all people are able to communicate freely over said network. It’s also a way for people to share and reuse data so everyone can benefit from it and get more or better information.
How?
There are many different tools and methods that can be used when trying to make content on the web/ internet more open. One way is through global sharing, and stepping away from centralized points of control. Over time we have also developed new technology which move data clusters and resolve domain names so that anyone is open to use them for any reason. You can find more information through this internet openness PDF from internetnz.
Accessibility
Why?
You would want to make the internet accessible to everyone so that wither the person is disabled or not they are still able to access and interact with web content.
How?
The internet is more accessible for disabled people by things such as screen readers, captions, and transcript audio.
There are three reasons why you would want to make something accessible. The legal reason, you could get sued, the moral reason, it is the right thing to do, and the business reason, it could be good for business by creating a more user-friendly environment for a group of people you weren’t intended to create that for.
How?
Closed captioning
Adding alternative text
Organized and easy to navigate post
Descriptive headings
Openness
Why?
Openness means to create in the open with your work freely available for others to modify and use themselves. We want to do this to make our work better and to make our world better. Through sharing content, you can inspire others and become a catalyst for new ideas and you can also receive helpful feedback.
The internet is for the public to freely engage with in order to exchange ideas, promote business or personal brand, educate themselves and others, and so much more. In order for it to be this kind of space, however, it must remain open and accessible for all individuals.
Accessibility:
Why?
The significance of accessibility to the internet cannot be understated. It enables all people to engage with modern technology, regardless of disability. Ensuring ones web design is accessible allows for people to share and learn information in a comprehensive manner, without roadblocks. It also becomes a legal issue should a website not have accessible fetures.
How?
Including assistive features such as closed-captioning for videos or alt text for images allows for blind/deaf individuals to fully grasp the content they are engaging with. Also setting up ones website to be text-to-speech friendly, blocking it into comprehensive sections, is a way to make your website more accessible.
Openness:
Why?
Openness of the internet allows for the exchange of information, ideas, and creative connection to flow more freely on the web. It benefits the public in that it provides a space for collaboration, and education.
How?
Openness is developed on the internet through the creation of public websites, made through WordPress for example. It also presents itself through public forums, social medias, blogs, and more.
For more on accessibility requirements its significance, follow click this link to discover what the ADA has for Guidance on Wed Accessibility.
Accessibility on the web means creating interfaces that don’t exclude those with disabilities. An example of disabilities that make browsing the web harder include blindness and deafness.
Why accessibility?
Legal Aspects: 20% of people have a disability, this is one out of five people in America. In America, accessibility is FEDERAL LAW.
Moral Aspects: Universal access and interoperability are what the web strives for. Corporate Social Responsibility is where many companies integrate certain aspects to their interfaces that may be concerns for their business operation or how interactive their design is.
Business Aspects: Creating accessibility can avoid potential lawsuits as accessibility is federal law. It also makes goods and services more accessible to a broader number of consumers.
How do you make it accessible?
Making an interface accessible to users with disabilities, examples of disabilities that impair web usage would be blindness or deafness.
One way to accommodate deafness is to apply closed captioning to any video or audio.
Openness in terms of the internet means creating online resources and sources that allow others to observe, critique, and collaborate using these sources without penalty. This allows more information to be shared!
Why Openness?
Creating a more open online resource will force you to think more introspective and articulate why your actions are justified.
Sharing with a broader community allows more users to validate or invalidate your decisions. This can help solve everyone’s problems and not just a few.
How do you make it open?
An example of creating more open resources is through open-source programming. Open-source programming is a software program whose source code can be distributed and made available for use, modification, and distribution however other editors see fit.
While we want to say that the internet is for everyone, there are two major factors that must be met in order for the internet to be open. The first factor is openness while the second factor is accessibility. In todays post, we’ll go over what it means to be open and accessible on the internet. We’ll also focus on why it’s important to meet these two factors while also looking at how well the internet has adapted to these two factors over time.
Openness
Why?
Openness allows:
Easy access and communication with others
Can create something new with others
Allows others to take a peek at your creative process
How?
How to be open:
Making your work and information public
Communicate and share ideas with others
Accessibility
Why?
Easy accessibility allows:
A website that can be easily used and understood by all
Avoidance of major lawsuits
Aiding those who have a disability
How?
How to achieve accessibility:
Closed captions
Text to Speech reader
Online translator
If you want more information about how to achieve accessibility on the web, visit this guide on the ADA website
The internet is for the anyone in the world to use. This website is going to explain to you the importance of internet accessibility.
Openness
Openness can be defined as reachable by the general public and does is not limited to just one person. This can benefit many people.
Why?
The information your sites may be very helpful to someone that you are not familiar with. Also you could appreciate collaborations.
How?
You can enable openers by making your site. Another way you can excessive openness is by allowing anyone to make an account and share the content.
Accessibility
Accessibility is about making things usable and universally open to all more than just the majority. Something with low accessibility might have very few accommodations for people with impairments, while websites with high accessibility will have many accommodations for people with impairments.
Why?
The reason we need accessibility is because people with impairments deserve to experience the World Wide Web like everyone else. The more you make something accessible, the more people you can reach.
How?
You can make things more accessible by adding things like “click to speak”, descriptive alt text for pictures or even Spanish versions of your website.
Find more information about accessibility on the WAI website.