{"id":1129,"date":"2008-03-30T11:23:30","date_gmt":"2008-03-30T16:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=1129"},"modified":"2008-03-30T11:23:30","modified_gmt":"2008-03-30T16:23:30","slug":"the-accessibility-of-online-forums-for-public-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=1129","title":{"rendered":"The accessibility of online forums for public meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>People often raise concerns about accessibility when the idea is raised to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.horsepigcow.com\/2007\/10\/17\/the-brown-act-of-1953-how-this-positive-policy-now-negatively-affects-civic-collaboration\/\">use internet technology for public meetings<\/a>.<br \/>\nIn my opinion, perceptions are lagging reality. In the latest 2006 large-scale internet study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/PPF\/r\/182\/report_display.asp\">73% of US adults had internet access.<\/a> The percent in the San Francisco Bay area was <a href=\"http:\/\/findarticles.com\/p\/articles\/mi_qn4176\/is_20031229\/ai_n14560798\">83% back in 2003<\/a>.<br \/>\nA decade ago, there were serious accessibility concerns.  Today, internet access is mainstream.  Physical attendance to a meeting poses greater accessibility barriers than online participation. Meetings in a building pose problems with people who have mobility impairments and sensory impairments, as well as people who have needs for child care or elder care.<br \/>\nInternet meetings surely need to be as broadly noticed as meetings in a physical building, and it would be important to accommodate people who have shared internet access for example at the library.  Taking those considerations into account, I see internet forums as a way of broadening access, not limiting access.<br \/>\nI see local governments in this area doing a lot to try and stimulate civic participation.  Local governments are also open to innovation in other areas such as green policy. So I would hope that some local governments would want to take the lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People often raise concerns about accessibility when the idea is raised to use internet technology for public meetings. In my opinion, perceptions are lagging reality. In the latest 2006 large-scale internet study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 73% of US adults had internet access. The percent in the San Francisco Bay area &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=1129\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The accessibility of online forums for public meetings&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-id","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}