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Current Announcements

Upcoming Boston Accessibility Roundtable Meetings

Boston A11y Roundtable
Annual Boston Accessibility Conference
Boston-IA Focus
Boston Interactions Calendar
Past Boston-IA Meetings

Current News

Boston A11y Roundtable

Each month, the Web Accessibility community participates in the Boston A11y Roundtable, hosted by the Boston Accessibility Group (a11y-bos.org) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Boston A11y Roundtable is a monthly Web Accessibility networking event that gathers Boston area accessibility experts, user experience developers and designers, media specialists, usability professionals, and other internet professionals for the latest open discussion about accessibility.

Join the Web Accessibility community at the Boston A11y Roundtable each month to share knowledge and stay current about making electronic information more accessible for all. Everyone is welcome to attend!

The gatherings are dedicated to keeping internet professionals and other information technology and services professionals up-to-date about accessibility news and challenges, while providing networking opportunities in a fun and informal way. The format of the meetings varies from speaker presentations, to group case studies, to impromptu discussions, and more.

To learn more, or to receive announcements about future Boston A11y Roundtable events:

Find out about upcoming Boston A11y Roundtable meetings.
Visit the Boston Accessibility Group website (a11y-bos.org).
Join A11yBos on Meetup (Meetup signup required).

Hint: If you don't know what A11y stands for in A11yBos or Boston A11y, it means that there are eleven letters between the letter A and the letter Y, hence "Accessibility"! "A11yBos" simply means "Accessibility Boston"— Now you know!

Upcoming Boston A11y Roundtable Meetings

Come to the next meeting of the Boston A11y Roundtable.

The Boston A11y Roundtable networking group generally meets on a monthly basis at the IBM Innovation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Location: IBM Innovation Center, 1 Rogers Street, Room 2211, Cambridge, MA 02142

Room 2211 is located on the second floor.

Pizza and beverages will be provided. We request contributions at the meeting to defray the cost.

Event registration is requested on Meetup.com (group membership required).

Directions to the Boston A11y Roundtable

The Boston Accessibility Roundtable meets at the IBM Innovation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The IBM Innovation Center is located at the intersection of Rogers Street and Edwin H. Land Boulevard, not far from the Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston and CambridgeSide Galleria Mall in Cambridge, Massachsuetts.

Note: The sign on front of building says "One Charles Park".

Discounted parking is available at the CambridgeSide Galleria Mall. (IBM validates.)

Get directions to the IBM Innovation Center.

The closest stop on the MBTA subway system is Lechmere Station on the Green Line, approximately a quarter mile from the IBM Innovation Center.

The CambridgeSide Galleria runs a shuttle every 20 minutes from Kendall Station on the Red Line, from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m., Monday to Saturday.

Annual Boston Accessibility Conference

The 2015 Boston Accessibility Conference was held Saturday, September 19, 2015, at the IBM Innovation Center in Cambridge.

Learn more about the Boston Accessibility Group at www.a11ybos.org.

The 2014 Boston Accessibility Conference was held Saturday, May 10, 2014, at the IBM Innovation Center in Cambridge.

Boston-IA Focus

In 2003, when Boston-IA was founded, many individuals and organizations were building fairly static websites without much concern for Internet Accessibility. Boston-IA and its members focused most of our attention on advocating for online accessibility for people with disabilities and raising awareness about the need for accessible and universal web design.

A lot has changed since then. The World Wide Web has become more interactive, browsers now host a wide variety of web applications, and social networking and multimedia are incorporated everywhere. Almost everyone has at least heard of the concept of Web Accessibility, and internet professionals and organizations have been struggling with the best way to achieve accessibility compliance for the websites and applications they are developing. The bar has been raised for incorporating accessibility into the delivery of electronic information.

Even the standards and guidelines are changing. The U.S. government is working on a refresh of the Section 508 accessibility standards originally published in 1998, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) issued its second revision of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in December 2008.

Boston-IA continues to be committed to "Making Internet Accessibility Mainstream". But we see our mission shifting from the job of raising consciousness and advocating for accessibility to providing more education about how to achieve accessibility of electronic information. Not only is our focus changing, but we also see our audience expanding.

Over the years, Boston-IA has hosted or cosponsored dozens of exceptional talks and presentations on a wide variety of accessibility topics and has participated in many networking programs with fellow Boston Interactions organizations.

Our current goal is to expand our on-line presence as well and offer more information electronically. We hope to address the needs of a wider range of internet professionals in a wider geographic area, and we see more of our efforts going online.

Boston Interactions Calendar

Boston-IA is a member of Boston Interactions, a collaboration of the premier of user experience, interaction, design, and usability organizations the Greater Boston area.

Boston Interactions brings together members of Boston's premier usability and user experience organizations to network and socialize. Boston-IA has been a member of Boston Interactions since 2008.

The Boston Interactions organizations maintain a collaborative calendar to help members coordinate participation in local professional usability groups.