[Accessibility_sig] Fwd: open source chat with accessibility standards

[Sharron Rush]

>From: The Digital Divide Network via Jayne Cravens:
>
>(just thought some Knowbility techies might be interested in this 
>conversation)
>
>does anyone know of an open source chat tool that complies with
>accessibility standards? I have been using PHPMyChat, but a friend told me
>that the way it refreshes the page causes some confusion with the program he
>uses to participate.
>
>Thank you,
>
>Dani Matielo
>dacamat at gmail.com
>dani at futuro.usp.br
>
>---------
>
>I am not sure if this will solve the problem you described but Meebo is
>a great chat tool.
>
>"Meebo <http://www.meebo.com> is a web based IM that lets you log into
>your IM networks from any computer with a browser and internet
>connection with no firewall issues. It employs technologies (like AJAX)
>to make it act more like a desktop application, which dramatically
>improves usability. Many users enjoy the benefits of a native DHTML
>application, as it does not consume as many system resources as a Java
>applet (such as ICQ2Go or Yahoo Web Messenger)."
>
>http://wwwm.meebo.com/index-en.html
>
>Michael McCarthy
>Michael McCarthy <michaelmccarthy_sf at yahoo.com>
>
>---------
>
>For accessibility reasons, I would avoid anything that uses AJAX, since
>there are *very* few implementations that will conform fully to standards.
>
>Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to recommend a chat client; AJAX
>is javascript and existing chat clients are java applets, neither of
>which is ideal. Perhaps something developed in flash with a built-in
>screenreader could work?
>
>I'd be interested in hearing other suggestions, since this is something
>I'd also like to learn more about.
>
>   Dave.
>  "Dave A. Chakrabarti" <dave at ctcnetchicago.org>
>
>---------
>Within the ATutor Learning Content Management system there is a chat
>feature that is WCAG-AA compliant but if you try it out you'll see
>that the act of making it validate to WCAG actually degrades
>performance for sighted users.
>
>http://www.atutor.ca/
>
>This isn't a stand-alone tool, the ATutor chat client is part of a
>larger system that cannot be decoupled without some serious code
>changes.
>
>Kelvin
>http://www.uvatt.org/
>"K Wong" <wongo888 at gmail.com>
>
>---------
>I had found the A-chat:
>
>http://achat.atrc.utoronto.ca/
>
>Also, which claims to be *WCAG 2.0 <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/> compliant,
>but couldn't make it work in my server (maybe I don't have the needed
>privileges to do so).
>
>If anyone can install it and bring feedback, I would be really interested to
>read. About the use of Flash, I believe it could work, but couldn't find an
>option yet.
>
>Thank you for the replies so far,
>
>Dani
>dacamat at gmail.com
>dani at futuro.usp.br
>---------
>
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