Sent emails to

• European Foundation Center
• Swiss National Association for the Blind
• European Disability Foundation
• International Disability Alliance

Inviting them to help us with promotion and sponsorship.

So I got first feedback today from the European Disability Foundation. I had asked them for 3 things:

1.- Help with promotion. I figured that, if they could spread the news to their associates, we would get more support and coverage from beyond our community.

2.- Help with guidelines and feedback from actual disabled people. By getting feedback from people who actually have difficulty with our interfaces, we may be able to catch things that otherwise may be overlooked.

3.- Help with sponsorship.

The EDF are willing to help us with 1, are contacting disabled developers for 2 and have also pointed us to

http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/301500_301599/301549/01.01.02_60/en_301549v010102p.pdf

a document the developers should at least be aware of.

They also pointed us to

https://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech

which should also be looked at.

As for 3, they said they are small NGO centred on advocacy, and therefore can't help us directly. So I asked them to put me in touch with anybody the knew that could help us.

Fingers crossed.

EDITED TO INCLUDE BETTER VERSION. Thanks @colomar for the pointers.

This is the email I sent to the organisations listed above:

SUBJECT01: Can you help us with our Accessibility programming sprint?
SUBJECT02: Can you help make KDE more Accessible for everybody?

Hello XXXXXX,

We are writing to you today on behalf of the KDE Community. KDE develops (mostly) end-user software for (mostly) Linux. Along with Gnome, we produce and maintain one of the two largest free and open source desktops for Linux systems: Plasma.

https://www.kde.org/plasma-desktop

We also produce a large amount of applications for Plasma (and other desktops and platforms), such as email clients (Kmail), design programs (Krita), educational software (GCompris), video editors (KDEnlive), and much more. All our software is Free Software, is distributed for free, with its source code, to everyone in the world. KDE relies on a community of (mostly) volunteers for development, testing, outreach and other tasks. No one company controls KDE. It is truly a joint effort of an altruistic community.

However, volunteers tend to work on what they like, and so, some features often fall by the wayside. Such is the case with accessibility.

To address this problem, we are organising a sprint in Randa, Switzerland, for September. In this sprint, our developers will work on specific applications to make them more accessible to people with vision, hearing, or mobility problems. We will, for example, improve the text-to-speech of our mapping application, Marble. We will also work on improving Braille-based activities in our collection of educational games for children, GCompris.

So the reason we are contacting you with this news is threefold:

1. We need help spreading the word. If you think this news merits your organisation mentioning us in a press release or on your social media, you would help us a lot in the task of raising awareness of our project.

2. We would appreciate if you could advise our developers. If there are members of your organisation who could get in touch with our programmers and give them concrete advice on what needs be implemented into programs to make them more accessible, this would be invaluable. If they could test our software and give feedback, it would be even better.

3. We need sponsorship. We usually rely on the community, banks, tech businesses and local companies for funding and resources, but, as this is especially interesting for society in general, we have decided to widen our scope. And, as the issues we will be addressing are relevant to your organisation, we were thinking you may want to help us fund the event:

https://randa-meetings.ch/support-randa-meetings/

We are also running a crowdfunding campaign at

https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2017/

to cover travel expenses of the developers who want to attend the even.

If you decide to help us, we will highlight your organisation as the patron of our sprint in all promotional materials that will be published during and after the event. We can also offer you a dedicated story about your organisation and the work you do on our website, https://dot.kde.org/.

Please get in touch with your ideas at my email address. You can also phone me on my mobile at +XX XXXXXXXXX.

Kindest Regards

XXXXXXXXXX

If you would like to copy, adapt or personalise it, please do. I am sure it can be improved in several ways.

If you would prefer not to include you mobile phone number, for example, take it out. If you would prefer that Ivana or I answered queries, give them our emails:

Paul: paul.brown@kde.org
Ivana: isadora@kde.org

More organisations I haven't contacted yet (thanks @colomar):

http://www.access-for-all.ch/en/ [DONE: 25/08/2017 - FILLED IN ONLINE CONTACT FORM]

http://www.stiftung-barrierefrei-kommunizieren.de/ [DONE: 25/08/2017 - FILLED IN ONLINE CONTACT FORM]

http://www.einclusion.ch/equal-opportunity/eaccessibility.html [DONE: 25/08/2017 - FILLED IN ONLINE CONTACT FORM]

Please check out edited version of the email above!!!!

I've cleaned up the list of participants that @fux sent us (to @skadinna and I) on 18/08/2017:

https://share.kde.org/index.php/s/VL1WMRqzv1S1CBd

There are some columns I need help filling in: I don't know the exact names of all the nicks of the users, so please help me complete those.

This should provide us with material for dot articles ("X will be doing this. This is important because of Y") and social media posts, @skadinna.

Also, @abetts, I think you wanted to see this, right?

Just to check, have you confirmed with each of the attendees that they are happy for you to use their names publicly like this?

Some people are also not comfortable with having listed when they are away from home as this is against some home insurance policies.

This also applies to the spreadsheet you have made public above

@duffus Good point. Sharing the spreadsheet only with selected parties now. As for the stories, we will consult with attendees before publishing their names.

In T5780#107791, @paulb wrote:

@duffus Good point. Sharing the spreadsheet only with selected parties now. As for the stories, we will consult with attendees before publishing their names.

Great

As mentioned in the mail on kde-ev-campaign I think, especially the first two bullet points are things/information developer can benefit from.

I think it could be rewarding for the Randa Meetings & fundraising not only to focus on organizations that offer help for people with a disability, but also on usability in general (Really good article http://www.apaddedcell.com/what-s-the-difference-between-usability-and-accessibility). At my school for applied science (FHNW) we have an own department for that:

https://www.fhnw.ch/de/forschung-und-dienstleistungen/psychologie/usability-labor
https://web.fhnw.ch/plattformen/usability/infrastruktur/usability-labor-olten
https://web.fhnw.ch/plattformen/usability/infrastruktur/usability-labor-brugg-windisch

At the moment I don't have the time & resources to take a lead on that but a few organizations/companies I can think off:

• As mentioned: FHNW
• http://www.usability.ch/home.html (Few persons there were working as lecturer for the FHNW)
• http://uxschweiz.ch/
• https://www.uservalue.ch/de/