Announcing XReach

I’ve previously posted on this journal about the accessibility of forum software and indicated that I was working on an adaptation of Phorum to make it more accessible.

Since some other open source packages suffer from the same problems I thought it would be worthwhile creating an umbrella project for similar endeavours, which I’ve called XReach.

From the XReach site you can download an early release version of the forum software or have a look at it in use as the discussion area for the site.

It’s very much a work in progress at this stage, but I think it represents an improvement over the base software from an accessibility point of view.

I’m keen to get other people on board, since I don’t know everything there is to know about web accessibility - by a very long way - and I probably won’t be able to spend as much time on the project as I’d like. So if you feel you could contribute in any way, please get in touch. I’m looking for end users, especially those with disabilities that affect their use of the web, as much as developers. Anyone with ideas for improving the user experience would be very welcome.

If you are interested in participating, please either register on the XReach discussion area or send me an email.