RealityNext

The Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) is a worldwide association of professional organisations, web designers and developers working together to promote the use and preservation of accessible design standards.

GAWDS operates as a not for profit company.

It is formed to provide mutual support and to provide a competitive edge through association; as a ‘Guild member’ you might have more chance of your proposal for a particular bit of work being successful. This in turn will push up the value of accessible web design among design organizations.

Having the appropriate skills and certification will become important; the more Guild members there are, the more important it becomes - and the more people will want to become members - and the more need there will be to have the appropriate skills. Eventually this will push accessible web design into the mainstream - it might happen anyway - but this will make it happen quicker.

It is also a business fraternity, which will develop resources with the aim of helping its members learn new skills, and find more work. For example:

• By providing a search engine of accessible web designers and developers - to be used by potential customers.
• By providing a place to add articles and resources to the site, which in turn promote the posters’ own business, - that’s not a problem - that’s an aim of the Guild.
• It’s a mutual support and learning society - the Guild is not a Discussion Forum, but it provides a Discussion Forum and mailing list.

Visit: http://www.gawds.org/

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 12:19 am and is filed under Communities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.