Seeking Nominations for the Chairman’s
AAA
At the July 19th event celebrating the anniversary of the
ADA, Chairman Genachowski launched the Accessibility
and Innovation Initiative and announced the establishment of the Chairman’s
Awards for Advancement of Accessibility (or Chairman’s
AAA). The Chairman’s speech, "Empowering
Americans with Disabilities Through Technology" was presented at the
FCC’s Americans with Disabilities Act 20th Anniversary Celebration.
The A&I Initiative and the Chairman’s AAA are based on
recommendations in the National Broadband Plan.
The AAA Awards will
be given to pioneers in accessibility and innovations. Contenders
could be individuals or organizations, public and/or private entities,
academics, students, application developers, and represent mainstream or
assistive technology industries. In addition to recognizing the
development of individual mainstream or assistive technologies introduced
into the marketplace, the awards could also recognize other accessibility
advancements, such as the development of standards or best practices that
foster accessibility, or the development of a new consumer clearinghouse of
disability-related products and services. We also believe that
teaching modules and tools that could help students learn universal design
and other accessibility practices could be worthy of
recognition.
The Chairman’s AAA is open to any individual or
entity in the public or private sector. This year, the product,
service, technology, or practice must be available and promoted publicly
until May 1, 2011. In the future, we will consider available and
publicly promoted advancements that occur during a 12 month period prior to
the award’s announcement.
We encourage individuals and
entities to contact us with ideas and nominations, which can be
self-nominations or for others. We will be accepting guest blog posts
and guest v-logs on this topic, and parties can also file nominations in CG
Docket 10-100. We will be forming an internal cross-bureau advisory
group to review the nominations and advise the Chairman on the awards.
Employees of the Commission and their families are not eligible for this
competition. For more information please contact me at
xxxxxx@xxxxxxxx The Chairman looks forward to hearing from
you!