FCC wants help with accessible technologies site

The Federal Communications Commission said it will start an online clearinghouse of technology applications for people with disabilities and wants volunteer Web developers to help.

FCC has invited programmers to its first Open Developer Day at its Washington headquarters Nov. 8 to help develop the Web application for the clearinghouse. Officials will also solicit ideas for technologies to meet other FCC goals, including open government, public participation and innovation.

"Developer days have become a tradition in the Web community for programmers to share knowledge, learn tools and build things,” said Greg Elin, FCC's chief data officer, in a news release Oct. 29. "We are excited to bring this tradition to the FCC."

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The event will feature guest engineers from the Yahoo Developer Network and Yahoo’s Accessibility Team, who will provide technical instruction in some of the technologies they have created.

FCC must create the clearinghouse under the 21^st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act signed by President Barack Obama Oct. 8. The law updates requirements for accessibility for people with disabilities, including rules on closed captioning, programming guides and emergency access.

“The clearinghouse is intended to make it as easy as possible for people with disabilities, families and support professionals to find information about accessible technologies,” according to the FCC release.

FCC started the FCC.gov/developer website in September and made its first set of public application programming interfaces available to provide better access to various FCC datasets.