NV Access An Overview
The idea of starting a non profit funding organisation to support free and open source software initiatives emerged out of the increasing support needs of the NVDA project in late 2006. When we decided to create an organisation, we did not want to limit support to only one specific project. We wanted to be able to include any free and open source software project that would allow blind and vision impaired people to access technology for no more cost than their sighted peers.
We decided to support initiatives that assist the particular disability of blindness and vision-impairment because, being blind and vision-impaired, we believe that we are better able to assess the practicality and applicability of the different projects as we depend on such software to access technology in our own day-to-day living.
What Does NV Access Do?
The main work of NV Access is to source funds and funding opportunities to support different projects and initiatives. It then distributes these funds in the form of different services as they are needed. These include: Human Resources (in the form of hiring and managing programmers), administration, travel, incidentals and so on. This allows each project or initiative to concentrate on making a better product, rather than worrying about the various management issues or having to set up an independent organisation for each project.
NV Access does not own any of the projects or initiatives that it supports; it merely provides the appropriate administration, funding and management needs where necessary. This allows each project or initiative the freedom to develop the software in a way that best meets the needs of the end user: rather than to follow commercial trends or be directed by economic pressures.
The NV Access committee works to identify and, in some cases create, projects or initiatives that would benefit from NV Access support. The first project supported by NV Access is NVDA, a free and open source screen reader for Windows. Check out our Projects page for more information.
Management Structure
NV Access is an incorporated association under Australian law, namely the Victorian Incorporations Act (1991). By this it means that we must have a management committee, a set of governing rules and a Statement of Purposes.
The committee meets over the phone a least once a month and generally keeps in touch via email. If you would like to contact the committee, please see the Contact Us page for more information.
The NV Access governing rules are available for download in Rich Text Format (RTF). You may wish to save the target document from the link before opening it.
The Management Committee
The first committee was voted in at our first official meeting on Sunday 11th March 2007. The current committee is as follows:
- President: Michael Curran. [Head programmer and creater of NVDA]
- Co-Vice President: James Teh. [Core developer of NVDA]
- Co-Vice President: Mathew Mirabella. [webmaster, also with industry experience in universal design and accessibility]
- Secretary and Treasurer: Amy Ni. [Office management and Administration]
- Committee members: Geoff Shang. [Experience in Linux and accessibility]
- Committee member: Michael Sheppard. [Graduated with legal and business qualifications]
Statement of Purposes
- To facilitate the development of open-source assistive technologies for blind and vision impaired people that are free of charge to the end user.
- To provide low cost information technology solutions which enhance accessibility for blind and vision impaired people.
- To act as a fundraising body to support the various projects encompassed by the organisation.
- To encourage and facilitate both local and international contributions to the overall effort of the organisation.
- To contribute to existing and future efforts aimed at improving accessibility for blind and vision impaired people.
- To raise awareness and promote the importance of accessibility.