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Training and Meetings |
Women in New Media Course - Starts 6th April 2004
This 9 month part-time course (15 hours per week), based at Hoxton Bibliotech's new media training centre, for woman over 18 who has been out of work for at least 6 months before the start of the course (6 April 2004)and are resident in Hackney, Haringey, Camden, Islington, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest or other boroughs within easy reach of Old Street. Course details and outcomes have already been posted on the Women in London Public Notice Board. See:
http://www.quicktopic.com/19/H/nV4WDtdd6iMqf/m176
To download an application form go to: http://www.biblio-tech.net/non_flash/proj_nonf.html or call Hoxton Bibliotech on freephone 0800 169 6008
Training and Learning Opportunities for Women working in London's Voluntary and Community Sectors - Thursday 1st April 2004
10.30 am to 1.00 pm at Toynbee Hall, Nr. Aldgate East Tube Station
Women's Resource Centre is hosting a meeting of groups and organisations keen to explore future provision of training and learning opportunities for the Women's voluntary and community sectors in London. Draft agenda:
* Introductions
* Explore barriers to women's learning
* Training and learning opportunities - a vision for the future
* Expressions of interest for partnership working
* The next steps
Who the meeting is for:
* Organisations and groups that offer courses, workshops, action learning sets, mentoring, shadowing or other ways of learning within London's voluntary and community sectors
* Women's organisations - or organisations that work with women - that would like to contribute their experience and hopes for the future
To book a place email Sarah Shooter
IT Training Offer funded by ESF if you work for a small Business or a Voluntary Organisation
You only pay 20% for two days training and get £1,325 voucher for IT training for the next 12 months based at Hoxton Bibliotech
Courses include: Web Design, Graphic and Print Design, Microsoft Office, Multimedia & 3d Animation
Free Learn Direct Courses worth £200 (Business Skills, Customer Management, Communication Skills, Human Resources, Personal Development, Finance and others)
Benefits include: flexible delivery at your workplace or our own, Evening classes, 80% discounted IT courses, assessments, registration for recognised qualifications, etc..
For further information on this scheme please contact Zeynep or 0207 553 71 89.
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Ongoing |
Networks for Life
Training For Life (see Networking Women - Bits and Bytes October to December 2003) has created a number of Social Enterprise one of which - Networks for Life - is involved in installing, configuring and maintaining company networks. We are hoping to eventually set up a department of Networks for Life run and administered by an all-women team specialising in dealing with other women at home or women's organisations/companies. We charge for every job we do, but only after a free consultation. Appointments should be booked to evaluate the problem. The information is then assessed and a quote issued. We are in a position to supply new or reconditioned machines at extremely reasonable rates and this includes servers, desktops and towers. In addition we are able to deal with wireless networks. Contact ICT Projects Director Hadriana Evans
Microsoft's Community Giving Policy and Practice
Details of how Microsoft will donate or contribute to charities can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/community/community/
Choosing Open Source Software - a guide
The document acts as both a primer for people who are new to open source and provides a decision making framework to help with software selection. Sections include:
* What is open source?
* The open source landscape
* The benefits and challenges of open source
* Open source questions and answers
* Choosing the Right Software
* Beyond Decision Making: Costing, Migration and Training
The document also includes a glossary and extensive lists of links. You can find it online at: http://www.commonsgroup.com/ideas/opensourceguide.html
The Choosing Open Source guide and curriculum were developed by Commons for the Association for Progressive Communications as a part of their Multimedia Toolkit initiative.
Online Benefit Calculations
The site 'EntitledTo' has now been (re) launched and includes complete entitlement calculators for under- and over-60s, including Council Tax and Housing Benefit as well as tax credits and Pension Credit. See: http://www.entitledto.co.uk
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e-gov |
UKonline to become DirectGov
The UK government has unveiled the first incarnation of what is intended to become its main conduit for all public services online, 'Directgov' http://ukonline.direct.gov.uk. Currently housed within the government's existing 'UK Online' information portal http://www.ukonline.gov.uk, the service aims to pull in content from across the public sector, becoming a destination site for most visitors rather than a mere gateway to the web sites of other bodies. The idea is that government departments will work together on a 'franchise' model to provide content for the site's themes. Already the Department for Education and Skills, the NHS and the Department of Work and Pensions have collaborated on the content relating to parenting, for example. Alack of local services has been a major failure of the UK Online portal, according to the Society of IT Management http://www.socitm.gov.uk
Better Connected 2004
The sixth annual snapshot survey of the state of development of every council web site from the society of IT management - Socitm : http://www.socitm.gov.uk - has been published. Perhaps the most daunting findings of this year's survey were in the area of 'accessibility' - how easy it is for people of all abilities to access council sites, including those with disabilities using special access software like text-to-speech screen readers for those with impaired vision.
Accessibility is generally measured against standards set out by the international World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI
This rates sites as 'A' for basic accessibility; 'AA' for higher level accessibility and 'AAA' for near perfection. In the government's guidance for the third round of council 'implementing electronic government' (IEG) statements, councils are urged to work towards 'AA' standards. Of the 23 sites assessed as transactional, only three achieve level 'A': Surrey, Tameside and Wrexham. Only one site - Tameside - achieves 'AAA' standard. According to Socitm ' ... Councils that had made efforts to meet accessibility standards were "very concerned" about the amount of effort involved, with particular problems arising where councils were trying to make sites accessible that had not had accessibility in mind when first created. But in a sense, they don't have a choice. The fact is that there is a law about accessibility - the Disability Discrimination Act -so it would seem single 'A' accessibility is a minimum. ... ' (see belwo for other accessibility issues)
Taken from egov bulletin, a free email newsletter which you can subscribe to at http://www.headstar.com/egb/subs.html .
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Accessibility |
Policy on IT Systems for Employees with Vision Impairment
The RNIB has drafted a policy setting out standards for organisations and companies to procure IT systems fully accessible to employees with vision impairments, and has adapted the policy for its own procurement practice. An online discussion group "IT-include" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IT-include/ has been established to discuss setting up a framework for accessible IT procurement in all sectors and recommending testing and evaluation methods.
Workgroup To Promote Accessible Open Source Solutions
A US-based group which promotes open source software has launched an accessibility workgroup to establish standards for making the Linux operating system and associated software accessible to people with impaired vision. The free standards group http://www.freestandards.org an independent non-profit body, launched the workgroup at a Linux conference in New York last month http://accessibility.freestandards.org (for more on Open Source see Ongoing section above)
the first two items in this section taken from e-access bulletin, a free monthly email newsletter which you can subscribe to at http://www.headstar.com/eab
The Disability Rights Commission
has produced a web page for the smaller employer on the new employment regulations from October. From then, the 'under 15 employees' exemption is abolished:
http://www.drc-gb.org/businesses/bizdetails.asp?id=94&title=ep
Overview of Part III of the Disability Discrimination Act
on HRZone, about the regulations deal with ensuring access to buildings and services which comes into force this October:
http://www.hrzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=121797
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bits and bytes |
information from October to December 2003
information from July to September 2003
information from April to June 2003
information from January to March 2003
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