Accessible Web Design; Strategy, Leadership, Web Entrepreneurship and Social Sector Impact; Cyberscholars

Preventing Societal Discrimination: Accessible Web Design for People with Disabilities

Tuesday, November 8, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

Technical standards already exist to make web sites accessible for people with perceptual and motor disabilities, while research is underway to better understand web design for cognitive disabilities. Despite the existing resources and knowledge, many categories of web sites continue to be inaccessible for people with perceptual and motor disabilities. For instance, over 90% of federal government web sites are inaccessible for people with disabilities, denying users access to important government information. Social media tools tend to be inaccessible, cutting people with disabilities out of the chance to socialize with friends and contribute to important discussions, both interpersonal and societal. E-commerce web sites are inaccessible, often meaning that people with disabilities are denied the online-only discounts available on the web. Online employment applications are often inaccessible, denying people with disabilities the ability to apply for jobs on an equal footing. This presentation will provide an overview of web accessibility for people with disabilities, including the technical standards and laws, as well as reporting on recent research projects documenting how inaccessible web sites lead to various forms of discrimination against people with disabilities. Jonathan Lazar is a Professor of Computer and Information Sciences, Director of the Undergraduate Program in Information Systems and Director of the Universal Usability Laboratory, all at Towson University. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Interweaving Strategy, Leadership, Web Entrepreneurship and Social Sector Impact

Thursday, November 10, 12:00pm ET, Hauser 104, Hauser Hall, Harvard Law School. Co-sponsored by the Cyberlaw Clinic, Dean's Office at Harvard Law School, Office of Career Services, and Office of Public Interest Advising.

As an established entrepreneur and social innovator, John Williams offers a number of lessons learned over the course of his 32+ year career. How do organizations – both for-profit and not-for-profit -- achieve strategic clarity, and why does it matter? How does one go about re-positioning an iconic product or organization when the market changes? What did it take to launch the first Webby Award-winning online travel business? How do the most sophisticated not-for-profits and philanthropists think about how to maximize their impact on society? John will share his personal career explorations since graduating from Harvard with the JD and MBA in 1979, and offer insight into his most valuable experiences. John Williams is a partner in the Boston office of the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit firm that works with mission-driven organizations and philanthropists to scale their impact, enhance their effectiveness, and help strengthen their leadership. RSVP Requested. more information on our website>

Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group

Thursday, November 10, 6:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St.

The "Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group" is a forum for fellows and affiliates of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, Yale Law School Information Society Project, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to discuss their ongoing research. This month's presenters will include: Jia Wang, Berkman Research Fellow on "Empower Public Sphere with ICTs--A Chinese Perspective" and Soomin Seo, Columbia Journalism School. RSVP Requested. more information on our website>

Program Your City: Legal and Governance Issues of an Urban Integrated Open Data API

Tuesday, November 15, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

The physical city is covered with an increasing number of layers of digital information. At the same time, there is a significant trend towards incorporating location data into web and mobile applications: The urbanisation of the internet, and the digitisation of the city. Recent ‘Government 2.0’ initiatives have led to the creation of public data catalogues such as data.gov.au (U.S.), data.gov.uk (U.K.), data.gov.au (Australia) on federal government levels, and datasf.org (San Francisco) and data.london.gov.uk (London) on municipal levels. In most cases, these initiatives produce mere collections of data repositories. However, proprietary database formats and the lack of an open application programming interface (API) often limit the full potential that could be achieved by allowing these data sets to be cross-queried. This talk presents the proposal for an information substrate with an integrated open data API. The primary goal is to put intuitively accessible real-time data into the hands of citizens and residents and unleash the creative capacity of programmers and end-users who will be able to create, share (or sell) their own custom-made web and mobile based decision-support tools and applications that take advantage of data mash-ups comprising all three types of data sources and tailored to specific needs. Associate Professor Marcus Foth is the founder and director of the Urban Informatics Research Lab, and Principal Research Fellow with the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Intellectual Property Strategy

Monday, November 21, 6:00PM, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Entrepreneurs, corporate managers and nonprofit administrators should look at intellectual property as a key strategic asset. Most managers leave intellectual property issues to the legal department, unaware that an organization’s intellectual property can help accomplish a range of management goals, from accessing new markets to improving existing products to generating new revenue streams. In his new book, Intellectual Property Strategy (MIT Press), intellectual property expert, head of the Harvard Law School Library, and Berkman Center faculty co-director John Palfrey offers a short briefing on intellectual property strategy for them. Palfrey argues for strategies that go beyond the traditional highly restrictive “sword and shield” approach, suggesting that flexibility and creativity are essential to a profitable long-term intellectual property strategy--especially in an era of changing attitudes about media. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Michael Nielsen on Doing Science in the Open

Consider the Polymath Project, an ongoing experiment in "massively collaborative" mathematical problem solving. The idea is to use online tools like blogs and wikis to collaboratively attack difficult mathematical problems. Michael Nielsen — author of the book Reinventing Discovery and an advocate of open science — discusses how online tools like the Polymath Project can be used to transform the way we humans work together to make scientific discoveries, and how the normally conservative scientific culture can become more open. audio on our website>

Radio Berkman 184: Intellectual Property — Not Just For Lawyers Anymore

It’s time to stop thinking about intellectual property as something purely for your legal counsel to deal with. That’s the driving idea behind John Palfrey’s aptly titled new book Intellectual Property Strategy. Companies and institutions that have to worry about creative works, trademarks, or brands would be well-suited, Palfrey says, to seize the sword and shield from the attorneys (who tend to be aggressive and/or defensive about IP) and exercise a little more flexibility and creativity with intellectual property on their own. audio on our website>