Oracle’s Accessibility Program

In the Accessibility Program Office (APO) at Oracle, we're always interested in cutting edge technology available to increase the accessibility of our products. Oracle University offers a certificate course, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) 2023 AI Foundations Associate, that’s well worth your time and effort. https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/post/ai-ml-tools-oci-greater-accessibility

In honor of NDEAM and World Standards Day on Saturday, October 14, Oracle supports and celebrates the continuous progression of global accessibility standards. These standards empower all web users of any ability to access the world wide web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the web, and Charles Adams, a member of the Accessibility Program Office at Oracle, serves as co-chair of the W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/post/honor-disability-employment-month-standards-day

The 2023 National Convention of the National Federation of the Blind was held Saturday, July 1, 2023 through Thursday, July 7, 2023 at the Hilton Americas-Houston in Houston, Texas. Oracle is proud to be a long time supporter of the National Federation of the Blind and was a Gold Sponsor of the event, in addition to the sponsorship of the Oracle Scholarship for Excellence in a STEM Field and Oracle Scholarship for Excellence in Computer Science.
https://nfb.org/get-involved/national-convention/past-conventions/2023-national-convention

Oracle was a sponsor of the 2021 Annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, hosted by California State University, Northridge, March 2021. Michele Van Doozer of the Oracle Accessibility Program Office co-presented Accessibility Conformance Reports Using the VPAT with IBM and HP. The presentation included introducing the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) Training courses available from Information Technology Industry Council (ITI).

Applications are being accepted for the Oracle and European Disability Forum (EDF) scholarship for students with disabilities studying in the field of Computer Science, Computer Engineering, User Experience, or related fields enrolled at a EU university for the academic year 2020-2021. Deadline to apply is March 6, 2020. The scholarship consists of 6,500€ to be awarded based on a project or research that will be conducted during the academic year. The Scholarship will be awarded primarily based on a project or thesis in which the needs of persons with disabilities in terms of accessibility to ICT (e-Accessibility) are taken into consideration and/or an innovative solution to enhance their access is proposed. The project must be an integral component of the educational program undertaken by the student (e.g. final year assignment or part of their Masters or PhD).

Oracle and the European Disability Forum (EDF) announced Renata Deszo-Dinnyes as the winner of the 2019-2020 edition of the EDF-Oracle e-accessibility scholarship. This 6,500 euros award is to higher education students with disabilities in fields such as computer science, computer engineering, user experience and others. Renata's study focuses on user experience related to digitally manufactured objects, for example using a 3D printer to manufacture a prosthetic based on computer data. Full details of the scholarship and the awarding to Renata Deszo-Dinnyes can be found on Announcement - EDF and Oracle Award Scholarship to Researcher with Disability.

Oracle was an Executive Sponsor of the 2020 Annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, hosted by California State University, Northridge, March 10-13, 2020. Due to travel restrictions Oracle was unable to present at the conference this year. We look forward to the virtual conference next year.