Mission and Operating Principles

Mission

The mission of the Raising the Floor is:

To help ensure that access to Internet technology and content is available to all, regardless of ability or economic resources. 

1. that access technologies are available for all types of functional impairment including those due to disability, literacy level, or effects of aging,
2. that these access technologies are effective enough to provide access to the ever evolving technologies used to create Internet based information, services and communities, and
3. that these access technologies are affordable for those of all socio-economic levels and all communities.

RtF is a dynamic, constantly evolving effort. In order to guide our development and operation we have developed a set of beliefs and principles that underlie all of our efforts and shape our decisions over time and across projects. They describe both the objectives and the operating approach of the group. 

Beliefs

The organizers and supporters of the Raising the Floor Initiative believe

1. That the Internet, including all of its information, resources, services and communities, is rapidly becoming important to an individual's ability to participate and compete in their and the global society.
2. That people who are experiencing temporary or permanent functional limitations due to disability, literacy skills or effects of aging should be able to access these Internet resources as freely as their peers.  
          This includes individuals who have little or no resources to devote to special adaptations or software and who often do not access the Internet with their own computers but rather through the computers they encounter in their environment (e.g. community centers, libraries, schools or others).
3. That people should not have to sacrifice their privacy and security in order to get accessibility.
4. That commercial assistive technologies are also an important part of the ecosystem and should be facilitated at the same time that basic accessibility is built into the Internet infrastructure.
5. That an open collaborative process can maximize progress by allowing all to build upon each others' work and those that came before us.
6. That open source software promotes community collaboration, allows contribution by individuals and organizations of all sizes, and allows adaptation as needed to accommodate different needs, languages and cultures. 
7. That this work requires people with a wide range of both technical and non-technical skills.
8. That this is an international issue and requires an international approach and participation,  and that the ability to easily adapt and apply the results in different countries, languages and cultures is critical.

Operating Principles

To support these beliefs, RtF has developed the following operating principles:

A level playing field - None of the projects will be designed to give any particular organization or community an advantage over any others.

• Open-source model for development
• Royalty Free, non-assertive intellectual property (e.g. LGPL or BSD type software licenses)
• Localization friendly
• Culturally open and agnostic
• No exclusive arrangements
• Code available to public and private entities

Eco-system friendly - All projects recognize that they operate in an environment that includes individuals, mainstream companies, assistive technology vendors, governments, and funding agencies. Projects in Raising the Floor will be aimed at addressing the above-named goals in a collaborative manner that involves public, private and volunteer sectors. All will be working together, looking for ways to maximize the ability of each other to address these issues while recognizing that different sectors (public, private, volunteer etc.) each have their own constraints within which they must operate.

• The key is understanding, respect for the fact that each of the entities has different constraints and principles under which it must operate, and a realization that working together we can do more than operating separately.

International, interlingual, intercultural - The projects will be designed in such a fashion that they can be easily adapted and applied in different countries, languages and cultures.

Socio-economic status robust - The projects will be designed to collectively address the full range of socio-economic status that individuals experiencing the problems may represent.

• When mainstream technologies are available for use free, the access features to use the mainstream technologies should also available for free (and at the same location and time).
• Accessible versions of mainstream technologies should (as much as possible) be available at the same cost as the mainstream technologies that the individual was not able to use.

Collaborative - The projects will work together, but will also maintain the identity and contributions of the individual contributors to help insure recognition of their contributions to the whole.

• Raising the Floor is designed to be a collection of individuals, organizations and projects that want to work together on common problems. It is not an organization created to replace or supplant other diverse efforts now or in the future.
• This collaborative principle does not just extend to other individuals in Raising the Floor but will also be extended to individuals or entities not in Raising the Floor by choice or other constraint.

Secure – The security and privacy of individuals using access technologies should not be treated as less important than any other user, and may in fact be more important to avoid discrimination that might result from any ability to identify user as having a functional limitation.

Freedom based – The objective of Raising the Floor is to increase people’s freedom to be what they want to be and achieve what they want to in life. The purpose is not to care for, nor protect individuals in these classes in any way that is extra-ordinary or that would restrict those freedoms.
 
Open Source - An open source model will be used wherever possible to maximize the ability of the output of Raising the Floor to be used by all parties private, public and governmental.

• The open source software licensing and Creative Commons content licensing that are planned would allow the core modules to be used in proprietary products to enhance the spectrum of products that will be available.
• For wrapper or shell technologies, the license would provide free open source versions of the output as well as allowing industry to create a new and improved shell which may also include other functions, not part of the core technologies.

Open Standards - An open standards strategy will be employed to ensure web and application infrastructure interoperability, and to allow use by other efforts including commercial entities.

Recognition - All participants agree to fully recognize the efforts of others on whom their work is built.

• Raising the Floor will have special features in its structure to facilitate this (e.g. license formats that require maintenance of author credit, listing of projects with full affiliation of contributors, etc.) and in the way it will list and publicize efforts of the participants.

Distributed Funding Model - Although Raising the Floor will seek funding to maintain some central operations such as general management, software distribution, quality, spyware and virus (malware) prevention, etc., it is recognized that RtF members will most often draw resources from their own existing or future funding mechanisms.   

• This facilitates local recognition and also facilitates support from companies or even countries that would like to support the effort, but are not able to pay for resources outside of an organization’s area or other boundary.
• Care will be taken to not interfere with this and to support it - particularly collaborative efforts.
• Funds received centrally may also be transferred to participating organizations or individuals working on specific Initiative projects, particularly individuals and small exploratory projects
• Financial sustainability is crucial to ensure that the benefits of Raising the Floor continue indefinitely.

Non-discriminatory - Activities of Raising the Floor will not be used to the advantage or disadvantage of any group or culture except as constrained by our other Operating Principles (e.g., it may be that a corporation is asked to pay for special support services that may be available to individuals for free).