Letters to the Editor

Kudos for new site

Steve,

The site looks great! Keep up that Dominican Work!

In SPND,

Fr. James, O.P.

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Steve,

Brilliant, Just Brilliant..

Thanks for the best laugh of the week..

I clicked on Jesuit Organizations and got the "Jesuits are you sure pop up
window!"

I love you site....I love your site..I love your site!

Hee hee

In Christ
Therese

(Blush) Thanks, guys. The compliments are gratifying - truly.

Fr. James has been drafted as editorial advisor to CatholicWitness. See his articles in the Life in Christ section.

Therese E., T.O.P., is the Webmaster for the Third Order of Preachers, Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C., chapter and works on the St. Joseph Province Web pages as well. Therese has been roped in as a technical advisor to Catholicwitness.Com.

On 12 Steps 4 the Rest of Us

Regarding 12 Steps with Scripture: "Did you know that a Jesuit priest helped form this 20th century spiritual program?"

Make that Sister Ignatia. She died in 1966. Her fascinating biography is called Sister Ignatia: Angel of Alcoholics Anonymous by Mary C. Darrah; Loyola Univ. Press, 1992

Not to put too fine a point on it, but she is THE one. There may have been Priests, too, but she worked from the beginning with Dr. Bob in the original hospital. She and he pretty much came up by trial and error with what worked for alcoholics. Bill Wilson of course is "the" founder, but he never put in those years figuring it out from the ground up like Dr. Bob and Sr. Ignatia did.

Rose Folsom, T.O.P.

I'm sure you're correct regarding Sr. Ignatia's work and contributions. Giving credit to her in no way lessens that of others just as giving credit to others doesn't demean her work. For those interested in the history of this truly successful ecumenical spiritual program, visit the A.A. archives.

We're happy to announce that Rose Folsom has volunteered to become our art and typography advisor.

Keep writing those letters. We need more help!

Catholic Witness Accessibility

Hi:

I'm glad you have gotten this site up. When I clicked on the first address I could get only a part of the home page, even after many attempts. Clicking on one of the addresses which appeared later in the text opened the full screen. As a former blind TOP, I am very aware of the need to create sites which are readable by screen readers, which I am now using, since my left eye is still blind.

Maybe you have heard of the return of my vision which I credit to Blessed Margaret of Castello. This past weekend I was in Lincoln NE for the performances of a new play about her at which I addressed the audiences at the three performances of "I Heard the Bell Toll," by Cathal Gallagher. I spoke on the relevance of Margaret message in today's world and her involvement in the mission of the National Catholic Partnership on Disability. All three performances were professionally videotaped by a TOP from Boise, who is now editing the event for distribution/showing.

My Board of Directors includes three bishops and Cardinal George. Additionally there are people who are strong and faith filled Catholics who are involved in creating welcome and justice for the 14 million Catholics with assorted disabilities. My job description requires that I be in harmony with the Holy See. I think if you check our web site, which needs updating, you will find it fits into your requirements. (If fact, I must be very careful about what sites we might link to - the bishops rightly want to association with any site that runs counter to the teachings of the Church.

We seek to promote and facilitate the goals of the three documents of the Catholic bishops which call for "Welcome and Justice for Persons with Disabilities," and I have been recognized as a powerful speaker for life - which by our definitions includes the whole range from abortion and cloning to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

I would love to send you a few items. Perhaps my address given in Vatican City? A document I recently updated on the demographics of disability within the Catholic Church? Please let me know.

May the Holy Spirit, St. Dominic and Blessed Margaret truly bless your efforts and our shared mission.

Mary Jane Owen, TOP, MSW
Executive Director
National Catholic Partnership on Disability
web site: www.ncpd.org

Thank you Mary Jane. We're working hard on debugging the basic layout and fine-tuning the code.

Our next major objective is to make the Catholicwitness.com content accessible to the visually impaired while preserving the look and feel of the pages for our non-impaired viewers.

While Section 508, the accessibility specifications regulating government and government contractor Web sites, do not apply to private Web sites, (and shouldn't) Catholicwitness.com will use Section 508 as our guide when resolving accessibility issues.

However, we will not be be overly concerned about strict compliance. To often, slavish adherence to the technical requirements of Section 508 destroys the artistic integrity of Web pages while doing little to make the content more accessible to the disabled.

Part of the problem is that the specifications are yet to be supported by the agents used by the handicapped population. We can make our site perfectly compliant while remaining inaccessible to visually impaired readers.

(We realize that "handicapped" is considered by some to be politically incorrect terminology. As editorial policy, we've decided to speak straight without tip-toeing around words.)

Now that we've completed design and testing for the primary pages, we've begun testing various approaches to making the pages accessible to our disabled readers.

In the meantime, we would love to publish your article and invite you to become our accessibility advisor and beta tester.