[games_access] Happy 5th Birthday Able Gamers

Mon Apr 6 12:04:44 EDT 2009

I second Mark's call for more support for the AbleGamers community. Come on lukers and active members - this is one of very few sites that's opening its arms to all gamers and can only get better with all of our backing. There's a free blogging area open to all, a great active forum and real passion throughout for making gaming fairer for all. If you've an article burning a hole in your mind - get it out there - to a burgeoning audience: www.ablegamers.com. 

Barrie
www.OneSwitch.org.uk
www.igda.org/accessibility

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mark Barlet 
  To: IGDA Games Accessibility SIG Mailing List 
  Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 1:58 AM
  Subject: [games_access] Some Changes Afoot at AbleGamers.com

  I wanted to take a few moments to send a message to this group, many of whom I  know personally, and share with you some of the good news the staff at AbleGamers wants to share.

  A New Beginning.
  So, spring is here, and as the trees, plants, and flowers wake up from their long winters nap, AbleGamers awakes too. There has been hints of it here and there, but I want to formally announce that the mission of AbleGamers has been reborn, and a site that was for a long time a labor of love has given birth to something new, The AbleGamers Foundation, Inc. a non-profit cooperation to further our current goals and expand our mission to better server our community. Our package has been accepted by the IRS, and we await a determination on our non-profit status (this is rarely  an issue, it just takes the IRS time, they are slow). The change of status will mean that we are no longer just a website, but we are an organization with a board and advisory committee that will help steer us to bring to life our mission; to help insure that people with disabilities can fully participate in the digital entertainment marketplace. 

  The AbleGamers Foundation was founded on Fed 27, 2009. We held our first board meeting on March 9th 2009. A new site will be stood up over the next month or so for the Foundation, AbleGamers.com is not changing at all, so don’t worry.

  Happy Birthday.
  I also wanted to let you know that this is AbleGamers 5th year! We are 5 years old! That is like 297 trillion years old in web years. In our history we have had to rebuild the site 3 times, once because of a major tech change (we moved from PHPNuke to Mombo) and twice because the cheap hosts that we used went out of business one day and forget to tell us!

  Lastly I want to share with you some news (I posted it on our forums) that is a huge milestone for all of us, AbleGamers has for the first time in our history reached 1,000,000 (1,024,843 to be exact) real hits in one month. Just to put that into perspective, at this same time last year the site got 61,436. We are on track to top that in the month of April. While I know a lot of this has to do with GDC, I still think it is great to see that AbleGamers has broken the million hit mark.

  I want to invite everyone here to come on over and check out all the great things that are going on, we have an active community and we are always looking for new and exciting voices. 

  If you have any questions about the AbleGamers Foundation, or any other things, please drop me a line, mark at ablegamers.com

  Thank you all for your time
  Mark Barlet 

  -- 
  Mark C. Barlet
  Editor-in-Chief
  AbleGamers.com

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