People who want to launch effective online movements must focus on building for the long-term, not on short-term viral phenomena, a global pioneer of online campaigning told a London meeting recently. Jeremy Heimans, co-founder of online petitions pioneer Avaaz (http://www.avaaz.org) was in the UK in November to launch Purpose Europe, the European arm of his campaign [...]

After training as a clinical support worker, US-based blogger Ro O’Shay was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2006, before losing her sight in 2008. Since then, the internet and new communications technologies have gradually become a lifeline for her, and she is now a keen writer and technology-user. Tristan Parker talks to her about her passion for technology.

TP: Please give us some background on yourself.

By Tristan Parker

Co-founder and co-editor of the online disability lifestyle magazine Disability Horizons, Martyn Sibley has become an influential voice in the disability community. A keen technology user and advocate, Martyn has run his own social media consultancy, is a frequent blogger, and has developed a number of e-learning and e- campaigning projects alongside his journalism. Here, he talks to E-Access Bulletin about the opportunities new technologies have given him over the years.

A project using technology to engage local people to help reinvigorate a run-down inner city shopping area is one of 31 new “community hubs” being funded by the national digital inclusion network UK Online Centres ( http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/ ). The initiative will use Facebook, Twitter and SurveyMonkey (an online survey creation tool) to gauge local opinion, [...]

The rise of social media will influence the development of emerging major government ICT projects, such as the G-Cloud cloud computing programme and the PSN (public services network), according to new government guidance on social media use within the civil service. The guidance ( http://bit.ly/Jhr4oC ) is split into two sections, with the first section [...]

Almost all UK local authorities now make official use of social media, with many councils now running multiple accounts to cover different services and projects, a report due out next month will find. The annual “Better Connected” snapshot report of UK council websites, published by the Society of IT Management (Socitm), is set to include a [...]

Our accessibility campaign and consultancy group Pesky People started life as a blog developed in response to Digital Britain, the UK government’s strategy for boosting our digital economy which did not include people with disabilities in any way. We responded by campaigning against this digital discrimination and evolved from a blog into a website and now a company.

Public sector bodies are struggling to respond to the volume of public questions and comments they are receiving through Twitter, delegates at the Building Perfect Council Websites conference heard this month. “We’d like to do it, but we get hundreds a day,” one local government participant told a conference discussion group. “We don’t have a conversation, [...]

By Dan Jellinek.

This has been a busy year for Diane Mulligan.