Web Access Centre Blog

We’ve introduced two new training courses for people who want to keep up to date with web accessibility and it’s forthcoming changes.

Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0 workshop

A half-day course, introducing the proposed guidelines for web accessibility, the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). It includes useful references to key parts of the WCAG 2.0 guideline documentation, explains how these relate to one another and suggests a workable strategy for progressively incorporating the new guidelines into your web sites.

Hidden barriers to web accessibility workshop

An eye-opening half-day course, to teach website designers, developers and programmers how to identify and cure some of the most serious, most common, but least obvious accessibility problems on their web sites. Many of the issues highlighted in this course are brought up in WCAG2.0.

These half day courses will be held on the same day so that if you want to attend both, you can do so at a reduced cost.

The first scheduled date is Friday 27th February.

You can find more details of all available courses in our training pages.

At the end of the week I’ll be on the road speaking and attending a number of conferences taking me through to March.

First up is the first ever Techshare India in New Delhi. Techshare is all about technology and accessibility (web, mobile, software, audio, Daisy…) and I’m really looking forward to learning more about what is going on in India specifically and Asia in general. I’ll be giving a workshop on “Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0″ as well as presenting with Brian Hardy from Vision Australia on “Government Web Accessibility Policies”.

After a little bit of time chilling in Goa (yay) and a quick pit stop in the office, I’ll be heading off to SXSW Interactive in Austin Texas. This will be my first year there and I’m looking forward to hearing the great and the good talking about all things web. Most of all I’m looking forward to hearing from Tim Guest, author of Second Lives. I’ll be co-chairing a Core Conversation on “Global Design: Web Sites for the World” with Glenda Sims who is lead of the Web Standard Project International Liaison Working Group which I also contribute to.

Straight after that I’m off to CSUN in LA which is the largest conference about technology for people with disabilities. This is always quite the event and a great opportunity to catch up with the latest technologies as well as familiar faces. I’ll be taking some time out after that to drive up the coast and spend some time skiing before heading up to San Francisco.

So if you are going to be out and about drop me a line, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of meet ups in the evenings to make the most of!

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has just published some great resources on the cross overs between the mobile web and accessibility. The good news is that reading through these you’ll see how designing with accessibility in mind makes your site work much better on mobile devices and that if you follow mobile web best practices you will already be enhancing the web accessibility of your site. Yet another nugget to add to the business case for web accessibility or mobile web best practices. This really does show how standards are mutually supportive and work together killing two birds with one stone:

• Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices
• Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines First Public Working Draft

It doesn’t stop there however. There is also a strong cross over between mobile web best practices, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and internationalisation. Watch this space as I’ll be publishing an article soon that looks at the cross overs between all three.

Finally a nod in the direction of Alan Chuter who worked so hard on getting these drafts together.

The first working draft of HTML 5 has just been published and the Working Group are looking for feedback. They are especially interested in people’s feedback with regards to accessibility features being changed within HTML 5 so don’t miss out on the chance to provide feedback by email.

For information on what’s new and what’s changed see the Differences Between HTML5 and HTML4 document. You may also find having a look through the HTML 5 comments archive useful as well.

For background information on HTML5 check out Lachlan Hunt’s Preview of HTML 5 on A list Apart.

We’re really pleased to announce that Andrew Ronksley has joined our team of Web Accessibility Consultants bringing us up to the grand total of five. Andrew brings some excellent skills to the team having focused on accessibility and user agents at university as well as experience assessing and training adults and children to use assistive technologies in his previous jobs. Having an understanding and experience of how people access the web is essential and in our book is key for any good consultant so we’re proud to have him on board.

We’re all really looking forward to working with Andrew and hope you also get a chance to meet him soon. He’s got some great ideas to contribute to the blog so watch this space!

Read Andrew’s biography on the About our Team page

The United Nations Global Initiative for accessible ICT relaunched their website recently to include a portal signposting information from around the globe on accessibility for people with disabilities.

The site is a great resource if you are looking for case studies, publications, reports, company or country information. It also has an experts zone where leading accessibility specialists such as Mike Paciello, Cynthia Waddell, Inmaculada Placencia-Porrero and many more discuss topics ranging from Government, legislation, industry innovation, standards and harmonisation. The focus on accessibilty goes beyond just the web to include software, mobile access and technology in general.

G3ICT was set up in 2007 after the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was signed. It is a two year program designed to create dialogue about ICT accessibility issues and develop a knowledge base and best practices sharing platform in support of the implementation of the new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

It’s already a useful resource and great to see a focus on accessibility that pulls together experts and learning from around the world rather than just one country or region.

Here are a few of our top tips for producing accessible Flash banner adverts. I’ve also included information about testing, compliance with WCAG, navigating Flash using Jaws and WindowEyes and some additional resources.

Note that the guidance here is just for banner adverts and not for more complex Flash animations that you may see on the web today.
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