Web Access Centre Blog

Getting geared up for WCAG 2.0? There are just a few places left before we close the bookings for our Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 training course. Find out what is likely to change, and how you can prepare for the forthcoming renewed web accessibility guidelines. This half day course is run on the same day as Hidden Barriers to web accessibility, where you’ll learn how to avoid some of the less well-known issues that create real access problems.

Both courses will run on Thursday 18th September, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Venue RNIB head office, London. Anyone who books both courses will qualify for £25.00 reduction on the total cost, and get a free lunch. .

AbilityNet’s conference Accessibility 2.0 was a resounding success in more ways than one. While is sparked controversy within the microformats and accessibility debate it was also the start of much creativity in making social networking sites more accessible.

So much happened during the day it’s difficult to know where to start but thanks to AbilityNet you can catch up yourselves on events by via the podcasts and transcripts.

Keep an eye out for Scripting Enabled, a conference to be held September 19th and 20th, that aims to break down the barriers between disabled users and the social web.

See you there I hope!

We seem to have gone a little bit Olympics crazy over here but as the games draw to a close the AbilityNet team look ahead at what we should be doing with the UK Olympics website by publishing their user testing findings of the Beijing 2008 Olympics website in the State of the eNation Report Beijing Olympics Special.

In this special report we asked disabled users to try out the Beijing Olympics website in our interaction lab. Poor information architecture and a lack of adherence to web standards result in an uneven playing field for disabled sports fans across the world…In a departure from our standard State of the eNation review procedure we brought a range of disabled users into our lab to perform some basic tasks on the website. Users uncovered a variety of accessibility and usability issues that only real-life user testing would have uncovered.

The report contains some fascinating user videos which give real insight to the barriers people face both in terms of guidelines as well as poor usability for people with disabilities - not to be missed. These all also come with either captioning or transcripts.

For further comment on the Olympics site see also E-Access Bulletin’s Web Accessibility - Beijing Olympics: Revisiting The Errors Of The Past as well as our post on the accessibility of the Beijing Olympics website

With all eyes on the Beijing for the 2008 Olympics I thought I’d publish a few observations of how well the official Beijing Olympic 2008 website works for international users. This post accompanies one I wrote about the accessibility of the Beijing 2008 website and flags where the cross overs exist with accessibility, localisation and internationalisation.

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Our busy and expanding team is looking to recruit two new posts, a Senior Web Accessibility Consultant as well as a team Administrator. We are also recruiting for a Principle Manager for Digital Accessibility in the Accessibility Group.

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