Web Access Centre Blog

If you haven’t heard already, Christian Heilmann from Yahoo! is organising a free accessibility conference / hack day in London this Friday and Saturday (19th and 20th September). Although both days are free, you need to register your details and get a ticket to attend. The hack day on Saturday is now fully booked but you can still grab a ticket for the fact finding conference day on Friday if you’re quick!

The following is taken from the Scripting Enabled site:

The aim of the conference is to break down the barriers between disabled users and the social web as much as giving ethical hackers real world issues to solve. We talked about improving the accessibility of the web for a long time - let’s not wait, let’s make it happen.

You can find out more details about the event by visiting the Scripting Enabled site. The schedule for the day is also available. There has been a last minute change with Jonathan Hassell from the BBC stepping in to talk about dyslexia in place of Phil Teare who unfortunately can no longer make the event.

Check out this page to get your ticket. Hope to see you down there on Friday!

John Slatin, a respected member of the web accessibility community and former chair of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group, sadly passed away earlier this year leaving behind him the University of Texas Accessibility Institute.

Sadly UT want to close the Accessibility Institute which has been a centre of excellence for research and innovation in web accessibility. This would be a huge loss to the industry as the Accessibility Institute has contributed to the furtherance of web accessibility in many ways.

As news has spread of the closing of UT’s Accessibility Institute, many have asked for a simple way to register their objections. Knowbility has created and posted an online petition and welcome all the support you can bring by signing the petition and forwarding it to anyone else who may be interested.

Reasons for saving the Accessibility Institute include:

• Need for research based findings to support accessible design practice
• Opportunity for a world class institution like UT to serve as an example to other institutions.
• Place where emerging practices can be tested and modelled
• Contributions to international body of knowledge on inclusion
• Maintain thought leadership in Texas, easily disseminated to state agencies that have accessibility mandates

Sign the petition to save the Accessibility Institute today.