Web Access Centre Blog

it seems to be a day of conference announcements today. Accessibility 2.0: a million flowers bloom
25th of April 2008 will be held by AbilityNet 25th April.

The event will look at practical solutions to the Web 2.0 accessibility problems, showing cutting edge techniques. Jeremy Keith, author of Bulletproof AJAX and technical lead at Clearleft, will be the keynote speaker talking us through through Open Data. Other speakers include Christian Heilmann from Yahoo talking about the implementation of accessibility and Steve Faulkner, author of the AIS toolbar, talking about screen readers and AJAX.

We’ll also be speaking together with many more so hope to see you there.

A couple of weeks ago, it was the Super Bowl in the US.

For many years, this has been one of the most watched events in the US sporting and television calendar, and consequently, a time for companies to spend millions of dollars on new adverts to try and capture the attention of the millions of sets of eyeballs tuned in for the game.

This year, PepsiCo released a new ad - Bob’s House.

The advert was created and enacted by deaf members of the PepsiCo workforce, a group called EnAble and is based around a deaf community in-joke.

I first saw it when someone sent me a link to the advert on YouTube, and I thought it was really quite clever and funny. At the same time, I was impressed that Pepsi had put the investment in both to make the ad in the first place, and also buy a slot at the Super Bowl for it.

In the comments accompanying it, some people felt that the ad was offensive. Some disagreed and felt it was positive, and some showed their ignorance of what people with a disability can do. Standard youtube stuff, mostly.

It reminded me of a video that we sometimes use in awareness raising courses - “A world made for disabilities” and it got me thinking - do adverts like this raise awareness, and if so, do they do it in a good or bad way, or is it that there’s no such thing as bad awareness raising?

View Bob’s House on youtube

View the making of Bob’s House on youtube

View A world made for disabilities on youtube

What do you think?

This is a resource that i think i’m going to find handy - cheat sheets for all manner of client and server side languages.

While not directly related to accessibility, when this one turned up in our inbox we thought we’d post it on here as this is a pretty handy resource for anyone working with the web in any way.

Client side languages catered for include (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript (including AJAX), ActionScript and Adobe AIR.

On the server side, there are resources for Apache Web Server, MySQL, .NET, Perl, PHP and Ruby On Rails.

There are also a number of resources for the Yahoo User Interface Library (YUI), Google keyboard shortcuts and popular blogging services including WordPress, TypePad and Moveable Type. Firefox and Thunderbird users will also find some cheat sheets they may find useful and for the creative people out there - Adobe Photoshop!

Enjoy!

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!

We’ve been talking to our friends in India and as a result Techshare is going East! Breaking the Barriers is the first ever accessibility conference-cum-exhibition bringing the entire ecosystem; the government, the
corporates, the NGOs, the disabled, the product companies, and the education providers under one roof.

Techshare India 2008 will be held on 4th and 5th February, 2008 at New Delhi, India. Continue Reading »

We’re looking for two Web Accessibility Consultants to join out busy team. The deadline for applications has now been extended to 16th October. Read more about the job description and how to apply.

We’re recruiting for three more posts in our busy Web Access Team, two consultants and an administrator. So if you’re energetic, enthusiastic and want to contribute to web accessibility come and join us…

Continue Reading »

The range of presentations at this year’s Techshare conference offers a wealth of choices for people interested in web accessibility, including a 40 minute spot from me. It’s quite late in the day on Friday, so I’m plugging it here, in case you don’t want to miss it.

It’s about the hidden barriers that can be built into sites when the perceived needs of one user group override the real needs of others.

Hope you can make it to room G at 15:00 On Friday 5th to hear the presentation: Avoid the hidden barriers to accessibility – produce truly inclusive websites

Techshare is fast approaching and places for the conference dinner and pre conference workshops are rapidly filling up.

Techshare 2007 - the international conference and exhibition for professionals interested in the role that technology plays in the life, learning and work of people with disabilities. Organised by RNIB, with pan-disability partners, this year’s theme is “Access to Information”. Pre-Techshare workshops will be held on the 3rd October with the conference running itself 4th and 5th October in London, UK.

Book a place online

Key Speakers

On Thursday 4th October the Techshare Key Speakers will be Axel Leblois, Director, Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict) and Rob Sinclair, Director of Accessibility, Microsoft.

On Friday 5th October the DAISY Key Speakers will be Jim Fruchterman, CEO of Benetech and Founder of Bookshare.org George Kerscher, Secretary General, DAISY Consortium.

Full biographies for the Key Speakers will be online very soon.

Programme

The Techshare 2007 programme is now available online.

Pre Conference Workshops

You can also book for any of the following Pre Conference workshops being held on 3rd October 2007

• Exploring Disabled Peoples Access to Your Call Centre
• Web 2.0 and Screen Readers: Challenges, Solutions, and the Future
• Software tools for dyslexic learners
• Testing your website: is it accessible?
• Transitioning your website from WCAG 1.0 to 2.0

Further information about these workshops are available online.

Any queries, comments or suggestions you may have please feel free to contact us:

Telephone: +44 (0)121 665 4240
Email: techshare@rnib.org.uk