Web Accessibility Conferences
Web Adaptability for Inclusion Conference 2009:
Realising the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities
January 21-23, 2009
Bundoora, Victoria (near Melbourne, Australia)
The keynote speakers are from the education community, but their scope appears broader.
The topics include: making Web 2.0 technology accessible, auditing content, and correcting incompliant content.
These address many of the today's challenges in Web accessibility.
ATIA 2009 Orlando
January 28-31, 2009
in Orlando, FL
This is the 10th annual ATIA conference. There appears to be an emphasis on hardware (of course!) and the education industry.
It includes interesting topics, such as the pre-conference seminar, Integrating Web 2.0 Tools and
AT: Promoting 21st Century Skills in the Classroom.
I can't believe the year's almost done. I've been so busy working and traveling that I
want to take this moment to catch up on some recent happenings. Most notably, the
W3C announced on December 11th that the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 became a W3C Recommendation.
That means it's official. No more rounds of comments. Make it happen! I love their
WCAG 2.0 quick reference guide that lets
you easily customize what material to display and provides links to examples of what to do and what not to do.
The other item of note is the publication of
Universal Design for Web Applications: Web Applications That Reach Everyone,
a book written by
Matt May and
Wendy Chisholm. I was a technical editor for the book and am pleased with how it turned out. I think Matt and Wendy did a
great job packing lots of useful information on accessible and mobile Web development into a compact number of pages. Perhaps I'm biased, so you can check out this
recent review of the book. On that pleasant note, I wish everyone a Happy New Year!
2009, here we come!
Lasting link for 12-31-08
Tomorrow, November 13th, is
World Usability Day. It's sponsored by
UPA. Transportation is this year's theme.
Local and web-based events will take place around the world.
Unfortunately, no events were listed
for the Portland, Oregon area.
However, the online card sorting of Canadian road and tourism signs is already available.
A version is provided in English and in
French. I'd be interested to find out more about how they use the results to improve the signage in multilingual Quebec.
Lasting link for 11-12-08
The W3C announced today that the
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is a Proposed Recommendation.
That means it's time for the final review, endorsement, and adoption. If you're not on board yet, it's time to step up.
They estimate the final recommendation will be
available in time for Christmas. It wasn't even on my gift list for this year, but I suppose they wanted to update it
before the 10th anniversary of WCAG 1.0 this upcoming May.
Lasting link for 11-03-08
