Web Directions North: Day 0
February 7, 2007, 11:31 AM | 2 Comments
Yesterday was the unofficial start to Web Directions North, with 3 separate all-day workshops going on. The conference itself officially gets started in about an hour, but I wanted to sum up my thoughts from yesterday.
I was fortunate to attend the “Accessibility 2.0” workshop that Derek Featherstone put on and was really impressed by Derek and the material that he presented. If you’ve never had the privilege of hearing Derek speak before, you’re definitely missing out. Not only is he funny, but also he presents in a way that is very open to audience involvement.
What I liked most about Derek and the way he presented was that he never really shoves things down your throat. He understands the importance of accessibility, but realizes that there are more important things to tackle than a few deprecated tags (like the <b> tag for example). Several times during the workshop he had us really hash out and discuss a few accessibility issues. Sometimes the answers were apparent, but on other occasions the answers weren’t quite so obvious and Derek was willing to admit that he didn’t necessarily know the best way of doing things.
One of the biggest points that hit home with me was that screen readers aren’t just being used by people with low-to-no vision, but also by people with cognitive disabilities like dyslexia or illiteracy problems. I’m sure this thought has run across my mind before, but it was pretty eye-opening yesterday to think of it in that context in more detail.
Derek also demonstrated a lot of different scenarios that would make screen readers such as JAWS and Window-Eyes go completely berserk. All in all it was a great day. I’ve met several people from all over the place and I’m really looking forward to the rest of the conference. I’ll try and post updates as I can, so keep checking back for those. Also, feel free to ask me any questions by posting a comment.
Technorati Tags: webdirectionsnorth, webdirectionsnorth07, wdn07, webdirections.
Posted in: Web Development, Web Standards
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Comments
1. Derek Featherstone - February 27, 2007, 5:59 AM
Hey Jonathan - great to have met you and I’m really pleased to hear you enjoyed the workshop! And - for reference - I wasn’t trying to show scenarios where Jaws and Window Eyes would go berserk, they just “did” :)
2. Jonathan Eckmier - February 27, 2007, 7:39 PM
Hey Derek, thanks for your comment! It was great meeting you at WDN as well and I know I told you already, but Maxine, Dave, John and yourself really put on a great conference. Thank you so much for all your hard work!
Even though the scenarios may have been un-planned, I think it was still a very eye-opening example for many people to see how easy it is to make people’s lives (those who need screen readers) difficult. What was also nice to see though was just how easy it is to avoid those issues with a little bit of forethought.