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"assistive technology" alt conference event

Fall Web Accessibility Events

Here’s a list of some conferences and events this fall relating to web accessibility. Please feel free to add more in the comments.

Techshare 2009

Workshops, presentations and exhibitions from organisations and leading figures representing the digital technology disability sector.
16-18 September 2009
ExCeL conference and exhibition centre
London, England

Standards.Next – Cognition and accessibility

Northampton Square
London, England EC1V 0HB
Saturday, September 19, 2009 (1-4 pm)

EdUI 2009 Conference

For web professionals in higher education.
September 21-22, 2009
Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A. (at the University of Virginia)

Accessibility 2.0

The UK’s only Web 2.0 accessibility conference.
22nd September 09
London, England
Hosted by AbilityNet

An Event Apart, Chicago

Two Days Of Design, Code, and Content
October 12–13, 2009
Sheraton Towers
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

12th Annual Accessing Higher Ground

Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference
November 10- 14, 2009
Westminster, Colorado, U.S.A (near Denver)
Keynote Speaker: T.V. Raman, Research Scientist, Google, Inc.
Hosted by the University of Colorado at Boulder

NOTE

I just have to add, I’m pretty disappointed in some of the code on these sites, especially with the (lack of) alternative text, the most basic checkpoints for web accessibility. In the Accessibility 2.0 site, the logo is missing alternative text! And on the Ed UI site, the date and location in the header is also missing alternative text; there is repeated content (under Get Updates); and my pet peeve, redundant title attributes (in menu). Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is pretty careless and poor example.

Addendum 27 Aug

Closing the Gap

Changing lives with assistive technology
Minneapolis, MN
October 15-17, 2009
Preconference Workshops – October 13-14

Web 2.0 Expo New York

November 16-19, 2009 at Javits Center
New York, NY
Register by October 8 and Save $350

Categories
administrative awards podcast

Web Axe Nominated in 2009 .net Awards

Web Axe is nominated for Podcast of the Year in The 2009 .net Awards by .Net Magazine (@netmag).

There are 17 categories, but you don’t have to vote for all at one time. Categories include best web app, mobile site of the year, and standards champion.

Voting closes 12th October 2009. The judges will then decide the winner from the top 3 in each category. Winners will be announced December 8th.

The awards have an excellent group of judges including: Jeffrey Zeldman, Paul Boag, Andy Budd, Christian Heilmann, Jason Santa Maria, Jon Hicks, Ryan Carson and Jonathan Snook.

Web Axe was also nominated last year (2008). Boagworld won the award.

Categories
administrative

Affordable niche advertising!

Web Axe is now offering audio ad space in each podcast. Additionally, you get a link on the blog. Standard rate is $150 (U.S. Dollars) per podcast.

Anyone interested may contact me by:

  • Email to: web axe [at gmail] NOSPAM! dot com
  • Direct message on Twitter (@webaxe)
  • Leave a comment on this blog post.

More Details

  • Valuable, unique niche market. Target this highly specialized audience! (accessibility advocates, web coding gurus, etc.)
  • PayPal is preferred.
  • Rate may vary depending on length and placement.
  • $150 rate is for an audio ad under 20 seconds.
Categories
color css javascript podcast twitter wcag2 yahoo

Podcast #73: Bandwidth & Download Time

Dennis and Ross provide nearly an hour of news, knowledge, and fun!

Download Web Axe Episode 73 (Bandwidth & Download Time)

Michigan and Web Dudes, Lab, and Accessible Twitter

Web Accessibility News

Main Segment

The Issue & Statistics
  • Web accessibility is about providing content for everyone; even if the user is unable to have access to a broadband internet connection.
  • Economic issue; many people simply can’t afford broadband.
  • Mobile–light and fast web sites can be more easily viewed on you phone!
  • Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003 (study from 2003-2008 data)
  • In the U.S. in March 2008, users connecting at 56Kbps or less now make up 11.18% of active Internet users.
  • CWA Communications reported that the “median real-time download speed in the U.S. is a mere 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). The best available estimates show average download speeds in Japan of 63 mbps, in South Korea of 49 mbps and in France of 17 mbps.

Growth of Average Web Page Size and Number of Objects

Chart shows that from January 1995 to January 2008, there was a tremendous growth of average page size and average number of objects. The average page file size went from 14.1k in 1995, to 93.7k in 2003, to over 312k in 2008. The average number of page objects went from 2.3k in 1995, to 25.7 in 2003, to nearly 50 in 2008.

Related WCAG Guidelines

WCAG 2.0 Principle 4: Robust

Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

WCAG 1.0 Intro states:

user may have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection and users may have turned off support for images (e.g. due to a slow Internet connection)

Greatly outdated web portion of Section 508 doesn’t mention internet connection speed.

What You Can Do
  • Use progressive enhancement.
  • Optimize images; use sprites.
  • Write clean code.
  • Use external CSS and JavaScript files. For CSS, use not @import.
  • Combine multiple CSS files into one. Same for JavaScript.
  • Use media domains.
  • Minify CSS and JS files.
  • Setup your server to send pages and files compressed.
  • Cache dynamic data and Ajax when appropriate.
More from the Big Boys
Categories
law survey

SurveyMonkey – web accessible or not? NOT!

SurveyMonkey claims Section 508 compliance and web accessiblity, but that is false.

Accessibility Statement? No, but info about accessibility in Help Center.

Tweet from Jared Smith
Survey Monkey’s problem is labeling method. Labels repeat A LOT (up to 6 times!). Turns label of “1” into “one hundred eleven” or “eleven”.

Tweet from mr_beeps
I had assumed the accessibility statement was referring to *future* releases of survey monkey, not the current one!

Jared:
Despite what Survey Monkey claims, their forms are not very
accessible. They are technically accessible, but not very useful. I’d
maybe consider replacing the radio button options with select menus.
They just seem to me much easier for screen reader users in Survey
Monkey. The problem is that the label for each element is usually read
multiple times (sometime 6 times) because of the way it’s coded. Radio
buttons don’t use fieldset/legend, but the label for each item is
coded multiple ways. The grid of answers were particularly difficult
with JAWS repeating the label for each item over and over and over
again. Putting each in a select menu (“How would you rate Accessible
Twitter’s speed”) would be better.

And this actually causes other significant items. On the “How many
times” question, the labels are repeated multiple times, but JAWS
jumbles them together. The radio button labeled “1” is there two
times, JAWS actually reads “one hundred eleven” the first time it
reads it and “eleven” when you cycle back through the radio buttons.
“2-5” is read as “two dash fifty two, two dash fifty two, dash five”.
Spelling out the numbers would help… a bit, though it would then
read “two dash five two”.

SurveyGizmo
SurveyGizmo’s accessibility statement