Institutional Knowledge

Evolution of Firefox Accessibility provided some excellent insight into how the Mozilla Foundation is working to make Firefox accessible for those will all different types of disabilities. I was blown away at how many grants had been given to various individuals to work on accessibly for different components of Firefox.

One of the best resources that I found out about was the Access Firefox which provides themes, extensions, keyboard shortcuts, and much more that all help those with disabilities use Firefox to navigate the Internet. I will be gathering tons of resources from this site, or linking heavily to the site, in the upcoming Accessibility web resource site that we’re building for the ATI project.

Overall, it sounds like Firefox is a very accessible application and works well with several applications such as: Jaws, WindowEyes, Drago, Firevox, and ZoomText. I think it’s high time that CSU Chico start to officially support Firefox 2.0 simply because it has such great support for making the web accessible.

Technorati Tags: csun, accessibility

• People dress up a lot nicer at CSUN than SXSW
• If you’re going to host a conference, involving technology, provide free wi-fi
  • Wi-fi with a Signal to Noise Ratio of 1 == LTO
• If you’re presenting…
  • Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse
  • Make your slides available online and list the URL at the end of your presentation
  • Less is more when it comes to slides. Less words, less graphics, more simplicity. See the 10/20/30 rule
  • Allow for questions/comments at the end

So the IBM Case Study wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. Basically, IBM has developed their own accessibility checklist which, if met, will mean 508 and WCAG 2.0 compliance. Creating your own standard is not the right answer as it is quite costly.

What I did find interesting is that there is a committee working to refresh Sect. 508 as it applies to technology. This could have interesting implications for us as we could be facing the scenario where we get X number of sites to be 508 compliant, only to have those same sites fail if a revised 508 law goes into effect. The upshot? While we’re required by law to be 508 compliant, 508 isn’t a very good law as it’s very specific to outdated HTML.

Apparently one of the best bits of WCAG 2.0 is that it’s meant to be technology agnostic in addition to not being country-specific as other accessibility laws apparently are. The good news is that the 508 Refresh now includes members from abroad as well as representatives from the W3C.

Technorati Tags: csun, accessibility

Live Bloggin… sort of…

So far I’ve heard a few session about WCAG 2.0 and the WAI part of W3C. Unfortunately most of the stuff we’re dealing with revolves around 508 so I’m tempted to write most of that stuff off. Especially after revisiting Joe Clarks To Hell with WCAG 2. That said, I’m waiting for a session to start that’s being presented by IBM titled Making the case for standards harmonization: An IBM Case Study which is suppose to be able developing sites that meet multiple guidelines (508, WAI, WCAG, etc). This should be very interesting. If IBM has an approach to development that ensures their product meets multiple guidelines, then that is something we should consider at CSU Chico; not because it’s required, but because it’s the right thing to do and the more accessible we can be the better.

Technorati Tags: csun, accessibility

Once again I find myself trying to put into words the experience that is South by Southwest. SXSW is not training. SXSW is not a trade show. SXSW is, in the words of Zeldman, a zeitgeist of the what direction the Internet and web industry is headed. You don’t attend SXSW to learn anything in particular and yet you walk away with more knowledge and inspiration about topics that you either had no idea existed or you’d forgotten all about. Having now attended SXSW for the last two years, I can safely say that it’s an unpredictable event that brings together some of the best and brightest. Here are some of my impressions, inspirations, and thoughts from this years event.
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