Three geeks. Three cameras. Three beers. Three photographs at arm’s length. Three reciprocal points of view. Three levels of inebriation.
Left to right: Ian Lloyd, Ethan Marcotte, and James Craig (me). Photo by Ian Lloyd.
Left to right: James, Ian, Ethan. Photo by Ethan Marcotte.
Left to right: James, Ian, Ethan. Photo by James Craig.
I’m just now catching up from all the South by Southwest stuff.
The big news in web accessibility is yesterday’s announcement of the Apple Spoken Interface at the CSUN accessibility conference. (Thanks for the tip, Joe.) Will the Mac screen reader be as usable as JAWS or Window Eyes? I sure hope so. Will it follow standards better than current AT? Well, I don’t know; the “comments and suggestions” link sends you to an inaccessible form. I’d expect more from Apple.
Who asked the Flash and SVG question in our panel? If you know who it was, I’d like to follow-up so please let me know... More on the conference later in the week.
Congratulations to Dave Shea, who took first place in both the Developer Resource category and Best of Show. Congratulations to Gabe Jeffrey, who won for the Weird and Extreme Category. Of course, congratulations to all the other web awards winners, too.
In case you hadn’t heard, the South by Southwest Interactive conference has more panels on web accessibility this year than ever before. In other words, there are a lot of panelists who know a lot about accessibility. I assume the audience is much more aware of accessibility concerns this year, too.
Instead of “singing the same song” as all the other accessibility panelists, I want to focus on our different backgrounds and approaches to the same topic. As one of the few accessibility panelists with a background in graphic design, my role is obvious. At the panel tomorrow, Web Navigation Without A Guide Dog, I’ll be speaking as a designer, not as an accesssibility consultant. I’ll probably say a few things I wouldn’t normally say. I’ll probably ask a few questions I wouldn’t normally ask. This is for the sake of discussion.
I’ve completed the proof of concept for my main argument, User Responsibility for Web Accessibility. I hope this topic makes for some interesting discussion. Come to the panel if you want to find out.
I’m finishing some last minute preparation for South by Southwest tomorrow. Jim Allan, Rob Sartin, Andrea Hamblin, and I will be speaking on a panel entitled “Web Navigation Without a Guide Dog” at 5 PM. I’ll post my presentation material here either tomorrow afternoon or sometime after the panel.
There is a slight possibility that I may be on a another panel at 3:30 PM tomorrow entitled “Accessibility is for Everybody.” I’m scheduled to sit in for Jeffrey Veen if his plane doesn’t land on time.
If you’re interested in going to the Web Standards Happy Hour on Saturday evening but haven’t heard the details, send me an email to let me know.
Update: Jeffrey Veen scheduled an earlier flight so he’ll be there. No sit-in for me. Instead, I’ll be sittin’ in the audience. See you there.
If you’re coming to Austin this weekend for the SXSW Interactive conference, don’t miss “Like Tension,” a 3-day video art show presented by Digital Purity. The Opening party is happening this Friday, March 12th, at Iron Gate Studios and features the “country techno” stylings of DJ Spaghetti.
With the SXSW Web Awards rapidly approaching, I decided that I needed to complete the unfinished sections of the AIR Advanced Training Materials. I’d have felt pretty lame sitting through an awards ceremony with an unfinished site as a finalist. Luckily, I’ve finished almost a week early. Heh heh.
The most notable updates are to the Flash MX Accessibility and Audio/Video Accessibility pages. They contain information that was covered during the training sessions, but was never on the web site until now.
I hope the new content is useful. Please let me know if you find any errors or have any feedback on the material.
After about six months of cancellations, Austin’s first Web Standards Meetup is happening tonight. If you’re interested and in the area, please join us.
It looks like James Tikalsky has started blogging again. He’s added some thoughtful follow-up to my recent rant about the AIGA redesign. I can’t agree more with his commentary of the “CoolHomePages” templates: Web Design for Fifty Bucks.
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