Category: conference

Podcast #99: Jennison Powers Up Silicon Valley

Post author By Dennis
Post date February 16, 2014
No Comments on Podcast #99: Jennison Powers Up Silicon Valley

Dennis speaks with @Jennison Asuncion about his big move to Silicon Valley from Toronto, new Meetup groups and camps, CSUN14 and other fun things.

Download Web Axe Episode 99 (Jennison Powers Up Silicon Valley)

[transcript of podcast 99]

Event announcements:

The first Bay Area Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup is Monday, ~~February 24~~ March 3 at Evernote in Redwood City, CA. Follow on Twitter with hashtag #a11yBay.
The first Accessibility Camp Bay Area is Saturday, March 15 at LinkedIn in Mountain View, CA. Follow on Twitter at @A11yCampBay and hashtag #a11yCampBay.
The third Global Accessibility Awareness Day is Thursday, May 15. Date has changed due to European holidays. Follow on Twitter at @gblA11yDay and hashtag #GAAD.

More new groups:

New meetup in Denver: Front Range Accessibility and Inclusive Design. @a11yFR
New meetup: Charlotte Accessibility & Inclusive Design.
New meetup in Pittsburgh Area Accessibility Meetup.
New meetup: New York City Accessibility & Inclusive Design. @a11yNYC
New meetup in Sarasota, FL: Wandering Parrot

Tidbits:

The last time Jennison was on Web Axe was Podcast 95, 2 years ago, when he and @JoeDevon discussed the inaugural Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Follow @a11yEvents on Twitter for related event updates.
Catch Dennis and Jennison at the Bay Area events and the CSUN14 conference in sunny San Diego in March!
Learn more about accessibility camps at accessibilitycamp.org and a11ycamp.org.
List of Regular Accessibility Meetups on WebAIM.

conference expert podcast

Podcast #98: AHG13

The 16th Annual Accessing Higher Ground Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference (hash tag #AHG13) was held recently in Westminster, Colorado at a very nice venue, the Westin Westminster. Representing my day-job employer, I was able to attend and present one session, Usability and Accessibility CSS Gotchas. I was happy to learn that it was being recorded and live broadcast over one the conference’s two virtual tracks. While there, I had the opportunity to interview a few great folks in the business; namely, Greg Kraus, Jayme Johnson, and Kathy Wahlbin. Have a listen!

Download Web Axe Episode 98 (AHG13)

[transcript of podcast 98]

Greg Kraus (@gdkraus), the University IT Accessibility Coordinator at North Carolina State University. He presented The Gamification of Accessibility, which included details about a great online tool he implemented at NCSU.

Jayme Johnson (@hippyjo), Instructor at HTCTU The High Tech Center Training Unit, provides training and support to the faculty and staff of all California Community Colleges. Jayme was on the panel at the plenary lunch during the second day of the conference.

Kathy Wahlbin (@wahlbin), CEO/Founder of Interactive Accessibility and invited expert in the W3C. She presented Accessible Responsive Web Design.

I met Greg and Kathy in person for the first time which was great. I also met keynote speaker David Sloan (@sloandr) in person for the first time as well. Wonderful people.

aria conference csun presentations

CSUN13 Summary

Last week, my author Dennis Lembree attended the 28th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference (better known as CSUN) at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, California.

Dennis presented one session “Developing an Accessible Widget with ARIA” representing his day job company. You may download Dennis’ PowerPoint file here.

WebAIM announced that there is now an API for WAVE, their web accessibility evaluation tool. It has a very affordable pricing model, and the first 100 “credits” are free with registration.

Besides the sessions, there are many activities happening at CSUN including the Tweetup, SS12 Finals, and the first WordPress accessibility meetup! A highlight was Deque Systems’ “Amazing Evening” event featuring a guitar player who played with his feet, and who was also a hilarious comedian!

Props to the Toronto accessibility crew who had great representation again. Met more Canadians this year (thanks to @Jennison) including Bill Gregory, George Zamfir and Jorge Mori.

Recap of Accessibility Camp LA

Post author By Dennis
Post date November 9, 2012
No Comments on Recap of Accessibility Camp LA

A few weeks ago, on October 20, Web Axe author Dennis Lembree attended the very first Accessibility Camp Los Angeles at CSU Northridge. The event is led by @jennison and @joedevon. After opening comments and introductions, Dennis presented Introduction to Web Accessibility (sorry, the Google docs nor the Slideshare version is very accessible). Dennis represented PayPal, his day job in San Jose, who sponsored lunch.

Many other well known accessibility professionals attended and shared their expertise. This is totally awesome since most came from out of state at their own expense. This includes:

Elle Waters who spoke on accessibility as innovation.
Karl Groves who spoke on testing tools.
John Foliot who spoke on HTML5.
Pratik Patel who spoke on document accessibility.
William Lawrence who spoke on Section 508.
Joseph O’Connor who spoke on WordPress accessibility.

Learn more about Accessibility Camp LA on Twitter:

Open Web Camp 4 another success!

Post author By Dennis
Post date July 18, 2012
No Comments on Open Web Camp 4 another success!

Open Web Camp 4 took place last Saturday July 14, 2012. Turned out to be another great event organized by John Foliot (@JohnFoliot) of San Jose, California. This time, OWC was held at PayPal headquarters in San Jose (was held at Stanford the previous three years). Although the event covers different area of web development, several sessions concentrated on accessibility and others included accessibility as part of the content.

After helping with registration, I arrived a few minutes late to “HTML5: All about Web Forms” by Estelle Wyl (@standardista). The talk was a bit rushed, but packed with great information. Next, “Surf a GB with Glenda’s Thumb” was pretty interesting as Glenda Watson-Hyatt (@GlendaWH) demonstrated challenges of using a computer with a motor disability. She also asked attendees to try a web-surfing exercise while simulating a mobile impairment (by using only non-dominant hand with rubber band around fingers).

I regretted missing “Getting Your CSS Under Control” by Jonathan Snook. But instead I attended Denis Boudreau’s very relevant presentation, “Social Media Accessibility: Where Are We Today?“. This session was actually a replacement for Molly Holzschlag’s presentation; she couldn’t make the event due to TSA nonsense.

I finished the conference by attending “Unhiding The Truth Behind Hiding Content for Screen Reader Users” by Victor Tsaran (@vick08) and then a “game changing perspective” talk by Glenda Sims (@GoodWitch), pictured below.

The event was free in the past, and this year there was only a small $10 registration fee; the value is tremendous! In addition to the sessions, a t-shirt and lunch was provided to all attendees. And lunch was enjoyed by many outside in the nice Northern California weather by the pond on the beautiful PayPal campus. A nice time. I look forward to an OWC5 next year.