I spent last Saturday at Accessibility Camp DC learning about some ways to make technology more accessible to the world. Before hand, I knew just a little bit about accessibility, but I’m happy to say that I walked out with a ton of new knowledge and a desire to keep learning on the subject. Some of the highlights for me:
- Jeanne Spellman from the W3C speaking about standards and the upcoming Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines. She also spoke of other important standards that all developers should be aware of when it comes to accessibility. Slides
- Russell Heimlich (like the maneuver) gave speaking about “”How to Build an Accessible Website from the Ground Up” that was one of the most code heavy speeches for the day.
I can’t wait to see his slides online so I can look through them for all the great tipsEDIT:Russell shared his slides in the comments below. - The Fire eyes plugin is a great tool for accessibility testing. Every developer should have it in there toolkit.
- UX expert Jimmy Chandler speaking about Integrating Accessibility Into Your Projects.
- The Able Gamers Foundation had some cool accessible games setup. I was able to play a racing game with my face, much like a quadriplegic would. It gave me a completely different prospective on gaming.
Overall, I’m incredibly happy that I went and can’t wait to continue learning. Big thanks to John Croston and his team for organizing this great event. Hopefully in the next year I will have learned enough to feel comfortable presenting a session at Accessibility Camp DC 2011.