Everyone has a role to play – what’s yours?

Inclusive Design 24 celebrates efforts worldwide to ensure people with disabilities have full and equal access to the web. We invite you to join the celebration and connect with the accessibility community, and learn your role in moving accessibility forward. Together we can take great strides toward making a web for everyone.

To celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, The Paciello Group will be holding 24 one-hour webinars on all things accessibility. The sessions range from beginner-to-advanced and are aimed at everyone from executives to web developers. View the schedule below to learn more and sign up now to reserve your spot.

See the video archive from #ID24 2014

Sessions

0:00 (0:00 GMT) Mike Paciello These 5 Changes Will Advance Inclusive Design

#ID24 and GAAD are all about user inclusion and common sense accessibility. Come see how 5 changes will ensure that we get there tomorrow...

YouTube: These 5 changes will advance inclusive design

For 30 years, Mike Paciello, founder and president of The Paciello Group, has pioneered the field of accessible interface design as a technologist, consultant, author and professional speaker. His internationally best-selling book, Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities, remains the definitive standard reference for accessibility design, implementation and usability. In 2006, Mike, along with colleague Jim Tobias, was appointed co-chair to the United States Federal Access Board’s Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC). On April 3rd 2008, TEITAC presented a historic series of internationally harmonized recommendations that will bridge the gap between technology and people with disabilities.

1:00 (1:00 GMT) Ted Drake WearAbility: the connection between accessibility and wearable computers

Find out what is possible with wearable computers and accessibility. This presentation will introduce wearable computers and devices and their use as assistive technology. Learn how wearable computers are providing hands free controls and augmenting visual and audio experience.

YouTube: Wearability: the connection between accessibility and wearable computers

Ted Drake is an experienced front-end engineer, developer evangelist, and accessibility expert. Ted leads the accessibility efforts for Intuit's desktop, web, and mobile products. Previously, Ted worked on some of the most viewed web sites on the Yahoo! network and participated in the development of many products, platforms, and applications. He worked with products to improve mobile accessibility, both HTML5 and iOS, within Yahoo's Accessibility Lab.

2:00 (2:00 GMT) Hans Hillen Dealing with High Contrast Mode, Custom Stylesheets, and Icon Fonts

As the Web keeps evolving at a faster pace, accessibility best practices tend to lag behind. Something as basic and fundamental as an accessible image can still turn out to be quite a challenge when popular development techniques seem to move away from traditional HTML images more and more. In this session we will discuss how such changes in web development can negatively affect accessibility, particularly in relation to user personalisation tools such as high contrast mode and custom user stylesheets. Solutions and workarounds for dealing with such issues will be provided.

YouTube: Dealing with high contrast mode, custom stylesheets and icon fonts

Hans Hillen is a Distinguished Accessibility Engineer at The Paciello Group (TPG) where he started working in 2006. Since then he has been active as a TPG consultant and developer to help companies deal with accessibility challenges on a practical level. Hans' expertise with with WAI-ARIA solutions has helped many projects become more accessible.

3:00 (3:00 GMT) Andrew Arch Web accessibility – the Australian experience

Australia adopted WCAG 1.0 in 2000 with great expectations, but the expected improvements were limited. When WCAG 2.0 was released, Australia was again an early adopter, endorsing it as the coordinated Government standard in 2009. The difference with the adoption of WCAG 2.0 was the preparation of national plan for government adoption that has driven extensive activity. Andrew Arch will talk about the Australian Government’s experience with implementing web accessibility – where they’ve come from, where they’re at, and what the future might hold.

YouTube: Web accessibility - the Australian experience

Dr Andrew Arch works in the Australian Government’s Department of Finance. He is part of the Web Policy team that developed, and is responsible for overseeing the implementation of, the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy to assist Australian governments adopt WCAG 2.0. Andrew has a long history with web accessibility. For many years he managed the Web Accessibility Consulting team at Vision Australia and more recently spent time with the World Wide Consortium (W3C) in Europe on a project looking at the overlapping accessibility requirements of older people and people with disabilities.

4:00 (4:00 GMT) Graeme Coleman Introduction to the Web Accessibility Toolbar (WAT)

The Web Accessibility Toolbar (WAT) is a freeware extension for Internet Explorer which enables developers to manually examine web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. This presentation will consist of a live demonstration of some of the common features of the WAT with respect to testing the accessibility of images, navigation, structure, forms, and color contrast. The intended audience is front-end web developers, as well as web accessibility consultants keen to expand their existing toolset.

YouTube: Introduction to the Web Accessibility Toolbar (WAT)

Graeme Coleman is an accessibility consultant for The Paciello Group (TPG). Graeme joined TPG in October 2013 from the School of Computing at the University of Dundee, where he combined his roles as a postgraduate researcher and accessibility consultant responsible for conducting numerous web accessibility audits and providing hands-on training in creating accessible websites.

5:00 (5:00 GMT) Susanna Laurin Why WCAG is not enough

any countries agree that WCAG 2.0 is the minimum requirement of web accessibility. But what does that mean for other target groups than AT-users? Content, language, cognition and touch screens are just a couple of the things that the guidelines do not cover. Where does it lead if the narrow and tech-oriented WCAG is used as the goal instead of the base line?

YouTube: Why WCAG isn't enough

Susanna Laurin, CEO at Swedish accessibility consultant, has been working for many years with issues around diversity, inclusion and disabilities. She is a board member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals that Funka has co-funded and a popular lecturer travelling around the world. Susanna is active in standardisation groups on national and international level and she is often debating human rights and accessibility as well as writing articles on the subjects. At Funka since 2003, she still likes to be involved in customer assignments, especially when it comes to methodology and user involvement. Susanna has a background from the IRIS Group owned by the organisation of visually impaired in Sweden and the Independent Living Institute.

6:00 ( 6:00 GMT) Armony Altinier AccessiWeb Methodology

Applying accessibility rules in a moving Web requires to use a methodology. In France, the main part of accessibility professionals use the AccessiWeb Methodology, based on a simple principle: one question, only one possible answer. Let's have a look on how it works.

YouTube: The AccessiWeb methodology

Armony Altinier is the founder of ACS Horizons Ltd and the coordinator of “Liberté 0”, a network that promotes a digital world free and accessible to everyone. Armony is as well a Free Software activist and a digital accessibility consultant and trainer. She loves sharing her passion for an inclusive Web in France and around the world in different ways: writing books and articles, giving talks, coordinating barcamps.

7:00 ( 7:00 GMT) Marco Zehe What modern web apps sound like

Marco zehe demonstrates what modern web apps built with HTML5 and WAI-ARIA sound like to a screen reader user. He demonstrates how the interaction works with some very common web sites like Twitter or Facebook, and gives a glimpse into some more involved ones like Google Drive.

YouTube: What modern apps sound like

Marco Zehe is Mozilla's accessibility QA engineer and evangelist. He previously worked at an assistive technology vendor and knows the worlds of a browser and that of a screen reader very well. He is also blind from birth.

8:00 ( 8:00 GMT) Ian Pouncey JavaScript for accessible web applications

How JavaScript can be used to make sites and applications more accessible and usable, and example implementations showing how to manage interactivity within applications.

YouTube: JavaScript for accessible web applications

Ian Pouncey is a Senior Accessibility Specialist and Web Developer at the BBC, writing standards, guidelines, and training material, and advising developers and designers on creating accessible websites and applications. He has been working on the Web for over fourteen years, building a wide range of websites, from small sites for local businesses to the 'Metro' version of the Yahoo! home page and the framework on which all BBC web pages are built. He is the author of Beginning CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design, 3rd Edition, a W3C HTML Accessibility Task Force member, and web accessibility advocate.

9:00 ( 9:00 GMT) Graham Armfield So How Do I Know if my Website is Accessible?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (known as WCAG2.0) are a great resource for those building accessible websites. But they can be a bit daunting if you're new to accessibility, or not really technical. This talk sets out a series of yes/no questions that anyone can answer about their own website to get a feel for the level of accessibility. A couple of free and easy to use tools are introduced to help with answering the questions. Whilst the questions don't cover every aspect of web accessibility, if you can answer all these questions correctly, your website is going to be more accessible than many.

YouTube: So how do I know if my website is accessible?

Graham Armfield is a Web Accessibility Consultant with Coolfields Consulting. He helps organisations, large and small, to understand and improve the accessibility of their websites. He is also a web developer, using WordPress to build effective accessible websites for companies and charities. Graham actively contributes to the WordPress Accessibility Team, and has spoken on accessibility at many WordPress WordCamps and meetup groups. When he's not doing all that, Graham is a guitarist and singer songwriter – playing his way round the open mic nights in Surrey. He's also a fan of real ale.

10:00 ( 10:00 GMT) Henny Swan Accessibility starts with UX

Henny will take a look at how BBC are turning accessibility - a bolt on developer and accessibility specialist silo -  into fluid, integrated, inclusive design. With a goal of making products not just accessible but also fun and engaging for all users, she will spotlight how the needs of disabled users are not so different to that of all users in a world of multiple inputs, platforms and devices.

YouTube: Accessibility starts with UX

Henny has worked in accessibility for 13 years and specialises in mobile and video on demand. Currently at BBC she works on iPlayer, standards and guidelines and media player accessibility.

11:00 ( 11:00 GMT) Mike Gifford The Drupal Accessibility Advantage: It's all about starting with Core

The key strength that Drupal has brought to accessibility is that we've worked to fix problems at the source.  Rather than addressing them in a site specific environment we work to fix the defaults so that it will be accessible. In this presentation we'll talk about some of the improvements we centralized and in many ways solved for sites using Drupal.  Although the examples are very specific to this one CMS, the general approaches can be adopted by any open source framework.

YouTube: The Drupal accessibility advantage

Mike Gifford is the founder and president of OpenConcept Consulting Inc, which he started in 1999. Since then he has been active in developing and enhancing open source content management systems to facilitate client control over their content. Passionate about building communities of collaboration, Mike and his team at OpenConcept have worked with several national government & non-government organizations. They have effectively delivered large projects like websites for PWGSC's Buy & Sell, the City of Ottawa and the Standard's Council of Canada and have consulted for numerous other government departments over the years.

12:00 (12:00 GMT) Léonie Watson Rock & roll guide to HTML5 & ARIA

Understanding where accessibility fits into the technology stack makes it easier to create robust websites and web applications. In this talk Léonie will look at the relationship between the browser and assistive technologies, at the relationship between HTML5 and ARIA, and walk through some useful HTML5 and ARIA design patterns.

YouTube: Rock 'n roll guide to ARIA and HTML5

After many years as Director of Accessibility at Nomensa, Léonie Watson is now a Senior Accessibility Engineer with The Paciello Group (TPG) and owner of LJ Watson Consulting. Amongst other things she is Chair of the British Computer Association of the Blind (BCAB), writes for .Net magazine, and is a member of the W3C HTML Working Group and HTML Accessibility Task Force. She even appears every now and then on TV and radio to talk about technology.

13:00 (13:00 GMT) Char James-Tanny Creating Accessible Documents with Microsoft Word (Windows)

Microsoft Word: The application that typically causes people to cringe and strikes fear into almost everyone who has to use it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. When Word is set up in a way that optimizes your workflow, you can create more accessible documents. (And if a Word document is more accessible, then the resulting PDF is more likely to be more accessible.) During this 60-minute demonstration, I will show you how to create accessible documents (along with some tricks to setting up Microsoft Word to make it easier to use).

YouTube: Creating accessible documents with Microsoft Word

Char James-Tanny, who has more than thirty years of experience as a technical communicator, will present this session. She speaks around the world on topics including accessibility, Help authoring concepts and tools, social media, web standards, collaboration, and technology. Char is the Primary Coordinator for the annual Boston Accessibility Unconference, a member of the Boston Accessibility Group, and was a Microsoft MVP from 2002 to 2013. She has written four books.

14:00 (14:00 GMT) Matthew Atkinson Accessibility Grindhouse

This talk covers two different topics... Matthew takes a look at the problems with HTML4 and HTML5 headings, and demonstrates one potential solution that could solve everything. He then explores progressive enhancement and how it can be used to solve one of the biggest challenges he faces as a screen magnification user.

YouTube: Accessibility Grindhouse

Matthew came to TPG from an academic background, having worked on research projects improving computer and communication accessibility for older people and affording vision-impaired and blind gamers access to mainstream computer games and 3D level-editing tools. He also enjoyed teaching JavaScript, HTML and CSS. He is experienced in applying accessibility standards to a range of web sites, web and native applications. From his research, he is keen to ensure that information is conveyed as appropriately, robustly and engagingly as possible and, as such, takes a keen interest in providing accessible user experiences and personalisation. Matthew holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (from Loughborough University, UK) and actively develops and contributes code to open-source projects.

15:00 (15:00 GMT) Steve Faulkner Using the aViewer accessibility object inspection tool

Run through aViewer features and how it can be used to test the accessibility information exposed in web content.

YouTube: Using the aViewer accessibility object inspection tool

Steven is a TPG Distinguished Accessibility Engineer. He joined The Paciello Group in 2006 and was previously a Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at vision australia. He is the creator and lead developer of the Web Accessibility Toolbar accessibility testing tool. Steve is a member of several groups, including the W3C HTML Working Group and the W3C Protocols and Formats Working Group. He is an editor of several specifications at the W3C including HTML 5.1, Using WAI-ARIA in HTML and HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives. He also develops and maintains HTML5accessibility.com

16:00 (16:00 GMT) Marcy Sutton Accessibility of Web Components

Many people are talking about Web Components, a series of new specifications moving through the W3C and into modern browsers. The goals of Web Components include built-in encapsulation, templating and the ability to create your own HTML tags. (<taco-button>, anyone?) Before we create the next generation of soulless <div> tags, however, we should consider the role of semantics in shiny, new technologies. In this talk, Seattle developer Marcy Sutton will get us thinking about web accessibility in a bleeding-edge way to illustrate that accessibility conversations don't have to be boring or old-school.

YouTube: Accessibility of Web Components

Marcy Sutton is a developer at Substantial, a 60-person product development company in Seattle. She's also an instructor and co-chair of the Seattle chapter of Girl Develop It, a nonprofit organization focused on teaching women the skills of software development. She can frequently be found riding a bicycle or playing frisbee with her dog, who happens to have epic eyebrows.

17:00 (17:00 GMT) Billy Gregory Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Digital Accessibility

Looking to fast track your journey into accessibility? This fun and informative presentation will include examples from Billy’s experiences in the Digital Accessibility space through all stages of his career, highlighting both his successes and his failures. In addition to Billy’s tips, this talk contains tips from 20+ recognizable voices in the digital accessibility space. Audience participation will be encouraged to give attendees an opportunity to share their own experiences or concerns about entering the digital accessibility space.

YouTube: Things I wish I knew when I started work in digital accessibility

Billy Gregory is an Accessibility Engineer with The Paciello Group based out of Toronto, Canada. Billy is an active participant in the Toronto accessibility community, serving as a co-organizer of the Toronto Accessibility & Inclusive Design monthly meetup group as well as Accessibility Camp Toronto.

18:00 ( 18:00 GMT) Heydon Pickering Current Page Link Solutions

We've come a long way towards web application accessibility with the adoption of technologies like WAI-ARIA. Some things never change, though, and the correct way to identify a link to your current location is still hotly contested. This brief talk will look at various techniques.

YouTube: Current page link solutions

Heydon is a UX designer who both prototypes and codes interfaces to be accessible. He's particularly interested in the relationship between CSS design methodologies and accessibility.

19:00(19:00 GMT) Makayla Lewis Like It Or Lump It: An Exploration Of Social Media Change And Its Implications For Users With Motor Impairments

Motor Impairment, Cerebral Palsy, Web Accessibility, Social Media and Change Management.

YouTube: Like it or lump it: Social media and users with motor impairments

Makayla Lewis has a passion for inductive Human Computer Interaction research. She completed a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction at City University London’s Centre for HCI Design in 2012 where she was funded by EPRSC to research online social network experiences and challenges, specifically change management, from a perspective of end users with motor impairments, especially cerebral palsy. Makayla uses user-centered design methods to draw out an understanding of how people influence the management of their data and how they use social networks to extend and maintain this influence.

20:00(20:00 GMT) Mark Sadecki HTML5 Canvas Accessibility

Get a bit of history on the struggle to make the HTML5 Canvas element accessible, some exciting news about where Canvas accessibility is today and how you can start using these new features to create accessible, interactive bitmap graphics. Includes a demo of an accessible HTML5 Canvas game.

YouTube: HTML5 Canvas accessibility

Mark joined the W3C in March 2013 as the Team Contact for the HTML Accessibility Task Force, a joint task force of the Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) and the HTML Working Group (HTML WG) which manages the progress of accessibility solutions in HTML5.

21:00(21:00 GMT) Sarah Horton Involving People with Disabilities in UX Research

You know accessibility is important and try to follow accessibility guidelines. But how do unlabeled form fields affect user experience? What's the impact of opening a link in a new tab, or resetting focus to a search input field? How can you learn the context for these guidelines and make designs that improve accessible user experience? By including people with disabilities in user research and usability testing. In this webinar you'll learn:

  • Ways to include people with disabilities in UX research
  • Things to consider when doing usability testing with people with disabilities
  • Accessible UX insights from our research activities

YouTube: Involving people with disabilities in UX research

Sarah Horton is interested in exploring ways to improve quality of life through good design. As director of accessible user experience and design for the The Paciello Group (TPG), she works with companies and product teams to create “born accessible” digital products and services that work well for everyone. She is co-author of A Web for Everyone with Whitney Quesenbery and Web Style Guide with Patrick Lynch.

22:00(23:00 GMT) Alice Boxhall Accessible Web Components using Polymer

Web Components is a set of upcoming web specifications which will allow web developers to create their own reusable HTML elements. In this talk, I'll demonstrate the techniques we can use for ensuring that these new elements are as accessible as possible, using the Polymer libraries, which provide an interface for creating your own custom elements with a minimum of boilerplate.

YouTube: Accessible Web Components with Polymer

Alice Boxhall is a software engineer at Google, where she works on improving accessibility support in Google Chrome. She is also the creator of the Accessibility Developer Tools project

23:00(22:00 GMT) Karl Groves Prioritizing Remediation of Accessibility Issues

Once you have a report from an accessibility consultant, automated tool, or your QA team, now what? Not all issues are created equal. This session will discuss the various factors which must be weighed in order to make the most effective use of developer time and effort while also having the best possible results for your users.

YouTube: Prioritizing remediation of accessibility issues

Karl Groves is Senior Technical Lead Accessibility Software Consultant & Director of Training for the Paciello Group. For over 12 years, Karl has dedicated his professional life to helping businesses create structurally sound web experiences that are also a delight to use. He has taught web standards and accessibility best practices to design, development, QA, and product teams from some of the largest E-Commerce and software companies in the world.