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Re: What to tell developers about accessibility?

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From: Karen Mardahl
Date: May 13, 2012 11:25AM


And I forgot the most important message of all in my mail: *THANK YOU* to
this list. You gave me good ideas, which helped shape my presentation. A
special thanks to Birkir for some discussions off-list.

To quote Newton, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders
of giants." Thank you for being giants.

Regards, Karen Mardahl

On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 7:20 PM, Karen Mardahl < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hello everyone
>
> I gave my presentation to developers last week. Without hearing the
> detailed evaluations yet, I'm hearing good things about it.
>
> My slides are at
> http://www.slideshare.net/kmardahl/build-accessibly-community-day-2012and you must download them to get at the notes. I am annoyed that
> Slideshare doesn't make them available. That is where all the juicy stuff
> is! It also explained why my first slide shows the infographic from WebAIM
> about web accessibility for designers. I think I will do something soon on
> my own blog with this information. As someone preaching about
> accessibility, I feel uncomfortable when I make material available that is
> not adequately accessible.
>
> I had 45 minutes at my disposal, and once I got going on the input, I had
> a hard time pulling things out. I talked for all those 45 minutes, too! I
> had hoped to start a dialog, you know, get people talking during the
> presentation and making a kind of discussion for the whole time, but I got
> nervously excited and passionate and just rambled on and on!
>
> The group was small - maybe 25 to 30 people - but they seemed engaged in
> the topic. There were four slots to choose from in each hour. Later, some
> asked for my slides because they wanted to hear the topic, but another
> session had grabbed their attention, too.
>
> The biggest surprise of all came the next day. There had been a journalist
> in the audience. He was from Version2.dk, a big Danish site (formerly also
> a newspaper) dedicated to ICT. He wrote up my session and mention of this
> was on the front page! In fact, it is still there as of this writing
> because it was the Friday edition - fourth article from the top at
> http://www.version2.dk/ entitled (lang=da) Web-tilgængelighed i praksis:
> Prøv en dag ved pc'en uden mus (end lang=da). That means "web accessibilty
> in practice: try a day at your PC without a mouse". I was plugging Global
> Accessibility Awareness Day and gave that tip in my talk.
>
> The link to the article is
> http://www.version2.dk/artikel/saadan-goer-du-dit-website-laesbart-blinde-45348- Google translate may be your friend and translate it from Danish to your
> language of choice.
>
> I was thrilled that the topic of accessibility could make it into such a
> well-known paper in Denmark.
>
> And why was I nervous? I am not a developer and I am awful at using a
> screen reader. I guess I was afraid of getting into territory where I had
> no answers. I did, actually. People were asking about dynamic pages, and I
> went blank. I told them to go look at ARIA, referring to the MDN site at
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en/ARIA and I admitted I was weak on that
> point (with regard to having an actual discussion right then and there).
>
> Now I am all fired up after this. I plan to dig deeper into some of the
> areas where I am weak and gain more knowledge, just for the sake of
> learning.
>
> Moral of this story: I went outside my comfort zone and I survived. So can
> you!
>
> My motivation for doing this was directly influenced by Jennison
> Ascuncion's challenge at some point in the recent past to go talk about
> accessibility *outside* the usual accessibility circles. It's hard to tell
> from my slides, but my point was also the low-hanging fruit stuff. I also
> mentioned web adaptability from the presentation a few years ago by Brian
> Kelly et al. I said just take one step at a time, echoing Derek
> Featherstone's recent blog post.
>
> PS It is so hard recommending good people to follow on Twitter. After much
> agony, I chose 9 names for this particular crowd. I wish I could have given
> them 100. This is where we, as presenters, need to think of one step at a
> time. Information overload won't promote accessibility!
>
> If we can talk to not-the-usual suspects and just get them to take one
> step at a time, I think we'll go far.
>
> regards, Karen Mardahl
> http://mardahl.dk
>