A million flowers boom - AbilityNet web2.0 and accessibility conference

 

www.abilitynet.org.uk/accessibility2/

1 Million Flowers

I was delighted to have been invited to the AbilityNet "A million flowers bloom" conference on the 25 April to join in the discussions about the implications of web2.0 and accessibility.

There was an impressive line-up of speakers resulting in an entertaining, thought provoking and educational day - very appropriate for a day hosted by City University and sponsored by the BBC!

My favourite part of the day was how little the words "web2.0" were used during 5 hours of lectures. My least favourite was sitting still for so long, but to be honest I barely noticed that, and those who know my fidgety nature will confirm, that's a massive compliment to the quality of the lectures.

All of the speeches will be transcribed and available online. It will take a few weeks to write up the full transcription, but I'll let you know in the next newsletter when the speeches will be available. Once they are I strongly recommend you take a look at them.

Just as a little taster, my personal highlights were :

  • Jeremy Keith took us to Doomsday and back to give historical weight to the idea of longevity and data storage, and concluded that simplicity is the key to longevity. Take HTML as one of the best examples of that. He also strongly blamed Mickey Mouse (well, Disney really) for the current extension of copyright.
  • Steve Faulkner took us through Twitter and how difficult it is for a screen-reader to manage, highlighting the problems with AJAX.
  • Christian Heilmann talked to us about how SEO sells accessibility. If you need a business case to justify improvements to accessibility of your website, this is a good one!

And that was just the first 3!

Anne Stafford, iT4Communities Deputy Programme Director