Here are my AccessU notes as a public Google notebook*. Just the stuff in the named section is specific to the conference.
My AccessU Powerpoint presentation for the May 15 meeting.
Overall, an excellent conference. I’ll report on the accessibility subjects covered there at the May 15 meeting. A few things new to me:
- General consensus re. the
longdescattribute: if what you’d put in it is important enough to include in alongdesc, it’s better to just put that info in a visible tag, for everyone. - One way blind people using the JAWS screen reader scan a web page is by hearing it list the page’s headers and links. One result of this? ‘Skip Navigation’ may not be necessary if your headings are done properly.
- I’d never bothered to understand CSS specificity (laziness inspired by Dreamweaver’s good CSS tools). But it’s easy, see Jon Wiley’s short description. I’d been just adding
!important, knowing it was lame. No more. - Check Jon Wiley’s ‘Test CSS’ bookmarklet. This is a quick-and-easy CSS tweaker that appears in a new window when you drag it to your bookmarks bar and click it. It even outcools this feature in Firebug since you don’t keep losing your stuff when you change pages. I’ll demo May 15.
- Flash projects can be made entirely accessible, and like many aspects of accessibility, doing so can have benefits beyond just those to the disabled. Our presenter Thea Eaton of Snert Studios is doing some very cool accessible Flash games for kids. Here’s her Flash accessibility best practices checklist.
- Accessible, searchable captioning of online video using free tools. Here’s the link to the final class project (warning: speakers down or off; you’ll see why).
NOTE 5-14: A kind and patient individual suggested the supposedly lost data may be accidentally deleted, in my ‘Trash’. Indeed, that was the case; it is now properly restored. Thank you!!!