Using the W3C ARIA Authoring Practices Guide 1.1, Wednesday, February 15, 2017

WAWG = Web Accessibility Working Group

We will be changing things up a bit this month so we can do a group viewing of a webinar on using ARIA, by Jon Gunderson from UIUC. Note that the time and location of our meeting has changed for this month. We will be meeting in the Clark Instructional Space, which is located on the second floor of the Hatcher Graduate Library's south building. 

Using the W3C ARIA Authoring Practices Guide 1.1 to Build Accessible Web Resources

Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Eastern (UTC – 5 hours)

​Location: C​lark Instructional Space, Graduate Library, 2nd floor, South building​

​Speaker: Jon Gunderson, Coordinator of Accessible IT Group, University of Illinois

Target Audience: UX Designers, software developers, Quality Assurance

​​Skill Level: Intermediate

​"​Join us on February 15^th for this IAAP webinar as we walk participants through how to use the W3C Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) Authoring Practices Guide to design accessibility into web applications and show examples of how the authoring guide was used to build and test the ARIA enabled examples."​

​Hope to see you there!​

Accessibility Summit 2016: Meeting Room at University of Michigan

Join us Tuesday, September 6, 2016 in Ann Arbor for the seventh annual Accessibility Summit, a two-day online conference with 12 experts on web accessibility, presented byEnvironments for Humans. Learn about building in accessibility from the ground up, creating accessible WordPress content, what the law says about web accessibility and more.

This year's event is again hosted by the University of Michigan Library, University of Michigan Office for Institutional Equity, and Refresh Detroit.

And thanks to sponsorships from the University of Michigan Library and the University of Michigan Office for Institutional Equity, attending the two-day Accessibility Summit is free. Sign up now to reserve your space.

Location

The conference will be held in the Gallery Room on the first floor of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan (directions to the library).

Though the event is free, pre-registration is required.

Tentative Speaker Schedule

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

• 10:00am: PM-Led Accessibility by Robert Jolly, Accessibility-focused Project Manager
• 11:00am: Creating Accessibility Reports Designers & Developers Will Love by Paul Adams, Accessibility Evangelist at Deque
• Noon: Accessible Data Visualization with SVG by Doug Schepers, W3C Developer Relations Lead
• 1:00pm to 2:00pm: Lunch (on your own)
• 2:00pm: Accessibility and Performance by Marcy Sutton, Senior Front-End Engineer at Deque Systems
• 3:00pm: Building In Accessibility from the Ground Up by Kevin Ball, Engineering Lead at ZURB
• 4:00pm: Session to be announced by Matt May, Accessibility Evangelist at Adobe

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

• 10:00am: Keyboard Accessibility by Jared Smith, Accessibility Trainer for WebAIM
• 11:00am: Low Vision & Accessibility by Glenda Sims, Senior Accessibility Consultant
• Noon: Accessibility Resource Roundup by Sharron Rush, Executive Director of Knowbility
• 1:00pm to 2:00pm: Lunch (on your own)
• 2:00pm: Accessibility in the Fifth Dimension by Elle Waters, Web Accessibility Evangelist at Simply Accessible
• 3:00pm: Accessible WordPress Content by Joseph O'Connor, Accessibility Consultant and WordPress Contributor
• 4:00pm: Digital Accessibility Legal Update by Lainey Feingold, Lawyer

Notes

• Arrive early to claim your seats. We'll have coffee and tea for you when you arrive.
• The morning sessions begin promptly at 10:00AM
• Free wifi will be available
• While the conference is free, attendees are responsible for their own lunch (one-hour lunch break). Lunch is available from several restaurants within walking distance.
• This is an online conference with viewing at the Gallery Room at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library in Ann Arbor
• Attendees can participate in as much of the event as they wish; no need to attend all sessions on the two days

WHEN

Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 9:30 AM - Wednesday, September 7, 2016 at 5:30 PM (EDT) -Add to Calendar

WHERE

Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan - 913 S. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 - View Map

WAWG meeting, Tuesday, March 1, TAFR 4004 Shapiro, 1-2 pm

Hi all. Due to a scheduling conflict, we will be meeting in our alternate location, the Turkish American Friendship Room, on the 4th floor of the Shapiro Library. 

Jane Berliss-Vincent, U-M's Assistive Technology Manager, will be our guest speaker. Jane is recently back from the EPUB Accessibility and EDUPUB Alliance Summit in College Park, MD, and will be reporting on the fruitful discussions, demonstrations of innovative products, and significant announcements that took place there. Standards for accessible e-text that directly affect educational materials are still under development and need input from multiple quarters, including end users, publishers, and university representatives. 

Hope you can be there!

WAWG meeting 12/1 - Screening Room in Shapiro - Room 2160 from 1:00 - 2:30 pm.

WAWG = Web Accessibility Working Group

Meeting: Tomorrow, December 1st, 1-2:30, Screening Room in Shapiro - Room 2160

Hi all, 

We will be meeting tomorrow. Brandon Werner will be speaking on math accessibility. Specifically, he will cover:

• Brief Introduction to LaTeX. He will talk about the concept of a typesetting language and how it is written in a text editor and compiled to output visually formatted content.  

• Reading and Writing LaTeX from a blind prospective using both speech and braille.  

• Demonstration of navigating web pages with both Internet Explorer and JAWS as well as Chrome and ChromeVox using MathJax.

This will be very interesting and is one of those trickier areas of web accessibility.
We hope you can make it!

WAWG Meeting, Tuesday Oct. 6, 1-2pm, 100 N. Hatcher

Hello all,

We will be convening for our monthly meeting in our usual location, in the 100 N. Hatcher Graduate Library classroom. We will meet for one hour this month to accommodate a class that needs the room at 2pm. In addition to announcements and matters arising, I thought we might do another group critique of a University website. If you would like to "donate" your site to the cause, we would be glad to give you some friendly advice. If nobody volunteers, we can always find something to critique. This is all done in fun in a supportive environment. It is not target practice. :-)

Hope you can make it!

September WAWG meeting cancelled

Due to the fact that we are hosting a 2-day group viewing of the Accessibility Summit next month (Sept. 8-9), we will consider that our September meeting, and we will not meet as a group next Tuesday (Sept. 1).

2015 Web Accessibility Summit

What:

Join us in Ann Arbor for the 6th annual Accessibility Summit, a two-day online conference on web and mobile accessibility, presented by Environments for Humans. Learn about accessibility as it relates to WCAG, PDFs, evaluation tools, and more.

Who:

Umich folk and web professionals in the S.E. Michigan area.

Where:

The Gallery Room on the first floor of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan (directions to the library).

When:

Tuesday and Wednesday, September 8-9, 2015 from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM (EDT)

Attend all day — or only the sessions that you are interested in!

Cost:

Free, courtesy of the University of Michigan Library and the Office for Institutional Equity. Sign up early to reserve your space. Though the event is free, registration is required in order to plan refreshments and observe the fire code. Do not register at the at the Environments for Humans site to attend this group viewing, unless you wish to pay for a private viewing.

Tentative Speaker Schedule:

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

• 10:00am: Accessibility  Professional Certification by Glenda Sims, Senior Accessibility Consultant at Deque
• 11:00am: Future Bliss: Make a Circuit with Me! by Elle Waters, Web Accessibility Evangelist at Simply Accessible
• Noon: Web Accessibility WAI by Sharron Rush, Executive Director of Knowbility
• 1:00pm to 2:00pm: Lunch (on your own)
• 2:00pm The Heart and Mind of Accessibility by Matt May, Accessibility Evangelist at Adobe
• 3:00pm Accessibility in an Agile World by Jesse Hausler, Accessibility Specialist at Salesforce
• 4:00pm: Accessibility and the Language of Love by Dale Cruse, author of HTML5 Multimedia Development Cookbook

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

• 10:00am: Is It Usable for People with Dsiabilities?  by Glenda Sims and Whitney Quesenbery, User Research Experts
• 11:00am: Future Web Accessibility User Testing, UX, and Research by Jared Smith, Accessibility Trainer for WebAIM
• Noon: Apple Watch Accessibility  by Paul Adam, Accessibility Evangelist at Deque
• 1:00pm to 2:00pm: Lunch (on your own)
• 2:00pm Usability in PDF and Word Form Creation by Joe Krack, Digital Accessibility Consultant
• 3:00pm Accessibility Testing Tools by Luis Garcia, Accessibility Evangelist at Deque
• 4:00pm: Demystifying WCAG 2 by David MacDonald, President of CanAdapt Solutions, Inc.

Notes

• Arrive early to claim your seat and enjoy the free continental breakfast; the opening session begins promptly at 10:00AM.
• Free wifi will be available.
• You are responsible for your own lunch (one-hour lunch break). Lunch is available at the League and from several restaurants within walking distance. There will be afternoon snacks and pop.
• Please contact Scott Williams (swims@umich.edu) if you have questions.

Hope to see you there!!

WAWG/Cool Toys meeting, Tuesday, February 3, TAFR 4004 Shapiro, 1-2 pm. 

Note: We will not be meeting in our usual location tomorrow (one time only) and will instead meet in the Turkish American Friendship Room (4004) in the Shapiro Science Library. 

Meeting time will be the normal 1-2 p.m.

We will be meeting with our friends in the Cool Toys group to discuss the accessibility of emerging technologies. 

Hope you can join us! 

Scott

No WAWG meeting for September

Due to the fact that we are hosting the Accessibility Summit on September 9, we will not be meeting up for the Web Accessibility Working Group meeting in September. We will meet again October 7.

Accessibility Summit 2014

What:

Join us in Ann Arbor for the fifth annual Accessibility Summit, a full-day online conference with six experts on web accessibility, presented by Environments for Humans. Learn about accessibility as it relates to HTML5, PDFs, evaluation tools, modern web apps, and more.

Who:

Umich folk and web professionals in the S.E. Michigan area. 

Where:

Michigan League, Michigan Room (second floor)

911 N. University Ave.

(directions)

When:

Tuesday, September 9, 2014 from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM (EDT)

Attend all day — or only the sessions that you are interested in. 

Cost:

Free, courtesy of the Office for Institutional Equity and University of Michigan Library. Sign up early to reserve your space. Though the event is free, registration is required in order to plan refreshments and observe the fire code. Do not register at the at the Environments for Humans site to attend this group viewing. 

Tentative Speaker Schedule

• 10:00am: Accessibility for UX? by Elle Waters, Web Accessibility Evangelist at Simply Accessible
• 11:00am: HTML5 Accessibility by Becky Gibson, Senior Technical Staff Member in IBM's Emerging Internet Technologies Group 
• Noon: PDF Accessibility by Denis Boudreau, Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at Deque 
• 1:00pm to 2:00pm: Lunch (on your own) 
• 2:00pm Using Free & Low Cost Accessibility Tools by Sharron Rush, Executive Director of Knowbility 
• 3:00pm Modern Accessibility for Modern Web Apps by Patrick Fox, Front-end web architect at Razorfish 
• 4:00pm: Accessibility Challenges in Complex Web Applications by Shawn Lauriat, Software Engineer at Google

Notes

• While this is a two-day event, we are hosting a viewing for the first day only. 
• Arrive early to claim your seat and enjoy the free continental breakfast; the morning session begins promptly at 10:00AM. 
• Free wifi will be available.
• You are responsible for your own lunch (one hour lunch break). Lunch is available at the League and from several restaurants within walking distance. There will be afternoon snacks and pop. 
• Please contact Scott Williams (swims@umich.edu) if you have questions. 

Hope to see you there!!

WAWG meeting, Tuesday, April 1, 1-2, 100 N. Hatcher Classroom 

Making Word and PDF Documents Accessible

​Not only are we responsible for making our HTML accessible, we must also ensure that our PDF documents can be accessed by those using assistive technology. Ruth Shamraj

 will demonstrate making MSWord and PDF documents compliant with Section 508 standards and pass the Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Checker. 

​She

 will cover the following topics:

• How to make structured documents using paragraph formatting styles
•  How to apply paragraph styles to someone else’s Word document with minimal impact on page formatting and layout
• Setting the document language and other properties
• Using the Word to PDF macro; Accessibility checkpoints
•  Using the Touch Up Reading Order tool; setting tab order 

​Hope you can make it! ​

WAWG = Web Accessibility Working Group

Next meeting Tuesday, March 4, 1-2:30, 100 N. Hatcher classroom

Hi all, 

ARIA is the bleeding edge of web accessibility and a challenge for everyone. I'm hoping you can join us as Colin Fulton and the Library team share their insights and experience working with ARIA. 

Colin's description:

"As websites transform from text documents to interactive applications, ARIA gives us powerful tools to ensure accessibility of even the most JavaScript-heavy websites. It is also a 184-page spec that, when applied incorrectly, can make make problematic websites nonfunctional.

The aim of this short informal talk is to give an overview of what ARIA is, why it is needed, and how to use—and not misuse—it. The talk will be informative and friendly for non-programmers and developers alike."

I know others have been working with ARIA (Gonzalo, Robert, Randall, et al.) and hope you folks can contribute to the conversation too. And for those of you who have been holding back, this is a good opportunity to get a finger hold on the topic. 

If you want to whet your appetite before our meeting I would suggest taking a quick look at:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/aria/faq

Hope to see you there!