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!