The Highland Fling is returning for its 3rd installment of Web Standards in Scotland — this Friday, 8th July 2011 — and this time it's all about going Back to Basics.
I'll be speaking on the subject of Accesibility in Modern Interfaces:
Though the web has evolved a great deal in the last decade, the most basic aspects of accessible development have hardly changed at all. So to kick-off my talk, I'll be looking at accessible techniques which have stood the test of time, being just as important today as they were a decade ago.
But the web is continually changing, and web-accessibility has had to change with it. To continue my talk, I'll examine in-depth the most-recent developments in this area, focusing mainly on WAI ARIA — the standard for Accessible Rich Internet Applications, which makes it possible to build custom widgets, like sliders, or drag and drop interfaces, that are accesible to screenreaders and other access technologies.
Then to finish, I'll be asking: how do we pass-on our understanding of the needs and purpose of accessibility to the rest of our development team, to make sure it's treated as a core-requirement and not just bolted-on afterwards? And how do we make sure we remember ourselves, and not get distracted by the coolness of the latest shiny stuff!
But I'm just one among many!
Covering a fascinating and diverse range of subjects, I'll be joined at the podium by some of the web's brightest lights — none other than Steve Marshall, Mike Rundle, Remy Sharp, Rachel Andrew, Jack Osborne, and the irrepressible Christian Heilmann.