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Current Courses and Descriptions

Some of our current classes are:

Accessibility 101

This is the first of a two-part introduction to accessibility issues and techniques for creating accessible web sites. This course will help you understand the need for universal design, experience the problem of access barriers on the web, give you an AIR Austin Competition overview, introduce and give you hands-on experience with core accessibility techniques.

Accessibility, What NOT to do!

The simplest of accessibility tasks can be executed in ways that will pass the filters of software testing tools and yet leave the page virtually unusable. This course takes you beyond Bobby and other automated evaluators to gain the experience to understand the real effects of your design choices.

Accessible Flash 101

Some of the greatest challenges of accessibility come from implementing Flash applications. Learn from an expert practitioner how she incorporates great multimedia Flash into her accessible web applications.(Prerequisite: Basic Knowledge of Flash)

Accessible JavaScript Strategies and Pitfalls

JavaScript has long been considered off-limits for accessibility reasons. In this course we'll look at how a modern approach to web development brings JavaScript back into the game and how it can be used to enhance interactivity without compromising interoperability or accessibility for people with disabilities. (Prerequisites: Experience with HTML and CSS are expected. Some JavaScript experience would be helpful with the code portions of the course but is not required to understand the concepts presented.)

Advanced CSS Techniques

When do I use proprietary workarounds instead of CSS? Flexible, elastic positioning that doesn't fall apart? Image replacement techniques? Containing floats? Browser bugs? Image formats and enterprise-level server optimization for CSS? Wait, what class is this? Answer these and other questions and discover advanced CSS techniques to provide the greatest quality work *all* audiences in every situation.

Audio Describing

Engage all the senses by developing effective descriptions of various media such as instrumental music, sculptures, charts, video, etc.

Captioning Video

Learn what good captioning is all about and how to use Magpie to synchronize captions to video clips.

Designing for Accessibility: Beauty Secrets of the CSS Masters

Accessibility can be beautiful! See real-life examples of accessible, standards-compliant sites at the forefront of modern web design. We'll fire up our creative skills with a look under the hood at the HTML and CSS for various design options including color, layout, typography, image replacement, and dynamic pages. Prerequisite: intermediate CSS skills.

Developing Accessibility Policy in Texas

Once you attain accessibility, how will you maintain it? This course will take you through the process of developing policy with a look at some of the best.

Firefox and WAI-ARIA

An overview of how the Web Accessibility Initiative is meeting the challenges to accessibility created by highly interactive web applications. (Demonstration class with a prerequisite of basic HTML and JavaScripting skills.)

Forms

Forms are one of the most common constructs on the web. Unfortunately, many forms are not accessible, making it much harder for disabled people to fill out applications, take surveys, and make purchases online. This class will show you how easy it can be to make forms accessible and at the same time increase form usability for all your site visitors.

How We Use the Web

Blind consumers, expert assistive technology users, share their perspective on browsing the web. Hands-on experience with voice readers, screen magnifiers and other AT devices that allows users with disabilities immediate access to electronic information. Computer-based information greatly increases the independence of people with disabilities. See how it works!

Intro to Accessible Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Learn the backbones of CSS design in order to format web pages and separate presentation from content to provide the greatest accessibility for all audiences.

Making PDFs Accessible

Explore the new Adobe Acrobat and learn how to properly mark up Adobe Portable Document Format pages with accessible code, allowing PDFs to be used by many assistive technologies.

Moving Large Organizations Towards Accessibility and Standards

With the current lawsuits moving forward involving the ADA many large companies and organizations are asking questions about how to change a large system and make their Internet and intranet presence accessible. This class will cover the ins and outs of policy making and strategies necessary to implement a standards based design program on a large scale. Some of the topics include…Determining your current position, where to begin, who is responsible, fighting the old guard, and advice on potential administrative problems and how to effectively handle them. Pre-requisites: This is not a technical class in that we will not be discussing code in depth. This class is more appropriate for managers and policy makers within a company.

Search Marketing and Accessibility

Many Web designers mistakenly think of Search Marketing as dirty tricks but did you know that designing sites for search marketing shares much in common with designing accessible sites? In this session you will find out how practices as separating style from content, using semantic mark-up and streamlining code not only makes pages more accessible but also allows search engines to more easily spider, index, and rank web pages.

Tables

HTML tables are a popular form of displaying data on the Web today. However, tables can be a major hindrance to a disabled user trying to view your site if your tables are not made accessible. This class will show you how to do that for both simple and complex data tables.

Testing for Web Accessibility

How do you find out if a web page is accessible? How do you determine if your (or their) web page complies with the Section 508 Web Accessibility Standards? How about the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? Do automatic testing tools work? Which guidelines are testable? What about the free one page testing tools? Is there a role for testing tools in the enterprise? Which tools make your job easier? This course will talk about accessibility from atesting perspective. This is not just about testing tools, it's about testable guidelines and tools that do the tests.

WYSIWYG / Dreamweaver Accessibility

Create accessible web pages easily using Dreamweaver 8. Learn about the integrated tools in Dreamweaver that make editing and maintaining accessible sites easy. Lesson covers testing, alt, tables, forms, templates and CSS. Prerequisites: (1) Familiarity with Dreamweaver and (2) Basic HTML. (Preferred: Completion of Accessibility 101)