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2010 California Web Accessibility Conference (CalWAC 5) Course Descriptions

Usability Track

Plenary and Lunch Sessions

Monday Plenary 1  - Accessibility Now

Keynote : Shawn Henry

Monday Plenary 2 - Accessible Web Sites: Success with Structured Negotiations and other Methods

Lainey Feingold

This session will focus on effective legal advocacy to make web sites more accessible.  Emphasis will be on the collaborative approach known as Structured Negotiations that has been used with companies such as CVS, Bank of America, and RadioShack.  Topics will include -- What should an end-user do when she encounters an inaccessible website?  How do Structured Negotiations start? How has the method been used to address CAPTCHAs? What is the role of experts and end-users?  How are web access legal agreements monitored? What does U.S. law really say about accessible web sites?   Other legal advocacy strategies -- including litigation and filing complaints with state attorneys generals, will also be discussed.

Monday Lunch Presentation 11:50 PM - 1:00 PM - Experiments at the Edges of Experience

Derek Featherstone

Experience web accessibility as you’ve never experienced it before. Dive straight into accessibility at the edges of user experience. Learn about tools and techniques you can use right away in your quest to craft the most usable and accessible of applications and sites. More importantly, we’ll look at the concepts behind the techniques so you can start experimenting on your own, and walk away inspired—and ready to inject accessibility into the web.

Tuesday Plenary 1  - The Future - HTML 5 and Accessibility

Keynote: Molly Holzschlag

Tuesday Plenary 2- Introduction to Universal Design for Learning

Mary Fran Breiling

Among our students, we have a diversity of student profiles, learning styles, physical and sensory abilities. As educators, we need to meet the challenges of providing equity, flexibility, and accessibility for our diverse student body. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles provide solutions for these challenges. UDL is an instructional strategy that provides multiple ways for students to access as well as to express their learning.

Tuesday Lunch Presentation - Stanford Captioning System

Sean Keegan & John Foliot

Creating captioned media is often viewed as a difficult hands-on process, that requires specific skills, technologies, and/or software that is complex, expensive, and intricate with which to perform captioning.  For captioned media to be fully embraced at Stanford University, a system and workflow needed to be developed that addressed these issues; it needed to appear and be as simple as posting a video to YouTube.

General Classes

(classes listed in order of appearance on class Schedule)

Rich Internet Applications

Marguerite Bergel / AnnMarie Chadwick–Dias

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) do not have to be accessibility barriers, but too often are. Learn the specific challenges inherent in achieving accessible applications when working with DHTML, AJAX, Flash, and Flex. Instructors will share best practices and lessons learned for designing, implementing, and testing accessibility of RIA's and communicating your findings to designers and programmers. 

Pre-Requisites: Basic understanding of Web technologies, including html.

Introduction to PDF Accessibility

Sean Keegan

Integrating accessibility into PDFs begins when using word-processing applications, like MS Word or Open Office, to create the document.  Content authors can ensure accessible PDF documents by following simple workflow procedures in the authoring stage and conversion to the PDF format.  Adobe Acrobat also contains several accessibility tools designed to remediate inaccessible PDF versions and improve PDF document usability.  This session will focus on the proper authoring techniques when creating documents and how to fix inaccessible PDF versions using features in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Pre-requisites: Basic familiarity with MS Word beneficial, but not required

Accessibility Policy & Development

Deborah Kaplan & Glenda Sims

If you are in the process of developing accessibility policy or have recently developed such policy and need help in implementation, this course will examine practices and experience from across the country and provide the elements to help you ensure the success of your local effort.

Introduction to Accessible Web Development

Tom Jewett

This session integrates and updates material from my previous CalWAC and AccessU presentations. It covers WHY we are concerned about accessibility; WHAT we have to do; HOW we do it; and WHEN we know it is right. The presentation includes an overview of WCAG 2.0, a mental model of the development workflow, and a simplified analysis protocol for checking your finished work.

Pre-requisites: Basic familiarity with web development or interest in the development workflow.

Web Design Workflow- Creating a workflow for effective web design

Kelsey Ruger

Learn how to create a framework for planning, designing and coding in a complete web design process. 

Accessible Word Documents

Mary Fran Breiling & Elizabeth Tu

What is an accessible document?  What are the tips or guidelines used to evaluate whether the document is accessible?  You will also have the opportunity to learn how to convert your Word document into a Portable Document Format (PDF) and perform an accessibility check

Pre-requisites: Basic word Skills

Procurement & Accessibility

Deborah Kaplan & Glenda Sims

Web Design Grids - Creating a page framework your sites 

Kelsey Ruger

Learn how to audit and plan your content and create an effective grid system for managing your website in any CMS. Will cover content auditing strategies, how to determine content and page classes for organizing content, using a grid system for design, coding your pages for easy CMS implementation, why reuse and recycling are critical concepts in web design.

Accessible PowerPoint

Mary Fran Breiling & Elizabeth Tu

This workshop will offer you the opportunity to learn how to create powerful presentations through the use of automated tools in PowerPoint.  You will learn to create, edit, and publish a PowerPoint presentation and to follow “best practices” as well as accessibility guidelines with “hands-on” exercises.  

Pre-Requisites: Basic PowerPoint Skills

Accessibile PDF Forms

Sean Keegan

Designing accessible, interactive PDF forms requires content authors to integrate form usability design elements in conjunction with accessibility features.  Using Adobe LiveCycle Designer, content authors can design PDF forms with a variety of interactive fields while supporting accessibility options.  This session will focus on using the tools and functions within Adobe LiveCycle Designer to build accessible PDF forms.

Pre-Requisites: Basic familiarity with MS Word beneficial, but not required

Sustaining Accessibility

Preety Kumar

In this session, we will discuss how an automated tool, properly integrated, can sustain an organization's commitment to accessibility.

We’ll discuss how an automated tool can solve the following problems:

Design Secrets of the CSS Masters

Marla Erwin

Accessibility and leading-edge design are not mutually exclusive! Learn some of the tricks used by world-class designers to follow best practices for accessibility without sacrificing aesthetics. This class will feature accessible alternatives to common design problems, featuring real-world examples and insights from some of the best-designed – and most accessible – sites on the web. Best suited for those with some HTML & CSS experience; code samples will be available in class and online.

Intro and Advanced JavaScripting

Derek Featherstone

JavaScript: understand and apply the principles of accessible scripting and best practices for web development; includes unobtrusive scripting, progressive enhancement and encourages thinking about user experience in addition to ensuring that sites work with JS on or off.

Pre-Requisites: none, though an understanding of HTML will help

Accessibility - What NOT To Do

Glenda Sims

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 automated evaluators to gain the judgment to understand the results of your design choices.

Pre-Requisites: Basic accessibility knowledge

Open Source Content Management System Best Practices

Kelsey Ruger

Learn the available options in the open sources CMS market and how to build your list of objectives for choosing the right one for your organization. Understand the best practices for choosing your CMS, building the right team to test for accessibility and usability.

Pre-Requisites: XHTML/CSS