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Back to Austin

April 8, 2005

It’s official. I’ll be heading to Austin again in May as a guest instructor for Knowbility’s Accessibility University.

I’ll be teaching a course in Accessible JavaScript — though many have struggled to define accessible scripting techniques, to me it means thinking carefully about what we do when scripting – we can’t just implement JavaScript solutions without actually determining their impact, and planning it properly first. In order to do this, we need to look at a few concepts:

  • Progressive Enhancement,
  • Contingency Design, and
  • using my patented, trademarked, and newly coined RAPIDS Methodology (more on that later)

I’m really looking forward to it and excited to be part of such a great event. The fact that I’m getting to teach along side some of the world’s best known accessibility experts is the icing on the cake. My sincere thanks to Sharron Rush and James Craig for getting me involved with SXSW and Knowbility in the first place.

Look out Austin – the Dragon returns!

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7 Responses

Comment by patrick h. lauke — Apr 08 2005 @ 7:12 pm

glad to hear things are working out for you, dez…you deserve it.

Comment by Derek Featherstone — Apr 08 2005 @ 9:05 pm

Thanks, Patrick – I appreciate it… oh, and Dez? you British lot with your short forms: gez, dez, daz… sod it. I’m calling you pez from now on… ;)

Comment by Jeremy Keith — Apr 09 2005 @ 9:01 am

Excellent news!

And what a great and noble subject. I hope you’ll be putting your notes online for those of us who can’t make it to Austin.

Comment by patrick h. lauke — Apr 09 2005 @ 8:54 pm

sure, call me pez…but i won’t dispense any little sweets or anything ;)

Comment by Geraldastinspiritfristoncapacitor Lemon — Apr 10 2005 @ 3:05 pm

Congratulations on the guest instructor role, Derek.

As for shortening names, it’s considered a great honour in Britain; the shorter, the better. The ultimate mark of respect would be for someone to address you as ‘D’ :-)

Comment by Keith — Apr 11 2005 @ 9:28 am

Congrats man. We’ll have to try and hook for lunch or something.

Comment by Squeek — May 05 2005 @ 9:35 am

D! I’ll be your monitor for the class on Friday morning. I was there (on tech crew) at the accessibility panel you were on at sxsw this year, and look forward to learning more from you at AccessU next week.