The WebVisions conference (2005 edition) is slated for July 15th, 2005 – you simply can’t get value like this anywhere else in the world for a web conference – seriously. $85 USD gets you into this one day event that boasts an excellent line up of speakers.

There is also a Visionary Workshop on July 14th with morning and afternoon workshops on design, usability, search engines and Flash animation.

This is definitely a conference I wish I could attend. Hopefully there will be some people liveblogging it and posting pictures to flickr!

At the @media conference in London, we were all treated to a blast from the past when Jeffrey Zeldman outlined the early days of the Web Standards Project. We were also well-informed about the current activities of WaSP by Molly, who successfully dealt with volley after volley of WaSP related questions from the audience throughout the conference.

Which brings us to what will hopefully be a really fun and adventurous future – I’ve become a WaSP, and I’m completely honoured, and very excited to work with such a talented group of people on the Accessibilty Task Force — all of whom I’ve got the utmost respect for, having followed and admired their work and writing from a distance for quite some time: Bruce Lawson, Gez Lemon, Patrick Lauke, Andy Clarke, Ian Lloyd and Matt May. Special thanks to Molly for getting the ball rolling on this much needed Task Force.

Continue reading Buzzing

There are currently two popular methods to get a free iPod – you can either sell your soul like Jeff Croft (sorry, Jeff ;) ), or win one of Mike Davidson’s contests. I wasn’t really interested in selling my soul, so that was out, and I haven’t really had much time to put together anything creative for Mike D’s contests, and even if I did win, I’m not sure I could take it from him anyway. Enter the bank and my need to set up another bank account. I looked at all of our banks (we only have a handful of banks in Canada) and was deciding where I wanted to do business.

My fellow Canadians – take note. Until mid-August, TD Canada Trust is offering free iPods to people that switch their accounts over to them.

Continue reading Finally, my free iPod

I want to follow up on a few things so that I can clarify and further explain my position on the statement I made in my presentation at @media 2005.

In one of my last slides, I made a statement that I want to be sure isn’t misquoted or taken out of context (yeah, right. Good luck). On one of my last slides, I said this:

If we are doing things right, we should be able to tell users of older screen reader software to turn JS off for more consistent experience.

Continue reading JavaScript and Accessibility

I’ve posted my presentation from @media 2005 online: Testing for Accessibility: Techniques, Perspectives and the Future. It may not make much sense to you if you weren’t there, and I don’t have extensive speaker notes within the presentation. It appears that Isofarro will be posting his recollection of the entire conference (thanks in advance, Mike – that will be a great resource!)

Update

I don’t usually revise posts dramatically once they are done, but I’m making an exception in this case. You see, it appears that our little challenge that we set up for the speaker pool at @media has had some interesting results. If you aren’t sure what exactly we are all referring to, Andy Clarke explains the @media speaker challenge very well.

The interesting bit is that doing this has vaulted these sites to the top of Google search results pages (I won’t link to the searches, but you can certainly figure out how to get the search results). I guess that isn’t too surprising, but what concerned me the most is that without at least some decent explanation, or some other context/content, we might be seen as trying to trick the search engines. And that wouldn’t be cool.

Again, here’s the original list, in order from first speaker to last speaker. Cindy Li has also posted a photo of our @media word list. And, as Molly mentions, it was too bad that Robin wasn’t able to play along. He couldn’t make the dinner, but would have done a bang-up job with whatever word he was handed, I’m sure.

1. Bujumbura
2. Prestidigitation
3. Raconteur
4. Superannuation
5. Perinaeum
6. Beefcake
7. Phalangist
8. Masturbatory
9. Anthropomorphize
10. Didactic