Justin, Trudy and Dave attended the Aiming for Accessibility Conference this week at the University of Guelph. With Ontario set to be “barrier-free” by 2025, the goal of the conference is to “raise awareness and encourage action” in the field of accessibility. The conference spans 2 days and features many enlightening talks given by professionals in the field.
Although the focus of the conference was primarily on accessibility in technology and the web, it started with a great keynote address given by Christine Karcza. She provided some great insight into the regular daily hurdles – both physical and technological – that must be overcome by people with disabilities.
GiantGoat also had an exhibition booth set up to showcase our latest work:
Notable talks were given by Sean Yo who focused on design principles and strategies to use to develop accessible websites, and Derek Featherstone provided some humorous examples of accessibility disasters and solutions that he has encountered in his work. Trudy and Justin also attended a presentation by Apple demonstrating their more recent accessibity features on products like the iPhone and iPad. Justin got to play around with an iPad too, much to his delight.
On Day 2 GiantGoat’s own David Hayes gave a talk about some new features in HTML5 and CSS3 that will really help in the development of accessible websites.
Overall the conference was very successful and educational. Clearly the industry is getting the ball rolling with conferences like this and hopefully we are all on track for the 2025 deadline!
