Biggest Hit

The CSUN Tweetup was a smashing success. Video games and certainly an open bar this year helped acquire more attendees! Check out these hilarious photos. Special thanks for Jared Smith and Mike Paciello for organizing.

Amusing Slide

This presentation slide cracked me up. It’s from the end of @PaulJAdam’s presentation “HTML5 & WAI-ARIA Forms-jQuery Validation”.

Amusing slide from Paul Adam.

Reality Check

This slide from ARIA Widgets presentation by @Todd Kloots pretty much says it all. In the web development world, we are in between HTML4 and HTML5 right now (we developers can start coding HTML5, but much support is currently missing from browsers and assistive technology).

Great simple slide from Todd Kloots.

Session With Most Style

The session Accessibility is the New Black by Wendy Chisolm and Elle Waters is definitely most stylish. Photo from tweet by @GoodWitch.

Accessibility Is The New Black!

Practical

The slide “Benefits of web standards” by Howard Kramer from A Web Standards & UD Approach to Access gives some great info on why coding properly is important.

• Makes it easier for people & search engines to find your content (including AT users)
• Separating structure and behavior makes your site easier and less expensive to develop & test. (And much easier to update.)
• Makes your site lighter (smaller file size).
• Semantic markup makes your site more accessible to different kinds of browsers and devices, incl. mobile devices and AT.
• Designing with standards in ensures that your site is forward compatible.

More

Want more?! Check out my Flickr CSUN12 photo album the Web Axe Women of CSUN12 podcast! And I’m already looking forward to next year…

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In January, I finally published my big article 25 Ways To Make Your Website Accessible. The idea was to get it on a major online magazine, but red tape got in the way, and I hate red tape. Anyway, the article got great response from the community on Twitter.

In February, The American Foundation of the Blind announced the winners of their AFB 2011 Access Awards, and my web application Accessible Twitter was a recipient! I’ll be traveling to downtown Seattle next week to attend the ceremony at the 2011 Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute (JLTLI) conference. Weird part of this is that Disney Parks & Resorts also won the award, but at the same time, Disney was sued for inaccessible websites!

The week after Seattle, I’ll be traveling back to San Diego for the CSUN conference (Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference). I published a Web Axe podcast which discusses the conference, CSUN 2011 Preview. I’m not speaking at the conference as I did last year, but I will be judging a contest!

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It was my first time in Indy, strange since I grew up only a 5-hour drive away in the Detroit suburbs. Except the humid weather and lousy flight delays on the way home, it was a great experience! It was great meeting the organizer of the event, Sara Croft, and running into the keynote speaker, John Bramblitt, at the airport. In addition to the excellent keynote speech by John, a highlight of the conference was an accessible gaming arcade provided by the AbleGamers Foundation. My presentation went well, and had a great conversation with a few visually-impaired users afterwards. Oh, and I took some photos of downtown Indianapolis.

Here’s my presentation below, a SlideShare link and embedded SlideShare Flash version. Or, go to the (text-only) HTML version.

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I missed the workshops, but attended the 2 1/2 days of the main conference and also presented one session. The slides are posted on SlideShare.net and briefly made the “” list on the home page. You may view and DIGG the “Twitter and Web Accessibility” presentation here. It’s also embedded below.

Highlights of the conference include:

• Finally meeting Jared Smith of WebAIM.  We’ve known each other for several years online; since he was a guest in the early days of the Web Axe podcast and blog. Great guy.
• I also met other great people, and several from Europe – UK, Netherlands, and Spain. And how could I forget, John Foliot of Stanford was there, too!
• Great venue. The conference was held at a new hotel this year, the Westin Westminster, which was very nice. Much more spacious and elegant than previous years. (I attended the AHG 2008 event.) Some great restaurants, including Rock Bottom Brewery, were just across the street.
• The day before I left, it started snowing. The streets were slushy, but the snow was pretty. I was a bit nervous about my flight home, but the Denver airport did a great job and there were virtually no delays.

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For more information, you may:

• View the presentation on slideshare: Accessible Twitter at Open Web Camp presentation.
• Learn more about the event with the Twitter hash tag: #openWebCamp.

After-party gathering outside on Stanford campus during OpenWebCamp.

Photo from OpenWebCamp album on Flickr from Barbara Haven.

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• Mobile web usage doubled in 2008.
• Nokia is the world’s largest digital camera producer (as they are the biggest mobile phone manufacturer).
• App written by Google in HTML5 for iPhone and Android is sweet.
• Mobilize Don’t Miniaturize
• Need to read up on the W3C Geolocation API
• Since 2003, web page file size has tripled!
• Only 1% of iPhone Apps are used long-term.
• For usability testing, research only what is necessary.
• Don’t put branding ahead of users.

The day before the conference, I took and vacation day and brought my wife and kids up from Cupertino to “the city” for a mini-vacation. We stayed at a very nice hotel for which we got a great rate through HotWire.com. Here’s a Flickr album of the family portion of the trip.

Computer nerd area

Exhibit Hall

Dennis at Golden Gate bridge

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During my 5-day trip to Canada (with my manager), I stayed and worked in a suburb of Toronto, Mississauga. I also spent a day in Waterloo, the home of my new employer RIM (Blackberry). It wasn’t terribly exciting, but it fun to be in Canada again, and to see the French plastered everywhere. And I sure lucked out with the weather; around 65F and sunny, which is amazing obviously for November.

Also, more importantly, I met many people that I’ll be working with from my office in Redwood Shores, which was very important. If a company has offices spread throughout a country or throughout the world, it’s very important for people who work together to meet face-to-face and build rapport.

I went to Boulder to speak at and attend a conference about web accessibility and assistive technology. (See the post Speaking at “Accessing Higher Ground” Conference.) The first thing I noticed was that the Denver airport was really nice. It snowed the second morning I was there, which was neat since I don’t see snow much any more (but it melted by afternoon). The conference was good, met some good people, and I even got a free t-shirt from WebAIM. On Friday night, I ate dinner at Zolo one night, which I totally recommend. Then I met a couple old friends who now live in the area and went bar hopping on Pearl Street in downtown Boulder. Pearl Street is very cool.

Here’s the view from hotel room in Boulder, Colorado:

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