I just returned from the Accessing Higher Ground (AHG) 2009 conference in Westminster, Colorado (just outside Denver). Subtitled “Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference.” The event has a slant in higher education; making college and university information accessible.
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.
I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that Web Axe, my podcast and blog on web accessibility, has been nominated for .net magazine’s 2008 Best of the Web awards. It’s in the “Podcast of the Year” category, the sixth category down the list. After voting narrows the candidates to three (voting ends October 13), a panel of judges decides on the winners who will be announced in December.
If you listen to Web Axe and like it (or even if you don’t!), you can vote for Web Axe on the Best of the Web site.
Here’s a quote from .net magazine about the contest:
The .net Awards celebrate the best in web design and development. The 14 categories for 2008 range from Design Agency of the Year and Podcast of the Year through to the Infamy Award – a chance to name and shame those ruining your web experience.
I thought it would be interesting to post some statistical information from Feedburner on my podcast and blog about web accessibility, Web Axe. It had been several weeks since I last checked the stats, and it was a pleasant surprise to see some growth.
The stats are for Thursday, July 10, 2008 and shows one of Web Axe’s highest subscriber rates of 746 (an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested in a 24-hour period). What I find most interesting is the different types of feed readers being used and how popular they are. Google and iTunes top the list. Google feed readers (Google Reader or iGoogle) count for 32%, and iTunes for 30% (17% Mac and 13% Windows). Netvibes, my favorite RSS reader, was next at 10%.
Just released the 2-year anniversary podcast for Web Axe, my podcast and blog on web accessibility. It’s been a lot of work, but a lot of fun too…
So Ross Johnson and I recently did another big interview for the Web Axe podcast. We spoke with Andrew Kirkpatrick, a leader at Adobe in product development and accessibility. And a nice guy.
Podcast #53: Interview with Andrew Kirkpatrick
We used Skype to record the podcast, again, and it sure makes it easy when folks are separately geographically–I’m in the Bay area, Ross is in Ann Arbor, and Andrew is in the Boston area. Scheduling is a bit tricky because of the time zone differences and everyone’s busy schedule, but that went fine since I planned a few weeks out. It’s still a bit difficult to get the audio levels right, though, and unfortunately we experienced this problem a bit on this podcast…check it out and let me know what you think…
Google recently purchased the master RSS feed utility Feedburner. In doing so, Google has made the PRO account and services now free to any user; there was previously a fee for the upgrade. This is great news for folks with blogs and podcasts because you can now do more and better statistical tracking of your readers/listeners. I just enabled the PRO service for my podcast/blog on web accessibility, Web Axe, so not all the data is there yet. But I’m looking forward to this great service! Thanks Google!
The idea of my podcast on web accessibility, Web Axe, is to provide “practical web accessibility tips”. The last couple episodes are angled a bit towards theory and ran a bit longer more than my preference, but the topics are essential in the field. Specifically, I’m referring to “Podcast #50: Analysis of WCAG 2.0” and “Podcast #49: AJAX and Accessibility“. Both podcasts I believe went very well, and they cover a lot of good subject matter that may be written about on the web (in blogs, forums, etc), but not talked about. I’m planning more succinct and code-specific podcasts in the near future. Topics may include OptGroup and an accessible slideshow.
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