The Great Big List from the 2011 CSUN International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference

Below is a collection of reviews, presentations and other links the from the 2011 CSUN International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference. If you have anything that I’ve missed, let me know at @mactoph or mactoph@gmail.com. I’ll keep adding stuff as long as I get it.

Overall Conference Experiences

Pre-Conference Sessions and Keynote

Presentations and Notes from Wednesday through Friday Sessions

Twitter

Lots of great Twitter conversation throughout, the official hashtags was #csun11.

Thursday Night Tweetup

Video

Audio

Vendors and Product Sites and News

Official List of Conference Exhibitors

Other Links & Resources

How to Eat an Elephant: Tackling Web Accessibility in a Large Corporation

Presentation from the 2011 CSUN Technology Conference.
Presenters: Primarily Elle Waters and Lisa Barnett of Humana, Wes Dillon and Preety Kumar of Deque Systems, Inc and Sharron Rush of Knowbility, Inc. were also on the stage.

Elle and Lisa were charged with coming up with an accessibility plan for Humana and went through a number of the challenges, successes and things they wish they would have known. Humana is big Fortune 100 (and moving up) company with 29,000 employees, 140+ web properties, 11 million customers in the US.

Here are the full slides from the presentation:

CSUN 2011: How to Eat an Elephant: Tackling Web Accessibility in a Large Corporation
View more presentations from Nethermind

(alternate formats coming later..)

Here are a few takeaways I came away with from the presentation:

  • Present accessibility as the solution to problem of the group you are presenting to (i.e. accessibility as a way to enforce coding standards).
  • One person pushing a cause in an oddity, two people is a trend.
  • Work to align accessibility goals with the goals and mission of the company.
  • When relevant, tout the non-accessibility requirements of accessibility such as better SEO, better mobile experience).
  • Look to information security as a model to how accessibility might be implemented in your organization.
  • Develop a library of acessible code snippets.
  • Plant a lot of seeds and cultivate what grows, identifying interested stakeholders along the way.
  • As an accessibility expert, don’t wait around for someone to tell you what to do, take the initiative.

CSUN Keynote Panel on International Accessibility and Information and Communication Technology

The next few days I’ll be posting some notes from the California State University Northridge (CSUN) 26th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference.

Tonight the keynote panel that was moderated by Mike Paciello and included Paul P. Schafer, Mohammed Al-Tarawneh and Axel Leblois. You can read the full bios for Paul, Mohammed and Axel on the conference website. The theme of the panel was an international perspective on closing the gap between assistive technology and information and communication technologies (ICT).

The State of International Accessibility and ICT

To start the discussion, Axel responded to Mike’s question on the state of international accessibility by stating that we are in an unprecended period of growth of technology and devices, citing statistics that there 5 billion mobile phones, 2.5 billion televisions, 1.2 billion personal computers and 1.6 billion Internet users.

Axel then discussed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and mentioned that 99 countries have already ratified it. Mohammed expressed a hope that the United States will soon become the 100th to ratify the treaty and Paul reported from conversation with Judy Huemann that the treaty would soon be going to the US senate.

International Accessibility and ICT Challenges

Mohammed discussed the challenges of the CRPD and how those challenges affect ICT. He said that there is a gap between developed and developing countries. He hopes that countries with the resources and expertise will offer needed financial, technical, education assistance to developing countries.

Axel discussed the problem that although there is much research happening in the area of assitive technology, little of the research done at universities actually makes it to market. Lots of money is being spent on that research that never ends up benefitting end users.

Paul mentioned another issue is that the cost of assistive technology in 3rd world countries is still to expensive, but expressed hope that as mainstream products such as Android devices become accessible they will eventually help assistive technology become more affordable.

Solutions to International ICT Accessibility Problems

Looking forward, Paul felt that some solutions to increasing access to ICT might be the mass market utilization of technologies such as text-to-speech (TTS), speech recognition and brain-computer interfaces (BCI). He also sees potential for assistive technology cloud services. Paul also emphasized the importance of sharing best practices– both in technology and business processes. He discussed the importance sucessfull businesses mentoring others with the goal of getting more accessible practices into off-the-shelf products to replae more expensive, proprietary solutions.

Mohammed said that the CRPD is a powerful legal instrument that binds member states to abide by every single article, but that some member states are unaware of all obligations that signing the treaty brings. He is hopeful that academic institutions, the private sector, civil society organizations and governments will work together to help those in developing countries who lack resources.

One of the areas where Axel has seen success is working on the “low hanging fruit” of accessibility of telephones and televison broadcasting in developing countries. Often there is an FCC–like organization that simply needs training of what they need to do to be more accessible. He also discussed the business value of assitive technologies in expanding markets such as mobile and cloud-based solutions.

Other Keynote Business

After the panel, Alan D. Muir received the the Fred Strache Leadership Award and Klaus Miesenberer received 2011 Trace Center’s Harry J. Murphy Catalyst Award. In his acceptance speech Klaus shared a chinese proverb that went something like this:

“If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk.
If you want to be happy for a month, slaughter a pig
If you want to be happy for a year, get married
If you want to be happy for a lifetime, plant a garden“

If you have an additions or corrections to the above, please let me know!

SXSW Accessibility Panels

I’m headed to Austin tomorrow, here is a list of some of the presentations specifically on accessibility:

In addition there are sessions on internationalization, web standards and the ongoing browser wars. Audio from each of the sessions will be recorded and at some point made available on the website.

Any sessions that I missed? I hope to see some of you there, you can get in touch with me here.

Mobile Education and Access for Students with Disabilities Webcast

The National Center on Disability and Access to Education is hosting a free audio Webcast titled Mobile Education and Access for Students with Disabilities on Wednesday, April 26th at 1pm Mountain Time (3:00PM Eastern). A description of the Webcast from the NCDAE website:

As technologies become smaller, sleeker and easier to carry can they be developed and used so that no child is left behind? That is the question we will address during NCDAE’s April 26, 2006 webcast entitled, “Mobile Education and Access for Students with Disabilities.” Join us at 1 PM Mountain Time (3 PM EDT) for a discussion of technologies, practices and standards related to this increasingly popular education delivery method.

The discussion will be moderated by Marty Blair and will include a panel of John Peifer, Ed Price and Paul Baker. Registration is not necessary. If you miss the Webcast then check back later at their page of archived Webcasts where you can access previous Webcasts such as:

If you haven’t visited the National Center on Disability & Access to Education website it is a great resource, with sections on Tools and Technology, Community and Partners and News and Activities.

World Usability Day

From the newly designed Accessify.com, comes a great link to the upcoming Accessibility Channel being held on November 2nd and 3rd to celebrate World Usability Day. There look to be some great sessions, including A Broader View of Web Accessibility and Usability and Accessibility: Twin Foster Children. Unfortunately (and ironically), the page states, “you will be able to see and hear these presenters on any Windows PC with a broadband connection.” Maybe they are assuming that PC users are the ones who need the most help in this area…

On a side note, I found this great list of usability demonstrations at the IDEAL Group, Inc., one of the hosts of the Accessibiltiy Channel.

Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust (POUR) Free Webcast from WebAIM

Paul Bohman from WebAIM is hosting a free webcast on “the next generation of Web accessibility work in which principles, rather than techniques, take the center stage” this Thursday, July 14. They have also published Part 1 of a great article on Constructing a POUR website. You can register for the webcast here.

Research and Development of Accessible Technologies Webcast

From the NCDAE site…

Join us on Wednesday, December 1, 2004, for a live audio webcast entitled, “Research and Development of Accessible Technologies”. The webcast will include presentations from national leaders in this area and will focus on research and development processes for accessible technologies, including the motivations for developing accessible products, the costs of including accessibility features, and the marketplace for accessible technologies. Panelists will be announced soon. Participant comments and questions will be welcome via email. The one hour webcast will begin at 2PM Mountain Standard Time (1:00PM Pacific; 3:00PM Central; 4:00PM Eastern). You can tune in to the broadcast free of charge. You will be able to tune in using your computer using either Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Archives (transcript and audio) will be available shortly after the conclusion of the broadcast. The broadcast will be captioned for the Deaf and hard of hearing.

ILRU Webcast: Making the GRADE: Improving Access to E-Learning

This is late notice, but it looks to be an informative webcast tomorrow on Improving Access to E-Learning from a couple of fellows who appear to know what they’re talking about. The presentation is happening tomorrow, June 9 at 3pm Eastern time and you can submit questions beforehand. It looks like they will be talking about their excellent curriculum that that have made available for free at www.accesselearning.net.

Kolabora Live! Web Conferencing Demonstrations

This Kolabora Live! Buyer’s Review is going to be a monthly event where software will be demonstrated followed by a question and answer period. The first event will be on Thursday April 22nd at 12pm EST. The event will be recorded and made available for a fee. Kolabora also has an event coming up titled The Competitive Edge, I’ve already signed up for both.

Also a reminder of the PBS Event, Untangling the Web: Making Online Teaching and Learning Accessible happening on the 22nd as well.

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