Accessible Long Beach

babs and I are in Long Beach for the California Web Accessibility Conference (CalWAC2). Its been a pretty good confernence so far. We left, along with another co-worker yesterday, quickly drove to Oakland, flew through the security (although I got frisked). It was my first time on Jet Blue and it was pretty good. Each seat has a mini-tv and you watch boring shows. One quick taxi ride and we were at the hotel right across the river. The food was good and the evening was mellow.

The first day of the conference was pretty darn informative, but mostly I have found it to be very confidence building. Started with Accessible Forms, always tricky, only to discover I have been doing it right.

Next was a demo of a screen reader that is an extension of FireFox called Fire Vox. JAWS a leading screen reader for the blind or those with vision problems will read the web page for you. Only problem, its expensive. Fire Vox … open source and Free! I installed that puppy, whipped out my ear buds and tested the library home page, worked like a charm.

Next came a 3 hour PDF Accessibility workshop. How to fix it seems pretty easy, but still really really time-comsuming.

Little cocktail hour, walk around downtown Long Beach made a pleasant evening,

Next day was Advanced topics in CSS, Desiging for Beauty and Access and Accessibilty – What Not to Do.

The conference has been enlightening. Lot of things to learn but also more important, I know most of this stuff and our sites are doing pretty well and for the most part compliant. still have lots to learn and things to fix but damn we are doing good.