One Day Workshop

Sharing the Secrets of Web Accessibility

Make your site standards-compliant and accessible

Creating accessible web sites is no longer an option, it's a necessity. During this one-day workshop, we'll teach you how to create accessible sites that work in the real world.

Photo of Joe Clark

Joe's advice will help you overcome those tricky areas that most developers get stuck on. He'll also let you in on many of the little secrets he's picked up over the years that will help you build accessible sites more quickly and easily.

The day will be full of the tips and tricks that will save you crucial time when designing a standards-compliant site for either yourself or your client. The area of accessibility is a minefield for the developer. This one day workshop will tell you what you need to know, why you need to know it and how to implement it. By the end of the session you will feel confident in saying to any client 'I can make your site accessible'. For a full breakdown of the day's content see the schedule below.

This session assumes you have a working knowledge of web standards and basic familiarity with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published by the W3C in 1999.

If you have any questions or if you prefer to pay by cheque or require an invoice, email .

We'd like to thank Patrick H. Lauke for allowing us to use his photos of Joe.

What You'll Walk Away With

The Web Accessibility Survival Kit: - Each attendee will receive this amazing kit, which is chock-full of resources and example documents from Joe.
Years of Experience: - Years of valuable knowledge and experience. You'll be benefiting from all the triumphs and mistakes that Joe has made over his career.
Practical Knowledge: - We're not going to bore you with theory. The workshop is going to focus purely on practical information that you can immediately incorporate into your web site.

Who should attend?

Web professionals who have a working knowledge of web standards and basic familiarity with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Past Reviews

"Easily the best workshop that I've attended." - John Pilbeam

"The workshop was great for comparing experiences." - Jeff Veen, Adaptive Path

"The workshop is going to save me a load of time and money." - Bill Adcock, Airlounge

"Well paced, well planned and very professionally delivered. An abundance of terrifically useful info." - Michael Buzzard, Cuban Council

"I loved it and can't wait for the next workshop!" - James Stanton

"The workshop was good value for money." - Leonard Lin

"Very useful, well organised and a great lunch!" - Jozef Hatala

"Superb organisation and preparation - thankyou!" - Andrew Hoskings

"Keep 'em coming!" - Thor Muller

How large is the workshop?

We've limited the number of attendees to 40, so that you will be able to interact with the speaker and get your questions answered.

Schedule

Registration & Coffee: 8:15 - 9:00am

Spotting semantics

You'll learn how to take a tag-soup document and identify its HTML structures
You'll mark up those structures with true document semantics (and valid code)

Navigation

Understand the problem of navigating within a page and within a site
Streamline the navigation you use, then mark it all up semantically
Special problem: Images and matching a corporate branding strategy

Coffee Break: 10:30 – 10:45

Images

Easy, medium, and difficult alt texts: By the end of the session, you'll be able to handle anything short of Picasso's Guernica
Avoiding the whole problem through the use of CSS background images (and list bullets)
Knowns and unknowns of image replacement

Tables

Easier than you think, if you work methodically
Creating tables that conform to the only published evidence about what actually works
Complex examples (as with multiple header levels)

Lunch is provided: 12:30 – 14:00

Hard-to-serve groups

Accessibility isn’t only about taking the easiest route. Some disabilities are difficult to accommodate on the Web. You’ll learn what you can do to accommodate them.

Learning disabilities

The basic problem – and the difficulties it presents
Use of greater or lesser content, and how to use show/hide widgets
How to use Colour Choices to make things easier

Low vision

Low vision viewers and zoom layouts: The secret to using CSS to get a handle on this situation

Coffee Break: 15:30 – 15:45

Practical Examples

Joe will run through some practical problems that you might face in your everyday job. If you have a specific problem or question regarding accessibility that you want Joe to deal with, please email it to before the workshop and Joe will choose several to address on the day.

Q & A: 17:30 - 18:00

Social: 19:00 - till late

Who's speaking?

Joe Clark

Toronto journalist, author, and accessibility consultant Joe Clark (www.joeclark.org) has been interested in improving accessibility for people with disabilities for 25 years . His interest started with a chance viewing of an open-captioned TV show in the 1970s. Since then, he's studied, volunteered on, and worked on a range of media-access topics, from cinema accessibility to the Web. The Atlantic Monthly called him "the king of closed captions," and he's the author of a standard reference book in the field of Web accessibility, Building Accessible Websites.

A longtime proponent of Web standards, among his other activities is an upcoming research project to develop standards for accessibility techniques such as captioning and audio descriptions.

Partners

Questions?

E-mail us:

or give us a call on: +44 (0) 1225 859 835