John F Croston III

At this months Accessibility DC event (February 16, 2010) Eric Wright (@ewaccess) will be discussing and demoing how to navigate the Web hands free on a PC. He will showcase speech computing software including Dragon Naturally Speaking, KnowBrainer, and Windows Speech Recognition. Eric will talk about what elements are important for ensuring speech accessible HTML, and show some basic HTML tags that will help people talk to your Website.

At the first Accessibility DC event Eric do a short demo of Dragon Naturally Speaking on how to set the software up in just a few minutes. He has a great knowledge of the product and seemed so at ease talking to the crowd while being put on the spot to help us kick-off the meeting.

The next few months it seems we have some cool talks and demos planned or at least almost finalized. Next months talk on Accessible PDFs by Carol Klinger and Dona Patrick, will be not be on third Tuesday of the month, because I will be at SXSW in Austin, TX. Their talk will be on March 23, 2010, starting at 6:30 PM same as other months.

In the last few weeks that has been a lot of talk on Twitter by others that they are  starting the planning process to do their own Accessibility Camp’s in Seattle, WA, Boston, MA, and London, England. Hoping that the ones in Boston and Seattle are not the same weekend so that I can maybe go out to both events

Please make sure to register for this months event and follow @AccessibilityDC or @jfc3 on Twitter for monthly information about the events and other accessibility news.

Hoping to have more information about this falls Accessibility Camp DC in the next few weeks.

I’m still working on my plan of how to complete Project 52, but I first want to thank Anton Peck for coming up with the idea to get himself and others to blog at least once a week for a year. Anton at first thought that maybe 25 or at most 50 of his friends would participate and ended up with over 700 last time I checked the list.

When Anton first came up with the idea on his blog I was all for participating, because I didn’t do a whole lot of blogging last. Instead I attended a few web conferences, ran a few (Accessibility Camp DC and BarCamp DC) with help from others, along with starting a monthly accessibility meet-up here in Washington, DC.

Donate to Charity

In the comments of Anton’s blog post about Project 52 I even talked about why not try and do some good out of all this by donating $10 to charity for ever week I miss blogging, creating code examples, making a “How To” videos of either accessibility related items or whatever. So each quarter I will donate $10 per week of missed blogging to a local charity like Martha’s Table or to Kiva.

Blog Post Ideas

Some of the things I plan on blogging abut this year are listed below:

• Accessibility related issues and best practices
• SXSWi - spring-break for geeks in Austin, Texas
• Access U - accessibility conference in Austin, Texas, put on by Knowility
• Accessibility Camp DC
• BarCamp DC
• Accessibility DC monthly meet-up
• Food and wine
• An Event Apart DC - great web standards conference put on by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer
• creating my web application (more to following in a future post)
• lessons learned from things I have done or from others (friends and experts)
• book reviews - mostly technology
• spending more time with friends
• more writing

So those are some of my ideas for blog posts and plans for the next 50 weeks. Might have to write a few accessibility best practices or code examples posts in advance for times like when I’m at SXSWI for a week and won’t have much time to blog. I already have six or eight subjects with titles and a short outline started from ideas from last year, now to just do the writing and coding required.

Are you planning on doing more blogging this year or just more reading and other work?

Please tell me what you are doing or suggestions for me to do in the comments.

Wish me luck.

The last few days I have been trying to recover from SXSWi in Austin, TX, and also figure out what I learned this year at SXSWi, lack of sleep being the biggest problem. It might take a few more days to figure it out to a greater degree. Right now I have to spend sometime getting in contact with those that I met to try and cement a strong bond/new relationship. Final set of notes on SXSWi will follow in a few days.

Things I Learned

Some of the big things that I learned was that it is about the people, the relationships, and the contacts. That’s not the only reason I go to SXSWi, I do enjoy going to panels to learn new things. I went to one that talked about WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications) and felt like I did not know anything really compared to others in the room. That was until I thought about it and realized that most of the people had helped right the specification or might have helped review it. That kind of makes me feel like being a BIG fish in a SMALL pond back home and then a SMALL fish in a BIG pond/ocean out in the real world. It just gives me more drive and reason to learn more and put myself and my ideas out there to help others learn.

As my last blog post mentioned I have a few ideas I want to accomplish in the next few months. I will need help getting a bunch of them completed, but was able to run a few of them by others while at SXSWi and get their opinion of them. While trying to explain what I was thinking of doing with the Accessibility Camp idea one person that works for Knowbility suggested I just put the accessibility talks into the next BarCampDC event we run (hopefully May or June). To which I explained that I’m usually the only one talking accessibility at these type of events and that I thought if we did an event that focused mainly on accessibility we might get more people that were just interested in web accessibility to come and participate, that have not as of yet.

Who Can Help

Going to try and make an announcement at Refresh DC on Thursday night, that we are starting to plan the next BarCampDC and the new Accessibility Camp. Hopefully while talking at Gov 2.o Camp on Friday and/or Saturday I can mention it to others to get some more interest of those not normally attending the local tech events. Being a government based BarCamp might get a great deal of people interested or not.

Later on another member of the Knowbility team suggested that I (we) might want to run an AIR Interactive contest, which is were a group of developers, designers, etc., get together to create an accessible website in one month for local non-profits and they give out awards and prizes (have to check on that part) to the most accessible ones. They also suggested doing something that Wendy Chisholm and others did in Seattle, called “Scripting Enabled Seattle“, which had non-profits pitch example problems they had to developers, designers, etc. and then have them create stuff to solve the problems that night and the next day.

Here is more information on how to run your own “Scripting Enabled” event. This is a great way to do “Pro Bono” type work with a group to help people/organizations that might not know how to go about getting the work done or can not afford it. Was even able to talk to Wendy Chisholm herself at the event and hope to get more pointers from her later on.

Conclusion

I went to a bunch of panels and found a few interesting ones. The one that got me thinking the most had nothing to do really with my everyday work (web accessibility). The one that stick in my mind right now the most is “What Can We Learn From Games“, whose panelist where Henry Jenkins, James Gee, and Warren Spector. Their panel got me thinking about how to make a game one of the guys at work made, accessible or to be able to change tiles. This game is similar to four across or one that give you points for all like squares that are touching each other.

Lots to think about from what I learned and talked to people about at SXSWi now it’s time to get started finishing up a plan and getting to work on it.

What did you learn at SXSWi, while you were there or while the rest of us were gone that you can start doing the web better place?

The last few months have been busy with helping run the last BarCampDC, interviewing and getting my current job as “Web Content Accessibility Manager” (big fancy title) for ARMY.MIL, and a bunch of other things.

BarCamp and AccessibilityCamp

In the near future I’m looking into when we might have the next BarCampDC, along with contemplating, doing an Accessibility Camp here in Washington, DC. I saw a twitter a few weeks ago about a group in San Antonio, TX, that did an accessibility camp.

We have started talking with the powers that be about getting a venue for the next BarCampDC, which we are thinking of doing in May or June. Hopefully we can get even more people to come out and enjoy the fun of BarCamp and maybe even give a talk on what they are passionate about. I’m going to try and get some more information about dates and locations for both events early next week before heading to Austin, TX, for SXSWi.

The other event I’m thinking of trying here in DC, is an Accessibility camp, which will probably be a lot smaller, with only two, maybe three rooms, depending on the number of people interested in attending. This one could go either way, meaning that a ton of people will want to come or just a dozen or two, I will have to wait an see.

The first item of the other three I need to start back working on once I’m back from SXSWi is a whole bunch of blog posts further explaining slides from my “Is Your Website Accessibile? If not, practical ways to make it so.” presentation.

Adding Video to Posts

The next item on the list would be to start using Clearleft’s SilverBack application to create a bunch of tutorials explaining and showing how to use things like JAWS, other accessibility coding issues, and additional information for my blog posts. Silverback is spontaneous, unobtrusive usability testing software for designers and developers, uses the Apple iSight to record the person and all their movements and clicks on the screen. Seems to me to be a great way to create tutorials.

Conclusion

The final project would be to finish the two applications that I have been working on for the last year or so off and on. The two applications are an accessible version of Magnolia.com and a wine inventory system. It will be a way for me to learn both PHP and MySQL, along with creating more real world examples of how to do coding, using web standards and making your web application accessible.

What is everyone else looking to do in the next few months, especially after getting all pumped up after SXSWi?

Ok, we are now heading into the busy part of SXSW, that is if there is a slow part at all from the time you get there until you leave days later.

Sunday - (2008/03/09)

Managed to get up and make to see Rob Weychert and Jason Santa Maria do their talk on “Everyone is a Design Critic“. They had a few main point to be made. the first is that a critique should be broken up into three parts. The parts are before, during, and after the presentation of your ideas.

The other main point was the “Top 5 Client Requests”:

1. My unqualified friend has a different idea.
2. Purple is my favorite color, why don’t you use it?
3. We need more stuff above the fold. (People do scroll now.)
4. There’s so much empty space, can’t you fit it in?
5. Cant’ you make the logo bigger?

One of the most interesting points was when Rob realized that they were being displayed on the two big screens. So while Stan was talking he just started dancing around behind him.

One of the best presentations that I saw was the next one by Derek Featherstone. His talk was titled “Everything I learned about Accessibility I learned from Star Wars“.

Before Derek started his presentation he came on stage wearing all black with a brown hooded cape. While setting up he turned “Mac Saber” on his laptop, which now made it sound like a Star Wars light saber. By using the MacBooks built in gyroscope yo can pick it up and make it sound as if you had a really light saber in your hands. Ok, now on to his talk.

A few keep points are:

• “You think you know everything and others know more”.
• “Storm Troopers are all the same”. Real life things are different.
• “No, matter what you can see on the surface does not matter to what is underneath”. I think what pretty stuff your page has does not matter as long as your code under the pretty is accessible.
• “Living people is what matters not validators or screen readers”.
• “Pass on what we learn to others to channel the FORCE”.
• “You have to believe it can be done”.
• “Do or Do Not there is No try”. - Yoda
• “I don’t believe it, that is why you fail”. - Yoda

The other amazing part of his presentation were the digital Star Wars drawings by Aton Peck.

Went to an internationalization talk by Stephanie Troeth and Stephanie Booth. This was one of those core talks that they added this year. It was interesting and I learned a few things about how to internationalize websites. It was more a discussion between them and the audience of about 25 around one table.

The final big event of Sunday was the “Geeks Love Bowling” event put on by the nclud guys and real hard work of Cindy Li. Cindy and the nclud crew were able to in a few short weeks get enough sponsors to be able to rent out all 52 lanes at the bowling alley and get buses to transport all the people and a bunch of peole that just wanted to watch. On top of all that they had prizes for all the top bowlers for each team and the top three winning teams. The prizes were free copies of the new 2008 Mac Office suite.

The Refresh DC team I was on did not do to badly. I believe we finished in like 14th place we needed only 4 more pins to come in 12th place. Maybe next year we will do better, not that it matters, since we out to have lot of fun and meet new people. We shared a lane with an all woman team from England. I believe most of them had never bowled before. Fun was had by all.

After bowling a lot of people went out and I decided with a few other the Brits and others to go back to the Hapmton Inn and sit in the second floor lounge and talk. it was great time to be able to relax with Cindy, the Matt Harris, John Hicks, Richard Rutter, Anton Peck, and others.

Monday - (2008/03/10)

I attended a few different panels that I normally might not go to see. The first was “Scalability Boot Camp“, were they talked about make sure to monitor your system early and often. That is everything from Disk I/O, memory, and bandwidth.

Another one was the”Design Eye by South By” where they went over how they would re-design the SXSW website to make it better and more usable. What they talked about and showed was really nice, but the build up was to much for what they showed.

Attended the Annual public WASP meeting. Very interesting to see what they are up to and planning on doing in the future.

It was out for the “Great British Booze Off” and the “NXSW” party. I like the Brits party a great deal and had a wonderful time meeting a lot of new people and meeting up with others I had met last year or earlier this year.

Tuesday - (2008/03/11)

I went to a bunch of panels I normally would not have. I first went to the “How to RAWK SXSW and Stay Inspired“. A few key points from this panel was to:

• Go through businees cards on plan.
• No, idea is to silly.
• Read “Cluetrain Manifesto” - cluetrain.com
• Look for other ideas, etc. at aftersxsw.pbwiki.com - Password - POPRAWKS

The “Secrets of JavaScript Libararies” panel was cool, since it seemed to have all the people that started the different big JavaScript libraries.

• John Resig - jQuery - (ejohn.org)
• Sam Stephenson - Prototype - (conio.net)
• Alex Russell - Dojo - (alex.dojotoolkit.org)
• Thomas Fuchs - script.aculo.us - (script.aculo.us/thomas/
• Andrew Dupont - Prototype - (andrewdupont.net)

The main thing that was said was before picking one of the main JavaScript libraries is to figure out hwat you need them for. Each different one has strengths and weaknesses.

At another panel a cool thing I saw on the person in the row in front of me was a photo application. After the panel I asked him what it was and he said it was PicLens (Firefox plug-in). The following is the description of PicLens from the plug-in page - instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen 3D experience for viewing images across the web.

There was a bunch more stuff that happened during these six great days in Austin, TX. I hope to get to the full set of notes I took in the next few weeks.

Any further explanations or questions please leave a comment.