Category Archives: AccessibiltyCamp

DC Monthly Accessibility Meet-up

Posted on by

After last years successful Accessibility Camp DC event I wanted to keep the momentum going and decided to have a monthly accessibility meet-up. I first talked with Patrick and a few others about having a monthly meeting if we got enough interest while at the big event in October.

Event Details

The monthly accessibility meet-ups in Washington, DC, take place every third Tuesday of the month to try and further the knowledge in the area of accessibility. The events are held at the Martin Luther King Library at 901 G St. NW, beginning at 6:30 PM and ending at 8:30 PM. Further information can be found at the Accessibility DC website.

Ideas of what it should be

Everyone liked the idea and we have now had three meetings starting in November, 2009. The first meeting was mostly to see what the other people had in mind for what the meetings should be and what I had been thinking about for a good amount of time.

What I had in mind was a place for designers and developers to learn from each other, along with getting input, advice, and first hand information from those that might use adaptive technology to view websites on a regular basis. So the long and the short of it was to be a place for people to learn from each other and make new friends. That seemed to be what everyone for the most part thought it should be as well. The audience for the events seems to be about a third designer and developers, another third business professionals that use assistive technology to work, and the rest are those that use assistive technology for everyday life.

November 17, 2009

The first meeting went well with everyone introducing themselves so we all got an idea who was at the event and what they did. After that was done, we had Eric Wright (@ewaccess) do a short demo of Dragon Naturally speaking, which was on how to set it up, along with demoing a few of the basic commands, functions, and showing it’s abilities.

December 15, 2009

The next meeting is when I presented my “Is Your Website Accessible? If Not Practical Ways to Make Them So.” talk, which I have done a bunch of times at other events. The really cool thing that happened before this meeting got going was that about a dozen different students with visual and others disabilities stopped in to talk with us. We talked about what we did and what they wanted to do when they grew up. There were a few very interesting sets of mini talks and questions asked by the students and people who attended.

January 19, 2010

Just the other day Leslie Bobbitt (@Dreamweaver78) did a wonderful talk and demo on JAWS. She talked about what the product was, how you can use it to do many things on a computer from WORD, browse the internet, and a lot more. She talked about Freedom Scientific’s Surf’s Up tutorials, along with going over different pages examples that I created. There were two types of pages those that were less accessible and then pages that were much more accessible. Here is the link to the accessible test pages.

Future Plans

The next big obstacle is trying to get more people to come and learn from each other. We are currently getting about 15 – 20 people per meeting. I would like to add some more people to get us closer to about 35 – 40 or thereabouts. If we get anymore we will not have enough room in the space we are using now.

Now comes the fun part were we are looking for talk ideas, along with people to do those talks. So if you have ideas for talks or want to present an idea now is your time to speak up by adding your ideas to the comments below.

Project 52 Plans

Posted on by

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.

2009 Has Come to an End

Posted on by

2009 was a very interesting year of change and learning new things. Looking forward to 2010 to even be more fun and productive.

Some of the 2009  highlights for me were:

January

Started new job as “Web Content Accessibility Manager” (big fancy title) for the United States Army, which means that I’m responsible for making sure the Army’s main website www.ARMY.MIL and the 45+ micro websites we are responsible for are accessible to as many people and devices as possible.

March

Attended SXSWi (spring break for geeks) for the third year in a row now. Had  great time as usual speaking with old friends and new ones I made this year. Still continue to learn each year that I attend. A lot of the new things I learn is from having conversations in the hallways, at dinner, in the bars late in the evening, or just relaxing in the Hampton Inn’s lounge on the second floor.

Upon returning from SXSWi needed to start planning for the next BarCamp DC, along with another event I heard about on twitter a few weeks before SXSWi. A small group in San Antonio, TX, did an accessibility camp. I spent a great deal of time and some conversations while in Austin, TX, about doing one here in Washington, DC.

Upon my return I spent more time I’m looking into when we might have the next BarCampDC, along with contemplating, doing an Accessibility Camp here in Washington, DC, in more detail. These events took over a lot of my spare time trying to find venues for both events that were both free and cost to metro.

April

Took a trip out to Denver to visit my brother and his family, along with attend BarCamp boulder which got canceled do to 18+ inches of snow the day before. That is a lot of snow for even the Denver area for mid April. Ended up still having a nice time visiting with my brother’s family.

May

Attended “Access U” put on by Knowbility in Austin, TX, in mid May. Again it was a great place to meet new friends and learn more about accessibility. Spent an extra two days down there after the conference was over so I could see Austin, when it was not filled up with over 10,000 web geeks from around the world.

July

In late July got a direct message from @v (William Lawrence) another local accessibility person and a good friend about going to an accessibility event at Ben’s Next Door. Decided to go and hoped to meet some new local accessibility people. Got to meet and talk with a lot of new people throughout the evening. Later in the evening I got to talk to my good friend Patrick Timony who is a great resource of information about Adaptive Technology equipment and software. He works at the Martin Luther King library here in DC.

During that conversation a big old light bulb went off in my head. Why not I ask Patrick about having Accessibility Camp DC at the MLK library.

August

After a bunch of talking with him later in the month to explain more what BarCamp style events are, we started looking into what it would take for us to have the event at the library. Normally the library only lets you have one room for a few hours, we were looking to use at least two spaces besides Patrick’s for an entire Saturday. Luckily Patrick and his boss were behind the event so we were able to secure the space.

While working on final preparations for Accessibility Camp DC, also started looking into having BarCamp DC at the MLK library. Planning and attempting to get rooms for this was even more involved, since we were looking at getting six spaces for a Saturday. In the end we managed again to get what we needed with the help of Patrick and his boss.

October

On October 10, 2009, which was the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend we had the first Accessibility Camp DC event. We had 110 people sign-up and over 80 people attend, which was just great. Most other BarCamp events we have run 40% – 50% of the people sign-up but never show up.

People came from all over the country (Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and a few other states I can’t remember) and even Jennison (@jennison) from Toronto, Canada. Even Shawn Lawton Henry, who leads worldwide education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities at the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) attend.

She even did a talk that was attended by about half the attendees and widely talked about as one of the best talks of the day. Was sorry, I missed it because I was running around doing work to make sure the rest of the day ran smoothly. I gave my “Is Your Website Accessible?” talk, along with a peared down version of Jared W Smith of WebAIM’s WAI ARIA talk.

We had 13 planned talks and one or two impromptu screen reader demonstrations during the day. There were like 30+ people at the first one that a few people mentioned opened their eyes to what people with visual issues go through to do things on the internet. Jennison did the first one and Leslie Bobbitt (@DreamWeaver78) did a wonderful one the second time as well.

End of October attended Peter Corbett’s (iStrategyLabs) Tech Art’s – Spooky Union, Halloween event. Had a great time and met a lot of new people, along with seeing a bunch of old friends.

November

On November 14, 2009, we (Justin Thorp (@thorpus), Shaun Farrell, Patrick Timony, Peter Corbett, and a few others) had our third BarCamp DC. It was a rousing success with over 125 people attending. We did not have to many problems.

If memory serves me correctly I think we had 36 talks on great many different subjects. We instituted a Twitter swear jar, that meant if you mentioned twitter in your talks it cost you a dollar, which was then donated to charity. I think we ended up collecting over $125.

We also attempted to have people not use PowerPoint and the like slides so there were discussions at the event than people just talk at or present information to others. This made the event more active than years before.

Only three days after we got done with BarCamp DC, Patrick and I put on the first monthly Accessibility DC event at the MLK library on November 17, 2009. We will be meeting every third Tuesday of the month for those wanting to attend.

December

nclud started the holiday season off right with their annual end of year holiday party. There were a ton of people as usual. I don’t think I got a chance to talk to half of the people I wanted to. Still had a great time none the less. Got into a little trouble, since I had another wine event at a friends and brought extra wine after they had to go get more from local store down the street.

Spent Christmas weekend with different friends and just relaxing.

New Years Eve was a quiet affair with some friends at a Japanese Steakhouse, with a few of them coming back to my place for wine, cheese, cure Italian meats, shrimp, and some Creamant de Bourgogne to usher in the New Year. All while watching the Food Network most of the evening. Creamant is a champagne style wine from another region of France that is not from Champagne.

2010

This years looks to be an even more exciting one than last year, with more monthly accessibility meetings, SXSWi, working on my different web applications (more on my change of plans later), hoping to attend Access U again, and attending An Event Apart DC when Jeffrey Zledman, Eric Meyer, and their great speakers here Washington, DC, on Sept. 16–17, 2010.

More details of me plans for this coming year to follow over the next few weeks. I am participating in Project 52, that my good friend Anton Peck started, which is to do a blog post or some equivalent each week for a year. When I signed up I figure he would get a hundred or so people to sign-up. Last time I checked he had 488 people signed up.

So how did your 2009 go and what are you’re plans for 2010?

Tallying the Votes

Posted on by

I am currently in the process of tallying all the votes.

I received them in many ways starting with the blog comments, to twitter direct messages, to e-mails, and to people telling me in person. From what I can tell the three leading web applications that you all want me to build are the technology Skills or Skill Swap repository, the mini adhoc conference information service, and finally the online wine inventory for personal use and to sell to wine stores. Most everyone I talked to personally said I need to do the wine inventory, since I’m knowledgeable and passionate about that one. Hoping to have everything them all tallied by the beginning of next week.

I am also at the same time as doing this, trying to put together one of the first AccessibilityCamp’s, which will take place here in Washington, DC, in the month of October. Going to be looking at a few places in the next week or so to see about using them. I will keep you informed about that too.

My Choices

In case you were wondering my top choices to web applications to build would have been the following in the order listed.

  1. Bookmarking – it’s such a pain with multiple computers at home and work to keep track of bookmarks/favorites.
  2. Wine Inventory – that one is a no brainer.
  3. Mini Adhoc Conference Scheduler – for things like AccessibilityCamp or BarCamp and the like.
  4. and finally Tech Job Skill Repository.

Conclusion

Thanks, again for your voting and encouragement in this endeavor I’m partaking in.