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East Sussex Disability Association
Published: February 3, 2005
I had a 4 hour meeting today with a representative of the East Sussex Disability Association (ESDA) regarding our organisation holding an event to advocate accessibility and usability to businesses and website designers/developers in Hastings, Bexhill and the Rother district.
I see things from a technical view point and he saw things from a users viewpoint and we had a really interesting discussion about what defines usability and how the W3 technical implementations that I promote and recommend to clients is only half the battle.
The WCAG 1.0 and the Bobby checker results are really steered to cater for the sensory impaired, predominantly vision. Our meeting revolved around people with learning difficulties and how navigation was still a major hurdle.
We are aiming to hold an event in or near Hastings which will offer practical solutions to website navigation structures. People who face accessibility problems will also demonstrate the tools they use and how difficult, or easy, a website can be to surf.
Natural English, or perhaps I should say language, is essential too. This is really a call for the marketing department as you have to ultimately sell your services and cater for the larger potential client base but there is a requirement for a shift towards a more personal approach to web content rather than the corporate press releases that many large organisations tend to publish.
I shall be conducting a speech at the event and talking to local developers about paths to take, resources available to start getting to grips with the web standards. Even today, large companies in my area are still blissfully unaware that there are guidelines and recommendations published, laws to adhere to and forgotten markets to aim for.
The event will serve me well as I get to see practical accessibility tools and users who rely on them and discuss how technology can be of assistance. I just hope I don't spend the day talking to web designers about CSS positioning in IE5.2/Mac.