Web Directions

Scripting Enabled — A Genuinely Great Initiative

• In: Blog
• By:Maxine
• June 25, 2008
• Leave a response

Christian Heilman has just announced this truly cool event. Scripting Enabled will be a two day con­fer­ence and work­shop held in London with the aim of mak­ing the web a more acces­si­ble place. Sound like the same-​​old-​​same-​​old? It’s not. The two days will be all about

mak­ing those in the know about acces­si­bil­ity bar­ri­ers meet hack­ers that know how to retrieve infor­ma­tion from APIs and dis­play them as alter­na­tive inter­faces. Together these groups can make any sys­tem out there more invit­ing, acces­si­ble and avail­able to peo­ple that are cur­rently blocked out.

The first day will be a trad­tional con­fer­ence struc­ture, with pre­sen­ta­tions explain­ing the dif­fer­ent bar­ri­ers peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties face when they surf the web. And then the sec­ond will be a hackathon/​hackday in a dif­fer­ent venue where devel­op­ers and experts sit together and work on the dif­fer­ent hacks.

All the sys­tems designed on the day will be avail­able as Open Source for other devel­op­ers to take and learn from. All the pre­sen­ta­tion mate­r­ial and videos will be pub­lished as Creative Commons for oth­ers to take on and re-​​distribute.

Some really excit­ing things could come out of these peo­ple com­ing together in this way. Both sides can learn all they like about each other through read­ing and learn­ing online, but any­one who’s been to a good event will know there’s noth­ing like the energy that comes out of being in the same phys­i­cal loca­tion. Read Christian’s blog post for more on his moti­va­tions and what he is hop­ing will come out of it.

At the moment they’re look­ing for both speak­ers and sup­port.

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