Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

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.