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Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2017

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which takes place every year on 18 May, is now in its sixth year, and is growing every year as more people join in what is both a celebration of accessibility for people with disabilities and a confirmation that much work is still to be done in ensuring that our […]

Will WCAG 2.1 Make Accessibility More Accessible? – Ricky Onsman

It staggers me that we are still – STILL – struggling with making our web and digital products and services universally accessible. In one sense, that is just a reflection of how poorly we understand and implement accessibility in the rest of the world around us. In another sense, it is both devastating and ridiculous […]

Transform 16: Transforming Accessibility

When we held our inaugural Transform conference in Canberra last year from 18-19 May, we didn’t realise it would coincide with Global Accessibility Awareness Day on 19 May. Once we knew, we decided to organise a small event to celebrate. There is, of course, a great crossover and overlap between the concepts of government digital […]

Respond 16: Building Accessible Web Components Without Tears – Russ Weakley

As the excitement builds for our Respond 17 conference (Early Bird closes 24 March), we have another Wrap magazine summary of a presentation from Respond 16. And not just any presentation. Russ Weakley is one of those Australians who has built an enviable global reputation as someone who not only has a comprehensive and detailed […]

Christopher Giffard – HTML5 Video, Captioning, and Timed Metadata

Photo of Christopher GiffardThe key focuses of this session will be accessibility, searchable media, and enriching existing multimedia experiences with timed data, all with a liberal application of flashy eye-candy. And of course we’re using the freshly minted Timed Text Track specification, soon appearing in a browser near you!

Daniels Lee(tm) – Designing for the 10 foot UI

Photo of Daniels Lee™This talk outlines the most important best practices to keep in mind when designing web applications for TV. We’ll cover issues like directional pad navigation, user interface design for TV, color issues, and zooming, as well as discussing some unique opportunities for TV applications.

Lisa Herrod – The Age of Awareness

Lisa Herrod PortraitSocial innovation, service design and even augmented reality are now presenting real and interesting opportunities for us as traditional web practitioners. Combined with inclusive design practices, this opens up a fantastic world of change for both us and the people for whom we design.

Paul Hagon – Enriching large data sets

Paul Hagon PortraitLibraries contain masses of beautifully structured data collected over many years. But these records may have their flaws and might now want to be used in ways, such as location based services, that weren’t imagined 30 years ago. How can we use existing API’s and web services to enrich this data to enable it to be used in a variety of ways. This data also needs to be exposed for others to use and build upon. With the recent release of the Government response to the Web 2.0 taskforce, how can institutions comply with these recommendations by providing their data in usable forms for the public. What’s involved in building an API into our resources and how can our data be given more meaning through semantic linkages like RDFa?

Sandi Wassmer – Inclusive design is for everyone

Sandi Wassmer PortraitInclusive Design is currently the domain of people who design physical things, like product designers and architects, but Sandi Wassmer is firm in her belief that Inclusive Design applied in the online environment just makes sense.

Damien McCormack – Accessibility means business

Damien McCormack PortraitOver 4 million people in Australia have a disability. As a result they may use the web in a different way to you: a keyboard instead of a mouse; a screen reader instead of a screen. Accessibility is the way that you can tap into this large and growing audience.

Scott Hollier – Boosting new media accessibility

Scott Hollier PortraitThis talk focuses on the efforts engaged by W3C and its members to promote and improve web standards and in particular HTML 5 with mechanisms to allow people with disabilities to access multimedia content, including audio and video.

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Thoroughly enjoyed Web Directions — met some great people, heard some inspiring presenters and added a whole bunch of things to my to-do list.

Joel Roberts Web Developer