The South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference starts Friday, and I'm going, hurray! Not that I don't love my home office, complete with toddler who insists on climbing into my lap often no matter what diversions Grandma has arranged, but a few days out of the house to learn new things will be a nice change of pace.
There are quite a few accessibility sessions:
Making Web Widgets Accessible: Tools and Techniques on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. is geared towards developers: "Browser vendors, code library developers, and Ajax gurus demo best practices for making widgets and dynamic web content accessible. You'll also see how they're implementing W3C's new Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, WAI-ARIA."
Accessible Flash and Flex Applications on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. is another developer session: "Developers are increasingly interested in delivering accessible applications that use Flash-based technologies but are uncertain as to what is possible and how to develop and test their applications. This panel will look at best practices and examples, and share information on what's new in Flash accessibility."
I may attend AJAX Accessibility: An ARIA Duet on Sunday at 11:30 even though I don't build applications, just because Knowbility director Sharron Rush is on the panel, and she's one of my favorites: "Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIAs) are not just possible but freely obtained through open source techniques. ARIA developer Becky Gibson will demonstrate ARIA coding techniques and existing toolkits to solve real world challenges posed by accessible technology advocate Sharron Rush."
Monday at 5:00 p.m. is the one I'm most excited about, though. It's listed as Deafness and the User Experience on the main SXSW site but listed as "Aging, Cognition, and Deafness: The Quirky Corners of Web Accessibility" on the "My SXSW" site. Perhaps the presenter decided she had to pare it down for time? Either way, this is going to be cool: "The user experience for a culturally Deaf audience is a fascinating area, influenced by sign language, history, education and migration. This session looks at the different needs of both the culturally Deaf and post-lingual (non-signing) deaf audience, and discusses what you can do to improve the UX for both groups."
Universal Design for Web Applications is a book reading on Tuesday at noon. It's based on the O'Reilly book of the same name.
If you're heading to SXSWi, take a look at these great learning opportunities! And let me know if I missed anything, the schedule is quite overwhelming!
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