Glenda Watson Hyatt, for those of you who don't know yet, is a woman on a mission: helping bloggers understand web accessibility. Yes, our armies are gathering strength!
Glenda recently had the opportunity to present at SOBCon: Biz School for Bloggers, and apparently it went quite well! You can read more about her presentation, or make sure you download her e-book on blog accessibility.
I find Glenda's success heartening, for a couple of reasons. First, she had an opportunity to present to a large number of bloggers who were fairly new to the topic. I think many people who have presented on accessibility would agree that if you advertise a session on accessibility or web standards, a smaller number of people show up than would be there if you advertised a session on "web design tips" or "search engine optimization." Also, attendees at an accessibility session are generally people who already know something about the subject. I'm not sure how SOBCon works, but it sounds from the feedback around the web that Glenda managed to reach a large number of "accessibility newbies" and their eyes were really opened.
Second, it's great to see the commenters on Glenda's post mentioning that they are trying to improve the accessibility of their blogs in concrete ways based on her presentation. It's good to open people's eyes, but to create change, they have to take action.
So hurray for accessibility outreach to bloggers! If you haven't checked out Glenda's e-book yet, make sure you do!
I was glad to see that Glenda's presentation went so well. I've been enjoying following her blog and Twitter updates for awhile now. Hopefully she made a few believers out of the attendees.
And "How POUR is Your Blog" is definitely worth a read. Glenda has a great style that makes the subject universally appealing -- not techy or a niche thing. That manner of speech and writing will attract people more than anything.
I like the way she cuts through the clutter to a precise point that is really effective. For example, her advice on thinking about alt text is to imagine you are reading your web page to someone over the phone. Anyone using the web can understand alt text with an image like that as a reference.