Firstly, I’d like to say a big ‘well done’ to Ryan and Gill Carson for organising the workshop. Everything went swimmingly! I did have a little too much coffee though and remained skittishly hyperactive all morning.
I was really impressed with Joe’s speaking style. He was both confident and eloquent, speaking for the entire day without referring to any notes. This meant that he could take audience polls and just skip the sections that people already knew, making the day more relevent and useful.
While I’m on the subject, I was surprised by the generally high standard of knowledge displayed by everyone in attendance. I was expecting a lot more beginners questions but what we got were tricky requests for help related to real projects, which everyone benefitted from.
I was already familiar with most of the material Joe covered but that was the best part for me - everything I know about everything I do on the web is self-taught and having someone who REALLY knows his subject validate what I’ve been doing was a fantastic relief. His pragmatic approach to accessibility problems in the real (commercial) world was very reassuring, and the advice he gave us matches what I’ve been telling my clients for a couple of years now. You have to do your best but an attractive design is an equally important factor in a site’s success or failure. A great site should be both attractive and accessible, and with semantic HTML, good CSS and a lot of common sense, there’s no reason why anyone can’t have both.
One interesting tid-bit that came out of the accessible Flash section of the seminar was that even the JK Rowling site, held up by Macromedia as a shining example of what can be achieved, has fallen down when tested on real people with accessibility needs. Interesting… I’d like to see some facts and figures on that one.
Oh, and I’m a little late on this news now but I’ll post it anyway… Joe Clark has been ostracised from the WCAG2 working group. Yep. He’s out. He didn’t seem awfully fussed about it though, to be honest! Joe is very outspoken, and isn’t exactly known for his tactfulness, but there is no question that he knows what he is talking about and I am sure that the working group will be worse off without him.
Anyway, it was a great day and I found it very useful. Highly recommended.
