Drupalcon Chicago session proposals

Posted by Everett Zufelt on November 3, 2010 at 11:49pm

I'm wondering if anyone is planning on proposing a session for Drupalcon Chicago. I was hoping that we could work together as a group to plan a set of excellent and complimentary accessibility sessions.

I notice that Advanced Accessibility in Drupal has already been pre-approved as a session. This confuses me a little, since as far as I know, there was no, or little, community involvement. I suppose it would be best, if others are interested, to collaborate to propose sessions that are complimentary to this session.

I was considering proposing an Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) session, perhaps using a module that I am planning to develop to improve autocomplete accessibility as an example. It might also be nice to have an Introduction to Accessibility session proposed, that would explain different types of users and assistive technologies and some basics of content authoring.

I would love to hear if anyone else has ideas and if anyone planning on attending Drupalcon Chicago is interested in working together to plan a set of session proposals.

Comments

Intro to Accessibility

Posted by bowersox on November 4, 2010 at 12:07am

I would be happy to do a beginner-friendly session that is an introduction to accessibility in the context of Drupal. I imagine the topics would include:

Overview of disabilities and why we should care
Assistive technology examples (with some interactive show and tell)
Theme issues: use of headings, font resizability, CSS-based layouts, accessible drop-down menus, HTML5
Content issues: WYSIWYG editors, ALT tags, tables, tools such as the accessible content module, accessibility of video and audio
Admin issues: the accessibility of the Drupal back-end and add-on modules like Webform and Views, use of ARIA

I gladly accept any feedback or suggestions. Maybe an intro session like this should really be part of the Training pre-conference and not part of DrupalCon itself?

www.pixotech.com

Good idea!

Posted by kat3_drx on November 4, 2010 at 1:05pm

These sound like great ideas. ATAG might be a cool thing to go into, specifically as it relates to WYSIWYG editors, like you pointed out, Brandon. By the way Everett, not to step on anyone's toes, but the pre-approved sessions are often by invitation and may be submitted under a tight deadline, which may explain your initial confusion. :)

I think so live demos would be cool too. I'm actually in contact with a friend who has physical assistive hardware that we might be able to borrow, including gumball switches, augmented mice, and a pull-switch input. He has a sip-and-puff too, but is a little protective of it (understandably :) ) I might also be able to get some disabled users to come and do a live demo during a BoF or maybe during the preconf, if we could arrange a meetup time.

How can we best collaborate?

Posted by Cliff on November 4, 2010 at 1:32pm

I've casually mentioned to Brandon and Mike that it would be great if we could do just this — work out the best presentations we could collectively produce on various aspects of accessibility and Drupal. Kate, I'm glad to see that you're presenting. Your presentation seems to have hit on two of the main points that are probably most important for DrupalCon — as a theme developer, what do I need to do to address accessibility? As a module developer, what do I need to do to address accessibility?

Another standpoint is the accessibility features inherent to Drupal. If I just assemble a Drupal site, what features in core are making my site more accessible? What features can I add with themes or modules, and, of those, which are most worth adding? What issues are totally in my hands? What issues also depend on the actions of people who add content to the site, whether in special roles or simply as authenticated users?

On ways to expose attendees to assisitive technology in action, I thought the demo by Able Gamers at Accessibility Camp DC was highly effective. People were raving about the challenge of playing a video game with a head wand. (Is that the right term? if I remember correctly, it was like a joystick you could operate with either your forehead or your chin.) If they could be given a booth or even just space in a BoF room, it would be not only highly educational but also quite popular. Of course, the head of able gamers is from the DC area, so it probably would be more of a challenge to get him to Chicago, but maybe he could help us set something up even if he personally can't make it.

Gotta run. Let's keep this discussion going.

Gamer Booth

Posted by bowersox on November 4, 2010 at 1:48pm

More ideas along those lines:

Have a booth in the lobby where anyone can try out assistive technology. Consider the gaming idea.
Give every visitor a turn to try using their own site with different assistive technology.
Make it a "contest" where anyone can tell us their website URL and we will give them a free, fast accessibility review of the site. We will use a simple scoring system and post the "high scores".
People who visit the booth get stickers or t-shirts that say "I drove my website without a mouse" or something like that.

www.pixotech.com

This is an awesome idea!

Posted by kat3_drx on November 4, 2010 at 2:31pm

Cliff, thanks for your kind words. :) I'm still sorry we didn't get to see each other in person at AccessCamp DC. We must have been literally 10 feet from each other at some point. I agree with you, the AbleGamers setup was brilliant and incredibly engaging. It would definitely draw a crowd, and we could hype additional AT demos at any accessibility presentations. I plan to add slides to my presentation hyping any and all accessibility-related presentations and activities, similar to what I had at the last DrupalCamp Chicago for Brandon's awesome accessibility presentation.

Also Brandon, I love this idea for AT use. We can put assistive mice, keyboards, and switchs around and demo them. We could also have a setup with some good headphones where someone can test their site with a screen reader, perhaps without a monitor, so users can see the difference between a site that's usable in a screen reader, and one that simply "talks when I plug it in."

Stickers and/or shirts would be an excellent idea. We could also do shirts or stickers for the D7AX pledge maybe, like if a developer makes the pledge, they get the pledge-themed swag. I can probably get us a pretty good deal on stickers at least, and have some contacts I can ask about getting shirts done up affordably, if we'd like to run with this.

Great ideas

Posted by Everett Zufelt on November 5, 2010 at 5:23am

@Brandon

I think that's an excellent session idea, don't really see where it needs to change much at all. I would prefer to see it offered during the conference itself, and not as a paid session, so that more may participate. That being said, if an individual doesn't know the basics of accessibility by now perhaps it is time to start paying for the training.

@Kate

I think a session looking at WYSIWYG accessibility, in light of ATAG is also really good, hopefully someone can take a look at puting together a proposal for this.

@All

So it looks like four session ideas are coming together:

Intro to Accessibility - Brandon
Advanced Accessibility- Kate (approved)
Accessible RIA (ARIA) - Everett
WYSIWYG and ATAG (maybe) - Nobody

I like some of the ideas that have been generated to get people more involved and to make accessibility real. I would be happy to volunteer some of my time during the conference to assist with the quick site evaluations. Perhaps we can offer 15 minute sessions where we evaluate / rank the site with the participant explaining to them the problems, and most common solutions, along the way.

Accessibility Consultant & Web Developer - Zufelt.ca
@ezufelt on Twitter | LinkedIn profile

Session submissions are all

Posted by Everett Zufelt on November 5, 2010 at 10:07pm

Session submissions are all due December 10th. Up until that time speakers will have the ability to edit their session details. This is a window of just over a month to get session submitted, so if you have an idea for a session the time to submit it is now! Once the sessions are all in, voting will begin and run until December 24th. Voting is happening after all submissions have been submitted in order to give each session an equal opportunity to get voted on. This will be followed by the full roster of speakers and sessions being announced on December 31st. (http://chicago2011.drupal.org/news/submit-your-session-proposal-drupalco...)

Accessibility Consultant & Web Developer - Zufelt.ca
@ezufelt on Twitter | LinkedIn profile

+1. Anything we can do to get

Posted by coderintherye on November 5, 2010 at 10:16pm

+1.

Anything we can do to get people more involved outside the core accessibility minded people (most of who have already commented here, and you all are awesome) would be great.

I'd be wiling to donate towards a D7AX fund as well as provide any other help if needed.

Drupal evangelist.
www.CoderintheRye.com

I can help

Posted by NonProfit on November 5, 2010 at 10:33pm

Hi, I'm certainly not an expert in this area, but would be willing to do some research and co-present with someone. -NP

Drupal 7 Core accessibility evaluation sprint

Posted by Everett Zufelt on November 14, 2010 at 12:06am

I am wondering if anyone is interested in working with me to organize and lead a Drupal 7 Core accessibility evaluation sprint in the Coder lounge during Drupalcon.

I am thinking that we can setup a copy of Drupal 7 Core with all modules enabled and some content. We can then find a method of walking participants through WCAG 2.0 AA as they evaluate different module UIs. If the participants are comfortable with filing bugs they can file them directly, otherwise they can have someone else assist them with filing the bug.

Accessibility Consultant & Web Developer - Zufelt.ca
@ezufelt on Twitter | LinkedIn profile

Drupal 7 Core accessibility evaluation

Posted by rangin on November 14, 2010 at 6:24pm

I guess you are talking about the Drupal conference in Chicago. Right?
Count on me. It is a great idea.
I haven't double-checked with my department but I think it won't be any problem. I will let you know if I can't.