I was impressed to see the number of people at DrupalCon this year with a visible disability. I didn't get to speak with hardly any of them, but I do think it's worth while to look at measures that have been made to make our events more accessible. I'm hoping that London is able to learn from & improve the experiences of people attending. I don't know what feedback #DrupalChi was collecting from attenders, but...
It was great to see that there was interpretation at the event for deaf people. There were seats reserved & I recall seeing something on the registration form about it too! That's great. Here's a photo from one of the sessions - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgifford/5511050537/
I don't recall seeing any question about people who needed mobility assistance. Generally the facility should be accessibile to wheelchairs, and I think that the Sheraton Hotel was. I did hear an attendee raise concerns about the lack of transportation for wheelchairs when we moved to the Field Museum. Transportation like that is probably pretty rare, but important to think about.
I don't know if it was possible to get material in braille or large print if you wanted to have the guide available that way. The iPhone/Android app probably helped out a great deal here, but might have also been useful to have an accessible PDF version of the materials distributed to the convention.
There were accessibility problems with the DrupalChi website http://wave.webaim.org/report?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchicago2011.drupal.org%2F...
Alt tags are the low hanging fruit of web accessibility. We should all know to check to see if they are included or not.
I think there must be a better resource online than http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/e735.html but don't know of it.
It should be clear here that organizing an event for thousands of people is a huge job, this is just an effort to reflect & document this piece of it so that it is easier for organizers in the future. Just as with COD, there is room for improvement between every DrupalCon.
What else can we learn from this great conference to make it better in London & Denver?
Comments
Good questions. This is a
Good questions. This is a good time to begin addressing them. I'm not at the DrupalCon Chicago, and have nothing to contribute there. However, here is an alternate resource about organizing events with accessibility in mind:
Planning for Accessible Meetings & General Guidelines When Serving Persons with DisAbilities
from DAWN (DisAbled Women's Network Ontario):
http://dawn.thot.net/accessible_meetings.html
A quick comparison between this one and the resource from hoagiesgifted.org suggests that the DAWN resource may have a few more pieces of "practical" advice about how to actually go about actual organizing a conference/meeting as opposed to a focus on what you need to do to meet ADA requirements. But I also see that both of them look like they are already a bit outdated 2002 or earlier. I'm not sure about current resources in this area.
Phil.
Thanks!
I should have thought about checking out what dawn had to offer rather than going on google to point me in the right direction.
Sadly, both resources are rather outdated and really not set for conferences of +1k I expect either.
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide