Web Accessibility = an Inclusive Information Society
Realising the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities
November 23 - 24 2009 at Melbourne University, Victoria, Australia.
Special Topics for 2009 Workshop:
Worldwide, there have been significant steps towards a more inclusive online environment. New applications for improving the accessibility of content and services are adopting revised guidelines from W3C; new quality certification standards have been developed, and interactive accessibility services are emerging. The ISO committee has produced an inventory of needs, responses, and requires input from users and developers. Learn more about these developments and how to take advantage of them at OZeWAI Workshop 2009.
The following topics are very relevant:
- Accessibility research - what is accessibility? what is known? what is recommended? what is yet to be discovered? how effective is accessibility action?
- Accessibility practice - what does a developer need to do? an administrator? a cataloguer? a publisher? a user?
- Accessibility in education - given that everyone has an equal right to education, what is being done, or not being done, to achieve equiy of access to all teaching and learning resources? How does this apply to hardware, software, and resources?
- Accessibility promotion - how are inaccessible resources assessed? how are they improved? by whom? how are they discovered?
- Can resources be automatically fixed for idividual users' needs? and more....
Who should attend the OZeWAI Workshop?
We always try to plan for the participants we expect to join us. Accessibility is of interest to people from a range of disciplines. Within those disciplines, we think the following people are relevant to our workshop. The list is not exhaustive but should be indicative:
- techies
- We always like to support the techie folk. Adaptability depends upon the expertise of technical people and we are keen to ensure that OZeWAI is a good forum for exchange between members of this class.
- educators
- A significant number of people working in the field of adaptability are also within the educational domain. We will be encouraging senior administrators, managers, designers and the technical teams to join us.
- * internationalisation and multi-lingual content developers/managers/educators
- Providing resources in multiple languages, and resources that are suitable for international use, is not as easy as it might be. Experts and novices can work together on this topic.
- *maths, science, music developers/publishers/educators (symbolic languages)
- Using the Web to distribute maths, science, music and other symbolically represented content in a standard way is essential if it is to be available to everyone.
- researchers
- Accessibility research is a lively field. Papers that report this research are welcomed. Where papers have already been published elsewhere, presenters might like to submit a short paper to present their work in this forum.
- information managers
- Just how critical is good management to accessibility? We appreciate that it is crucial but also that often managing the associated activities means working in a new domain for those responsible. We aim to help managers and those responding to managers' concerns. Managers often want to know what they should know, what they should do, what they should expect others to do, and how much it will all cost.
- users and ideas people!
- Without both people and ideas, nothing will happen!
For up-to-date information about the conference, please join the OZeWAI mailing list. This list is used for announcements only. The names and addresses of those on the list are not available for any purposes other than OZeWAI information and postings.
Workshop costs
The OZeWAI 2009 Workshop at OZCHI will cost $300 for two days including lunch. See http://www.ozchi.org/mediawiki/index.php/OZeWAI
Registration should be done via the OZCHI website: http://www.ozchi.org/mediawiki/index.php/REGISTER
Important dates for 2009
- September 1, 2009 - proposals due
- October 1, 2009 - acceptance of proposals notified
- November 1, 2009 - publication materials deadline