Let’s work on constructive and positive approaches to spreading accessibility awareness everywhere.

This is not being cheesy and cutesy. I’m not bringing out the unicorns and rainbows, even though they can correct accessibility errors in one sprinkling of fairy dust.

The background

Somewhere at the end of 2008 or beginning of 2009, I saw Chris Heilman make a similar call. He said something about making positive changes. He proposed that we stop (negative) rants about some inaccessible something. Instead, he suggested taking constructive action. I took that to heart. I recall coming across a website for some spinal injury organization that had a useful-sounding brochure on exercises for people who had spine problems. The brochure was a PDF and it was inaccessible. I immediately wrote to them and suggested that they make the PDF accessible. I never heard from them. That didn’t stop me. Only time stops me, especially when I make such discoveries on a tangent to a tangent to what I was in the process of doing!

Since then, the marvelous volunteers in the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) have produced a sort of fairy dust. They made templates for how to contact organizations about inaccessible websites. Just brilliant. (I wrote about the efforts of EOWG and several others recently.)

Now and then, discussions pop up in social media about negative versus positive in the process of making the web truly universal and accessible. Such a discussion popped up yesterday on Twitter and jiggled the memory of Chris’ old call to action. I sent a tweet to Chris yesterday, asking about the source of such a statement. Chris’ links led to some awesome resources I had forgotten. That man has a passionate way with words on technology and accessibility. That’s why I stalk him, uh, follow him on Twitter, even though I am not a web developer. (At least I can comprehend the funny videos he shares from time to time!)

Chris Heilman’s awesome must-read articles

I may not have found the exact quote I was looking for, but I found two articles that I hope people will read and ponder.

• July 2008: The biggest barrier to accessibility and inclusive design is us
• September 2009: Finite Incatatem – my keynote at Accessibility 2.0

The Finite Incatatem has a passage I thought worth highlighting here:

Our job now is to get out of our own little world and educate the world about accessibility and the issues bad web development and design causes. We don’t do a good job with this as we always try to excuse ourselves by saying that we don’t understand technology and its ins and outs. The point is though that as someone who advocates accessibility you don’t need to know everything but all you need to do is to listen, collaborate and communicate with the right people in the right format.

Last year’s Paris Web conference had a great example of Aurelien Levy and Stephane Deschamps showing and teaching accessibility by explaining the problems using magic tricks and making people from the audience experience the issues by blindfolding them or only allowing them to use one hand to use interfaces. This is what we need to do more – bring the human aspect into our presentations and trainings instead of banging on about guidelines and laws and minute technological solutions.

Note the phrase “all you need to do is to listen, collaborate and communicate with the right people in the right format”. Note that “listen” comes first!

We must also remember that teaching is hard, as Chris states elsewhere in that speech. That is because “it not only means transferring knowledge but also changing mindsets. And that is something we have to do if we want to make this accessibility thing work.”

That’s is why communication is on par with knowing code. Changing mindsets can be just as tricky, if not more so, than wrangling HTML code in any way, shape, or form! This communication theme continues from the 2008 presentation where Chris said that “the main problem is that we just don’t talk to each other the right way. AND we communicate with the wrong means in the wrong manner.”

This shouldn’t be the case for technical communicators, right? We know how to communicate correctly, right?

While digging through Chris’ old blog posts, I read a blog post somewhere else. I think it fits nicely into this discussion. Mark Baker discusses technical communicators and respect – a respect that many think is always just out of reach. He distinguishes between one-of-them respect versus one-of-us respect. Accessibility is about removing barriers, yet many of us are quite good at building and maintaining barriers in our work. Mark’s post provides an interesting and useful little wake-up call.

Do we want to win arguments or solve a problem?

A newer post from Chris continues some of his older posts and presents a challenge for 2012. He discusses a winter of discontent for web design, but I think his points apply to those preaching accessibility regardless of whether they code, write, or design.

What about my call to action?

I don’t have a spinal injury, yet I took action when I encountered a problem on that website I mentioned previously. I was professionally aware that there was a problem, and I felt that knowledge came with a responsibility. I think more of us can do this. If in doubt, discuss the issue with friends and colleagues, or turn to the resources I mentioned at EOWG. During elections, you always hear how your vote counts. Well, the same applies here. Your accessibility efforts do count.

Other people have bigger access barriers to the web than I do. Far bigger barriers. I can sympathize with their frustration. Realizing what they experience – well, I’d be outraged and furious. Especially if I felt I was all alone with my troubles. That’s why we need to work together. We can learn from each other and support each other in this project. I’ve done my share of mocking and scorning inaccessible sites. Nothing constructive comes out of that, however.

Write to a site when you discover they lack correct (or any) alt text on images. Bit by bit, we can fix this place. Let’s do it in a constructive and positive spirit. If they fight back and resist your suggestions, use intelligence to counter that. Fight back, but with honey and constructive ideas. Be kind and polite when you vocally take your business elsewhere. You who master words – you know it can be done! Let’s do this!

PS UPDATE: Obviously, I’m giving credit to Chris for his inspiration made-to-stick a few years ago. However, the tipping point or nudge to write this comes from Jennifer Sutton. Thank you, Jennifer!

Back in March, I heard Mahmoud Salem, better known as @SandMonkey, speak about using social media in the revolution in Egypt. He gave a fascinating presentation, which was followed by a question and answer session. The person who asked questions was Solana Larsen, a managing editor at Global Voices.

I have a lot of respect for Global Voices and the citizen media movement providing a platform for voices around the world. These are voices that you normally do not hear in mainstream media for so many different reasons. I chatted with @SandMonkey and a group of my friends after the talk. Solana was there, and I said hi, because I follow her on Twitter. We started talking about Global Voices.

Solana asked whether I would be interested in writing for them. I was reluctant because I honestly didn’t know what to write and because I have been saying yes to too much lately! If I wrote about something, it would most likely be accessibility.

Then I had an epiphany.

Why not encourage people with disabilities from around the world to join Global Voices? They could tell their story and raise awareness about disability issues and the efforts to make changes for improvement in their country.

The Real Voices of Accessibility

It’s been said before (in casual tweets and on blogs) that many accessibility advocates are people who do not have major mobility, vision, hearing, or cognition disabilities. It’s implied that although they care deeply, they are not directly affected by inaccessible websites, buildings, gatherings, etc. There are people with disabilities who are active bloggers and presenters at conferences, and there are some who blog quietly in one corner of cyberspace.

Why not find more? Why not find people with disabilities – those who are not directly involved with web development and design and all the web accessibility discussions – and get them to blog about what is happening in their countries? What are their governments doing to be more inclusive of all its citizens? What legislation is being debated or passed? What grassroots initiatives are thriving and what seeds have been planted?

Global Voices has sections dedicated to geographic areas and topics of interest. Accessibility is a topic of interest. More blog posts on this topic would be joyfully welcomed by the editing team. The real voices of accessibility deserve to be heard by a larger audience.

Tell Your Story and Make a Difference

This is a shout out to people with disabilities everywhere. You in the wheelchair. You with the chronic pain. You with the signing hands. You with little or no sight. And you and you and you. You have voices, regardless of the state of your vocal chords. You who know the value of accessibility and the value of inclusion. Your voices are the really important ones.

Global Voices is a vehicle ready to drive your message to every home. There is strength in numbers. This is not a job for one person, but a job for many.

Let’s start discussing it in the comments or on Twitter, but if you are ready now, go talk to Solana and the people at Global Voices. Learn about the specific details for blogging, especially those of you who already have an active blog.

@SandMonkey talked about using social media in a revolution where people wanted to make improvements in their lives. I’ve read Oliver Sacks’ Seeing Voices and the part where he describes the strike at Gaulladet University and the rise of Deaf culture. Recently, many people with disabilities took to the street in London in the Hardest Hit march to protest the cuts in disability spending by the UK government.

Maybe it’s about time to take to the (virtual) streets and explain the importance of inclusion and rights for persons with disabilities. After hearing about the Hardest Hit campaign in London, I speculated what it would be like if there was a Million People with Disabilities March in Washington, D.C. (like other Million Something marches in the past).

The chat with Solana and my great respect for Global Voices ignited an idea in my head. Someone else fanned the flames. I want to credit @nethermind with something she said on Twitter. I believe she was making a direct or even an indirect call for action on spreading the word about accessibility. Anyway, the two ideas made me think that Global Voices would be a great channel for that call to action.

Globa11y

Let’s do this. Accessibility is an issue that is not confined to one country or to one language. This leads me to the odd word in my title. I have a great hashtag for this project.

#Globa11y

This is the word “global” plus the special abbreviation for accessibility called “a11y”. The “11″ stands for the eleven letters of the word “accessibility” found between the “a” and the “y”. (This technique has been used for the words “localization”, which is “l10n”, and “internationalization”, which is “i18n”, so it’s not a new idea.) Merge Global and a11y and you get globa11y.

As an aside, I believe the word “inclusion” is better than accessibility in many ways. I think some people are put off by the term accessibility, or they simply do not understand how it can relate to them. Inclusion may be far better. However, both terms are not recognized that easily outside the group of people who work with or are interested in the topic of accessibility. Hashtags do tend to defy grammar and syntax, and the word accessibility lent itself more easily to a marriage with the word global.

Whatever we call it, let’s give it a go and start a movement!

What’s Ignite?

It’s an inspiration network. You have 5 minutes and 20 slides to “ignite” the audience with your passion. O’Reilly has the Ignite story for you. I think anyone who carries the label “communicator” ought to try an Ignite presentation at least once in their life.

Ignite Denmark manages the Danish sparks. I attended the World Usability Day / Ignite Denmark joint event in November 2010 and got so inspired that I foolishly promised to give a talk on accessibility at the next Ignite Denmark event, which was 1 March 2011.

This is the result of that promise.

My Ignite Presentation

I gave the presentation in Danish. The transcripts – in English and in Danish – are further along in this blog post.

I posted my slides to SlideShare.

The Credits and Thank Yous

I am very grateful to the following people:

• Shawn Lawton Henry of the W3C’s WAI for her very kind permission to use the photo in slide 6 and two photos in slide 7 that are part of the material from the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG) of the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). I also reference her excellent book, Just Ask, in slide 11.
• Lisa Herrod for the use of the photo in slide 5. I also quoted Lisa in slide 8 because she’s very smart.
• All the people on Flickr who use Creative Commons with their excellent photos so I can use their work in my presentation. I included the URL to the photograph on each slide. (The two photos with no URL are personal photos.)
• Kai Weber for sharing Olivia Mitchell’s great resource for preparing for an Ignite presentation. Along with comments from Mark Wubben who recently gave his first Ignite presentation in London, I learned that you really must practice. (I ran through a planned script about 15 times, but I had so much I wanted to say so I kept tweaking things!)
• The Ignite Denmark teams – Jimmy Holm Olsen and more – who made this experience possible and who do an incredible job with the Ignite program in Denmark.
• The people listed by Twitter name on slide 19. They are my inspiration along with many more people who could not be crammed into the slide. You find them all in the lists for @stcaccess.
• William Loughborough’s curse list.
• The US figures and the UK figures (http://www.uknetguide.co.uk/Latest-News/Disability-market-worth-80-billion-annually-800342755.html) for the “disability” market share. (Note: my original UK URL no longer has the article, but I found the original resource for the UK figures.)

I was nervous, but I had a great time doing this. Ignite is the perfect setup for talking about accessibility to the general public. This is what is discussed in accessibility circles on Twitter – raising awareness about accessibility in the general public so that everyone can get involved in making the world more inclusive.

The Transcript in English

The numbers here correspond roughly to the slide numbers. I include them for navigation purposes. I had some garbled sentences in the Danish (nerves!), so I tidied things up a bit in the English while keeping the original spontaneous flow. In fact, dissecting my speech in a transcript is kind of embarrassing, but the written word is completely different and more merciless than that spoken word.

1. Hi. I am a technical communicator, writing manuals, user guides, and that sort of thing. I am passionate about accessibility. You can’t see that on the title slide because it is written in Braille: “Ignite Accessibility”. That was to tease you about communication.
2. Accessibility, it’s about doing something so people with any type of disability can “get at” some thing – information or whatever. People with a disability – that’s us. It is all of us. The World Health Organization actually says that [quoted in the slide].
3. They say it is a universal experience. I am passionate about accessibility thanks to my mom. She ignited this passion in me. She was a special education teacher, and I have known about this topic since I was 7 years old and
4. I just think it is natural. In fact, I am so passionate about accessibility that I see it everywhere, even in a picture of ducks [where one duck is seemingly excluded by the others]. I think it’s kind of funny that someone else [at the evening's Ignite presentations] included pictures of ducks. So being excluded, not being a part of the community,
5. Not being able to hear a joke because you cannot hear, not being able to attend an event because there are stairs and you have someone saying “oh, couldn’t you come up the stairs? What’s the problem? Why can’t you participate”. But there are barriers. So
6. … it’s about seeing these situations and being more open to them. There was a lovely old man – he wasn’t afraid to stick out his neck [making a reference to an earlier presentation about daring to dare]. William Loughborough, who died last year, was very involved with web accessibility, and he cursed all those who didn’t think about it
7. in the year 2010, now 2011, because there are so many things you can do with it. There’s assistive technology, which lets you use computers and other things like a bike, a racing bike, which, despite your not having legs, lets you live out your potential, live your dream – something we’ve talked quite a bit about tonight.
8. And we who design things, whether you design words, develop, or whatever – when we do not listen to users with needs who say “make room for us”, then we fail. We fail as designers if we don’t think of these things.
9. And it takes so little. A simple little sign that shows the way. You don’t have to worry “gasp! Can I do this? Where is my destination?” A simple little sign, just from listening to users.
10. And there is also potential. Maybe there is a little boy who is passionate – again with all those dreams we’ve discussed – passionate about being a chemist, a great inventor, and he can – because there is technology that makes it possible for him to live out his dreams, live his passion.
11. And if you don’t have compassion/understanding, there’s money in all this. People with disabilities is the third largest consumer market in the US – people who use products related to their disability. A million, a trillion dollars. 80 million pounds in the UK. [I speak numbers that don't match the slides. The slides are correct.] There is money in all this.
12. And there is the law. Plus that, if you plan things well from the beginning and integrate things from Day 1, things are more harmonic, they fit together, you have something for everyone and not just something that you add on as an afterthought,
13. But something that everyone can enjoy from Day 1. So if you think, OK, this sounds interesting, but where do I get – I’m confused – where can I find guidelines or information? Well, for people who work with the Web, the World Wide Web Consortium has made something called
14. the Web Accessibility Initiative, and they have a ton of resources. Really good stuff. They have business cases, for example, so if you need to discuss with someone yada yada yada, they have the information that you can use to convince others that they need something that is more accessible.
15. There is also a book [Just Ask], written by the person [Shawn Lawton Henry] running the Web Accessibility Initiative. It describes how you can integrate accessibility into your design. And even though I talk about the web, I think this can be applied completely to all other professions.
16. For example, there is a book called “Seeing Voices”, which I have fallen in love with because it is about Deaf culture, and I learned that deafness, in my opinion after reading this, is not a disability, but a culture. Your eyes and your mind are opened to the perspectives of completely different worlds, so to speak.
17. And you find so much – the sign in American Sign Language [ASL] for love [with reference to what is on the slide behind me] – you win so much, you get new communication opportunities that open up. All the problems, all the challenges that you come with,
18. They can be solved by involving the entire world. So we can be more inclusive with all these things. And we have to work fast. In 2050, 30% of Europe’s population will be over 65. We must make things possible to use, so we can sit here and come to Ignite or whatever when we are 90 years old.
19. There are loads of people working on this. This [refering to slide behind me with Twitter names] is just a fraction of those people I follow on Twitter who are super clever. They live out their dream, that’s for sure, and that is fantastic.
20. And I can only encourage you to join the ranks. Think accessibility in your lives and then we can have that “over the rainbow” experience. Thanks for listening [I make a quick ASL sign for love].

The Transcript in Danish

The next Danish Ignite event takes place on March 1st. I’ll be there. Presenting. Whew! It’s a part of the Global Ignite Week.

Those of us who are presenting will follow the Ignite motto: “Enlighten us, but make it quick.”

What personal and professional passion will I share in twenty 15-second chunks?

Accessibility and inclusion.

I’m very grateful to @techwriterkai for sharing this post about the fastest way to create an Ignite presentation. Ideas are forming and I have sketches of ideas. Olivia Mitchell’s tips seem to be the perfect way to structure my snippets. Thanks, Kai!

My point of view on accessibility will be from the technical communicator’s point of view. After all, tech comms is my field. I think my information will be relevant to many of the fields connected to technical communication – usability and user experience, design, development (both software and hardware, perhaps), and more.

(By the way, with all the talk of certification in the field of technical communication, I wonder whether a successful Ignite presentation is a better certificate. I mean, you have only 5 minutes to communicate your heart out! It must be a communication IronMan. )

I have little fear of standing up in front of a crowd with the bright lights pointed right at my face. I am more concerned about getting my passion across those lights and into the minds of the audience. Accessibility and inclusion are issues that involve us all, and I plan to explain how and why. Igniting those minds is all that matters!

My latest encounter was on the website for the museum of Copenhagen. The Danish version of the site is the same.

Imagine that you had a list of only the links from a web page. I mean a list of the phrases displayed with a link, not the actual hyperlink. The list on a site that uses “Read more” would be as follows:

1. Read more
2. Read more
3. Read more
4. Read more

I could continue. It’s meaningless, right? That is what anyone who reads a website with a screen reader encounters. Screen readers are used by people who are blind, have low vision, or have physical disabilities. Assistive technology makes reading a website so much easier. Assistive technology also makes bad practices like “Read more” glaringly obvious. The failure lies with the content producer, not the technology!

When I look at the museum site, I realized that the designer may want to have only two words for the link to the continuation of the article. The words “Read more” are like a graphic element in their appearance. They are under a line used as a graphical element. I enjoy good graphics, but using “Read more” is bad when it leaves a screen reader user stranded with a list of useless information. That list is a quick navigation option in screen readers, but with useless information, the option becomes useless.

Let’s step away from design for a moment and think content. Isn’t “Read more” a content element? You are supposed to be lured into reading more by those two words. Could the content writer add a tiny bit more to improve the value? Like this:

1. Read more about Education
2. Read more about our Picture Archive
3. Read more about meeting the museum around town

You get the parallelism that someone might want, but you also get more information about the link that might be more enticing. This example is the first thing that came to mind. The content writer would look at the complete text, of course, and perhaps write a completely different set of links.

Those who can see the “Read more” text on the page may also be happier to have a longer text. On the museum site, these links are orange and stand out. In the scenario for my first list example, the links may be just as useless for a sighted person skimming the page and noticing the orange. The second list example might provide just enough information to be more enticing.

I did wonder whether the “Read more” text was built into the website templates somehow. To which I would reply – lazy! Not good!

Everything I have written applies to the phrase “Click here”. It is just as galling as “Read more”. I suggest you visit the WebAIM website for an excellent article about the bad practice of using useless link phrases like “Read more” and “Click here”. The Education and Outreach group at W3C have what I think is a great article for understanding how people with disabilities use the web. It can help you avoid lazy paths to web content. Such laziness won’t get me to read more or click here!

Unfortunately, the notes don’t show up as I thought they would. Because this presentation is not a normal presentation, the notes are crucial. I describe how to caption videos on YouTube and give a brief walk-through of the PDF accessibility checker in Adobe Acrobat. Those notes say it all, so I will have to break out those elements into blog posts, or do something that will make the notes visible. Of course, you can download a copy of the PowerPoint presentation to view my notes, but I wish the Slideshare notes worked. The message is too crucial to hide!

PS The sweat and (almost) tears came from reworking these slides 3 times! The first set became corrupted somehow and I had to re-do everything. That was so bad. Then, just as everything was finished and just before uploading to Slideshare, I managed to overwrite the slides with an older, obsolete copy. Sheer clumsiness. Sigh! I was upset about losing all the smart phrases I had prepared for my notes. I had to try and recall from memory what exactly I had written. I comforted myself with the thought of wabi-sabi. That is a phrase I have picked up from Simon Bostock after his “wabi-sabi” presentation at #tcuk10. In other words, my presentation will be unfinished. I send it out to you, dear reader, and we can continue this conversation. I didn’t need to make the polished, final version (that I thought I had in the forever vanished version) because then what would we have to talk about?

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.- Tim Berners-Lee. W3C Director and Inventor of the World Wide Web

If disabilities are a part of human diversity, why do we segregate and exclude? That is a gigantic human rights issue, so I’ll take the easy way out and just look at the issue from the angle of web accessibility. Information to citizens is constantly pushed to the web. There seems to be the viewpoint that everyone has access to a computer and the internet, so all information should be placed on the internet.

For some, this is like taking out the trash. “Let’s dump the trash in the back. Someone will pick it up and take it away, but what happens next is not our problem.” A website is put together, information is thrown into it, and the job is done. “Who comes to pick up the information and how they pick it up or use it is not our problem.”

Well, it is.

On 13 December 2006, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into being at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, along with its Optional Protocol. From 30 March 2007, countries could begin to sign and adopt this convention, and on 3 May 2008, enough countries had signed the convention so that it could be declared in “legal force and effect”. This convention is basically about human rights for people with disabilities.

It adopts a broad categorization of persons with disabilities and reaffirms that all persons with all types of disabilities must enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. It clarifies and qualifies how all categories of rights apply to persons with disabilities and identifies areas where adaptations have to be made for persons with disabilities to effectively exercise their rights and areas where their rights have been violated, and where protection of rights must be reinforced.

Where does Denmark stand on this convention?

As a part of the P2PU Web Accessibility course I am taking, I was asked to look at what is happening with accessibility in my country.

Denmark was one of the first countries to sign the convention on 30 March 2007 and ratified the convention on 20 July 2009. According to the list of signatures and ratifications, Denmark has never signed the optional protocol. I have no idea why not. Support of the protocol would mean that an individual could petition the committee with a claim about breach of rights and the committee could investigate serious or “systematic” violations of the convention. Does this mean that those countries who have not signed this think they can avoid lawsuits?

Web Accessibility History in Denmark

Fortunately, steps have been made toward web accessibility in Denmark, despite the topic not being so well known in some circles.

A move toward accessibility was put forth in the Danish Parliament in 2005 as “B40″. The research that came out of that decision is available in Danish as “an overview of legislation, policies, and other initiatives of importance for formulating a common strategy for accessibility of IT-based tools in the public sector.”

Other reports were prepared concerning accessibility for citizens with disabilities at the time of the massive reform of the local government in Denmark (2005). The reports map the situation back then and are useful as historical documents.
Danish reports from 2006 about the state of IT accessibility in Denmark.

As a result of the parliamentary decision (B40), the following projects were started.

• The government declared that it wants web accessibility on the public sector websites to ensure access for citizens with disabilities.
• Accessibility initiatives included looking at open standards.
• Improved guidelines about using WCAG 2.0 were created to help web developers know what they needed to do to make accessible websites.
• Regular evaluations of all public sector websites were started in 2008 and results are published at the Web Check (Webtjek) site.
• Danmark is also involved in initiatives toward a common standard for accessibility in public tenders (purchasing). (This might be ready now, but I didn’t find anything about it at this time.)

(This list is my interpretation of the Danish page about the projects coming from parliamentary decision B40.)

The Web Check Site

Since 2008, the web check site has published a report card for all public websites – national and local government sites, libraries and other public service sites. Guidelines for the web check requirements are provided so that you can do your own checks. On that page, you will also find practical tips for implementing and operating with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. It declares that as of 1 January 2008, “Accessibility – WCAG – for public sector sites is an obligatory, open standard.”

That page has a link to a Danish language guide to WCAG 2.0 guidelines. Those guidelines cover only level A and AA, not AAA. The page states that the guidelines completely cover the obligatory open standards for websites in Denmark. When the official Danish translation of WCAG 2.0 is ready on the W3C site, there will be a link to it here. This page was last updated 9 September 2010, so this is quite recent.

The Accessibility Toolkit

The checklist page also has a link to an accessibility toolkit. The toolkit, or checklist, is provided to help the public sector remember all the accessibility requirements for tenders, purchases, and development of new digital solutions. The toolkit is prepared like a wizard that guides you through the requirements. They include instructions for first-time users of the guide, as well as information as to why this is so important. That is quite good, I think – the ongoing education.

My Impressions

After reading the Danish documents, I am left with the following feelings:

The focus is on making public sector IT tools accessible to all because there is a chance that someone with a disability will want to work there and all tools must be usable by them.

There is a wait-and-see attitude, as in, higher level actions are taking place, so let’s not decide anything until that is settled. This is split into an education and enlightenment phase, followed by a phase for whatever action should take place after any legislation is in place. These two phases seem sensible, but the wait-and-see attitude worries me.

It was hard to find information regarding the accessibility of the output – the documents or websites delivered to citizens. There was a lot of ambiguity, in my opinion.

I found ambiguity in the term accessibility at one point when discussing standards. It seemed to refer to “can you or can you not use this format”, as in do you have the application on your computer that can read this data. I did not pick up on an undertone of whether someone was perceivable, operable, understandable, or robust; could a person who is blind, Deaf, has different motor skills, or has learning disabilities obtain that information easily and independently. It sounded more like an open standards issues. Fair enough, but I fear that gets into technical battles at times and forgets about the people who just want some information.

In conclusion, for now, the UN took a giant step for human rights with this convention. Bureaucracy (practical logistics, some might say) takes tiny steps toward ensuring those human rights.

In a space of 6 days last week, I attended

• Charity Hack 2010 where participants created applications that made it easier for people to donate money to charities
• Web Accessibility London Unconference where we discussed accessibility issues in the un-conference type of conference
• Technical Communication UK conference where the tech comms tribe gathered for the usual rituals

I also dashed around London in-between some of this. Now I need to digest it all. The world isn’t a quiet, slow-moving place anymore. At least, not in my part of the world. It helps to have photographs to maintain the impressions. I dutifully recorded my experiences on Flickr:

• My Charity Hack photo set
• My a11yldn photo set (where a11yldn was the nickname and hashtag for the Web Accessibility London Unconference)
• My tcuk10 photo set (where tcuk10 was the nickname and hashtag for the Technical Communication UK conference)
• (I also have a set of dashing around London photos.)

The next task is uploading my presentations to slideshare. I gave two presentations at a11yldn, and I repeated one of them at tcuk10. I cannot permit myself to upload them without adding my notes to each slide. (Moving between different applications to make the slides mangled the notes I did have. Grrr.)

Perhaps the real task is remembering where I keep all my memories. Like the squirrel I photographed digging frantically in St. James Park to hide a gem for later enjoyment, I need to be able to retrieve those gems when I want them.

The fact is, I’m gobsmacked by all the excellent conversations I had in the past week and all the delightful people I met. I have to hold on to my hat like John Betjeman does in St. Pancras Station (his statue, that is).

I’ll just relax and let the experiences bubble around in my head. After all, they are wabi-sabi – unfinished, as Simon Bostock told us at tcuk10. My beautiful (in my opinion) photos will help to retain my memories because Simon also says, fortunately for me, that beauty is mnemonic.

There are live WUD2008 events scheduled to take place around the world. There are many online WUD2008 events, too. As long as you have a computer and an internet connection, you can participate!

World Usability Day 2008 Global Transport Challenge Banner

I am taking the Global Transport Challenge today, and later on, I’ll attend the live events in Copenhagen. I also plan to take photos on the topic of transport and upload them to Flickr with the tag “WUD2008“.

I just discovered these delightful creations from Aardman Animations while writing for another blog. As I wrote in that blog entry, these animations were made to help re-brand a UK charity called Leonard Cheshire Disability.

This type of communication appeals to me immensely. I admire the animation work of Aardman Animations and love watching their stories unfold. At the same time, in this case, I am also “educated” about disabilities. Mary Poppins’ rule about “a spoonful of sugar” helping the medicine go down frequently applies to education – and I could add: technical communication. How to get a difficult, serious, sensitive message across in the best possible way? That is a task that many technical communicators face every day. Seeing a presentation like this is a tremendous inspiration, although the effort behind clay or stop-motion animation is so huge that it is definitely not the solution for everyone.

So what’s with the “cute” in the title? Well, I do love these figures. I have always liked stories told with animal figures. Some of my favorites childrens’ stories were populated with talking animals, such as Bernard and Bianca from Margery Sharp’s The Rescuers (and I am talking about the books, not the movies, which I have not seen). I think using these creatures is an excellent move for these ads.

The “wake-up call” refers to some of the facts found in the quiz on the website. There are issues concerning people with disabilities which governments and the public need to face and solve. Considering the stereotypes and prejudices that abound, it is important to educate everyone through well-thought out campaigns using all the modern channels of communication that technology permits. The tv spots are meant to raise awareness and change our perception of what disability is. No one communication method works for everyone, but I think this method will reach a large group of people. I am happy if this blog entry and the blog entry on the STC AccessAbility SIG blog can help raise awareness in the minds of a few more readers.