Today’s blog post is the second in a series of “guest interviews” conducted by Summit Conference Chair Chris Hester (see the first one with Stuart Bender here). Chris will be speaking with many of the presenters scheduled for the Summit about their sessions and what attendees can look forward to.
We are fortunate to have many fantastic speakers join us for the Summit this year, including Sharron Rush. Sharron is the co-founder and executive director of Knowbility, a leading authority on Web accessibility since 1998.
Your session, Integrating Accessibility from the Start, is going to address the importance of building accessibility into projects as soon as you start planning them. Why is that so critical?
When you start thinking about accessibility at the beginning of a project, you discover alternate ways to do things. It allows you to build pathways. Think about the architecture of a building: if you build accessibility into the basic plan, the appearance is smooth and elegant. The methods of accessibility are barely noticeable. On the other hand, buildings where accessibility is retrofitted look clunky and unattractive.
Planning makes the job easier, and in this session, we’ll look at how to plan projects so they include accessibility from beginning to end. We can look at it from the perspective of responsive design. If you try to retrofit a site or application for mobile, you basically double your workload. When you build in the different ways content might be rendered, you’re free to focus on the meaning and the message rather than constantly tinkering around the edges.
In the session evaluations we ask attendees, “What is the best idea you heard in this session that you plan to use?” What do you expect the top answer to be?
Accessibility is not just one person’s job—it’s a part of all the roles who are involved in creating the online experience.
So that brings me to your other session, Basic Accessibility Tools and Techniques. What can attendees expect to learn in this session?
This is the nitty-gritty, where the where rubber hits the road. In the other session, I provide an overview of responsibilities, procedures, and so on. In this session, we’ll look at measuring our success: how to test, how to measure, how to make sure we’re implementing the right things.
Complete the sentence: “You should absolutely plan on attending this session if you …”
If you do any kind of quality assurance or testing. The trends, both social and legal, are toward inclusion. You have a responsibility to make sure your communications are fully accessible. And the United Nations has said that it’s a basic right to have accessible information and communication. People can’t live in the modern world unless they have access to information.
As technical communicators, why do we need to be aware of accessibility issues?
If you’re producing content, even writing user manuals, then 15–20% of your users will have a disability of some sort, so you still need to take accessibility into consideration.
What can we as technical communication professionals do to stay current on accessibility issues?
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has a special interest group that would be worth subscribing to. Staying in tune with W3C would also be a good place to start.
What are you looking forward to most in Phoenix?
Talking to a new group of people. The opportunity for me to learn from this group is something I’m really looking forward to.
More about Sharron
Sharron has led Knowbility to recognition by the Clinton White House and the US Department of Labor for excellence in employment practices for people with disabilities. She has been invited twice to the West Wing to confer with Kareem Dale, President Obama’s Special Advisor on Disability Issues. Ms. Rush is a ComputerWorld Laureate and an advisor to the SXSW Interactive Media Conference. In 2001, she was named one of the Top 25 Women of the Web.