Developing an Accessible Web Site

This full day seminar is designed for web development teams seeking to understand the issues surrounding web accessibility and looking to ensure their sites meet current accessibility guidelines and standards.

The challenges of developing accessible web sites has recently come to the forefront with the emergence of numerous government standards not only in Canada, but also throughout much of the industrialized world, including the US, Australia and much of Europe.

This move towards universal accessibility is driven by both the legal need created by Human Rights laws as well as the gradual realization that Accessibility is more than just providing web pages for the handicapped. In fact, the principles involved will assist all users, using any of the myriads of newly emerging "web-enabled" applications, including cell phones, PDAs and more.

Fortunately for developers, many of the methods employed to develop accessible web sites are well established; the single largest barrier remaining is the lack of knowledge of these techniques, as well as the lack of understanding of the impact developers have on these techniques.

It is against this backdrop that the consultants have developed a one-day seminar for web development teams seeking to understand the issues and looking to ensure their sites meet current accessibility guidelines and standards.

Goals and Objectives

At the end of this seminar developers will be able to:

• Understand the issues of web accessibility and identify the benefits of accessible web design
• Identify potential problems in terms of accessibility
• Learn to use specific HTML coding techniques to create accessible web sites
• Learn how to test their work to ensure accessibility
• Understand the limitations of current user agent technology as it relates to building accessible web sites
• Apply their newfound knowledge to existing and future projects
• Develop accessible web sites within the Common Look and Feel or Section 508 Framework(s)

Seminar Content

The seminar will begin with an overview of the issues and a review of the existing Standards and Guidelines. Each checkpoint of the W3C Web Accessibility Checklist, along with Common Look and Feel or Section 508 Standards will be explained both from the development perspective as well as the impact of proper vs. improper usage. Actual web pages illustrating the "before-and-after" will be used whenever possible, with an emphasis on the code elements when appropriate.

Once the checkpoints and challenges have been identified, the seminar will proceed to look at specific techniques that developers should employ when developing their web sites. Techniques in HTML as well as Cascading Style Sheets will be explored and explained in depth. Experience has shown that the areas of sophisticated Data Tables, on-line Form development and Dynamic Page (data-base driven) development are particularly vexing to developers; these issues will be focused upon in more detail.

Throughout the seminar, participants will be encouraged to pose questions of the consultants; an amount of time will also be set aside at the end for a Questions and Answers period.

Prerequisites

While acknowledging and adapting to a wide variety of skill sets, this seminar is principally geared towards web developers and content creators. As such, a basic understanding of HTML is recommended for maximum benefit of the attendees. An understanding of other Internet development techniques such as Cascading Style Sheets, Dynamic Scripting Languages (ASP/ColdFusion/PHP, JavaScript, CGI/Perl, etc.) and Database driven web development is beneficial.

Pricing

Contact us for more details.

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