For the masses, the iPad is the latest, hottest, must-have toy. But, for people with disabilities the iPad is life changing: enabling communication, unlocking minds and fostering independence. However in purchasing these devices lays the challenge: oftentimes websites with product information are inaccessible to this market, which has a discretionary spending power of $175 billion in the United States alone. The session’s goals are to identify some barriers people with disabilities regularly face, making it difficult to participate fully online; explain the four guiding principles of what makes blogs and websites accessible; and offer key questions to begin asking and what resources exist to make sites more accessible to this under tapped market. By giving short vignettes of how people with disabilities are using iPads, faces are put to the size of this disability market - and putting faces to the need for web accessibility. This brings alive the technical requirements and guiding principles of web accessibility.
For more than twelve years, Glenda Watson Hyatt has worked with three levels of government, transit authorities and non-profit organizations to improve accessibility of their websites for people with disabilities.
She is well-versed in the internationally-recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and is also familiar with the United States legislation Section 508 that, in part, requires specified categories of websites to be accessible to people with disabilities.
Glenda is now combining her web accessibility expertise with her passion for blogging and her first-hand experience living with a disability to work with bloggers to create an accessible blogosphere
