Forget about checklists.* Put away the standards and guidelines.* Focusing on accessibility regulations won't win you many friends or fame. In this session you'll learn what can bring you friends and fame, along with success and satisfaction. Get the secret to making your website and other products work well for older users, people with disabilities, mobile users, and more. (grab those aging baby boomers by their iPhones) If you answer yes to any of these questions, you should come to this session: - Do you believe in accessibility but are having trouble getting your boss/clients to support it? - Do you think accessibility is a waste of your time and effort? Or, at least not something that you want to work on? - Do you want to WOW your current or potential future boss/clients and stand out from the crowd? This session challenges the way most people think about accessibility. We'll turn the tables on the technical aspects and take a good look at the human aspects -- and how to use this to advance your business. We'll provide specific guidance on using new resources to improve your organization's accessibility approach and future outlook. You'll get a clear plan and specific tips on how to conduct a buy-in session that will make your life better. (really, it will make your life better) Come away with a fresh approach to design and development of products that work for people, and make you shine. * (for a while. we'll show you when to come back to them later)
Shawn focuses her personal passion for accessibility on bringing together the needs of individuals and the goals of organizations in designing human-computer interfaces. She contributes to many online resources, and is currently updating the book "Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design", which offers an approach for developing products that are more usable for everyone. It too is available free, from www.uiAccess.com/JustAsk
Shawn leads the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) education and outreach activities promoting web accessibility for people with disabilities. Before joining the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), she developed and implemented strategies to optimize user interface design for usability and accessibility with Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations, education providers, government agencies, research centers, and international standards bodies.
Although Shawn holds a research appointment at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and has a Massachusetts phone number, she isn't a super-geek and she lives in the upper Midwest. When not typing on her little laptop, she is often out paddling her long sea kayak.
