The Australian Web Industry Association is doing it again. Putting on one of those must go to educational web events. This one goes under the moniker of Ideas 5.
They are having an evening of discussions with leading Australian accessibility experts Roger Hudson and Andrew Downie. Roger will be giving the low down on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2 (WCAG 2), while Andrew will be presenting some practical advice on PDF Accessibility. There is also the usual round of networking with your web industry peers and a cash bar.
When: Wednesday 22nd April, from 7:00pm
photo: Ben Buchanan
In a few weeks there is going to be the biggest web event of the Western Australian calendar year. Not just the Edge of the Web conference, there is also Webjam, four workshops and the WA Web Awards all in one roller coaster week.
One of the keynote speakers and workshop presenter at the Edge of the Web conference is Derek Featherstone. Derek is particularly renown for his straight forward and often enlightening approach to accessibility.
The other day I took the opportunity to discuss with Derek his motivation, the future of accessibility and his forthcoming workshop.
During the week the general terms of User Experience and Usability become interchangeable. Huh?
Well the ISO standard ISO 13407 - the International Standard for Human Centred Design (gets a new number too! - ISO 9241-210) is being side shuffled it seems. Now it’s a standard for User Experience. Is this a good thing?
What is User Experience, really! Well for me it’s all the aspect of the front end user interaction, the emotional response to use the page, the effective usefulness, the accessibility, the audience’s perception of credibility of the site and the directive of the user towards the site’s goal. Usability (ISO 9241-11: Guidance on Usability) on the other hand is just an narrow aspect of this entire user experience
The other day I was floored and humbled as I regularly am during a session of usability testing for a site prototype. Up to this point the testing and functionality determination had gone well. Then someone put a massive road block in the way. There it was sticking up out of the ground blocking all findability of the core information on a site. Well maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it did make me think; which is good.
