Presentations

Incorporating Document Accessibility into Your Organization’s Workflow
by Adam Spencer

From authoring, to remediation, testing and compliance, PDF accessibility is a vital part in your complete accessibility strategy, in either the Public or Private sector. It’s also one of the most cost effective ways of ensuring your content is accessible. There is no “easy button” in accessibility, which makes the development of a cost effective and robust strategy critical to the success of your organization.

Adam Spencer is the Head of Document Accessibility Services for Accessibil-IT Inc., a dedicated PDF accessibility specialist. As an active member on a number of ISO Committees for PDF and PDF Accessibility, Adam was also an active contributor to the development of the new international standards to ensure the accessibility and usability of PDF and adaptive technologies.

One of the major focuses for Adam is ensuring that all content is completely usable and accessible for users of adaptive technologies, including the development of accessible advanced mathematics techniques within PDF.

Adam is also the Vice-Chair of the Canadian Advisory Committee on TC 171 and TC 171/SC2 for the Standards Council of Canada.

Media and Accessibility: Broadcast and Digital Best Practices and Techniques for a Blind and Low Vision Audience
by Robert Pearson

Is there a lack of understanding of the need for media that is accessible? Does it lead to a lack of proliferation of fully accessible content? The media landscape in Canada is evolving and rapidly changing. Techniques such as described video, captioning, signing as well as web accessibility compliance - a11y - are gaining prominence in their importance and availability.

Accessible Media Inc. (AMI) is ‎responding to this through a number of initiatives including industry adopted description best practices, a described video TV Guide, an accessible online media player - the AMI-player - and the launch of a third broadcast service AMI-télé.

Robert has worked in the accessibility industry since 1999. He is an industry advocate, community builder, trainer and developer with experience from the Canadian federal government and abroad. Robert spent many years as the manager of accessibility for a major Canadian financial institution. He sat as a member of the AODA Information and Communications Standards Development Committee and is currently Chair of the CRTC Described Video Best Practices Committee.

WordPress and Accessibility
By Jordan Quintal

This presentation will cover everything to do with WordPress and Accessibility. I will start by sharing some of the new things WordPress has been doing in regards to making the platform and websites more accessible. From there, I will showcase a variety of WordPress Accessibility tools, plugins, and themes; as well as demonstrate some how some of them work. Then, I will share information on the WordPress A11Y Group, what they do, and how anyone can contribute to their efforts. Lastly, I will share information on local resources, events, and groups that anyone interested in WordPress or website accessibility can get involved with.

Jordan Quintal is a successful Online Multipreneur, a seasoned Web Developer, as well as a WordPress Contributor and Community Member. Jordan is the current President at The Genius Web Media Inc. that was founded in 2007, and he has over 15 years of web development experience. His skill, intelligence, and ambition have allowed him and his company to flourish in a very competitive Media market. Jordan is also an active advocate and educator towards Web and WordPress accessibility.

Drupal 8: The Leading Example for An Accessible CMS
by Mike Gifford

Drupal 7 really has led the way in ensuring that WCAG 2.0 recommendations are respected for anonymous users, editors and administrators. This has been pushed further with Drupal 8, and although not yet launched, there is a lot to be excited about.

In a non-technical way the presentation will focus on what has been added in general terms which can be applied to any open-source CMS. Centralized API changes and system-wide-defaults can benefit everyone.

One of Mike Gifford’s goals, through his company OpenConcept Consulting, is to fix the accessibility problems at the source using the Drupal open-source content management system. By taking this approach over a million web sites are enabled to become more accessible. With the Web increasingly becoming one of the main points of contact with citizens and customers, the ability for organizations to easily meet the relevant accessibility standards has become a customer-service issue. Mike is a Drupal Core Accessibility Maintainer and has been spearheading improvements in the Drupal community since 2009.

iOS Accessibility Testing with VoiceOver: A Crash Course
By Aidan Tierney

Learn the basics of how to use VoiceOver and a set of procedures for iOS accessibility testing. Bring an iOS device if you have one and follow along - this will be a hands-on session. We'll start by turning on VoiceOver, and adjusting some settings. Then we will practice some simple gestures. With this foundation in place, we'll go through (and also practice) a set of VoiceOver test procedures for native apps and mobile web content. Finally we'll look at wireless keyboard testing techniques and procedures.

Bring your iPhone or iPad ,and headphones/earbuds if possible!

Aidan Tierney is a Senior Accessibility Consultant at IBM Canada. He works with large enterprises to help them meet accessibility standards. This work includes advising customers on accessibility strategy, conducting assessments, delivering training to testers and developers and remediating code. Aidan has presented at The Guelph Accessibility Conference, Accessibility Camp Toronto and CSUN.

Use ARIA Now!
By Billy Gregory

In this session we will jump right in and use ARIA and HTML5 to create modern, accessible web applications. Starting with the basics, and working up to some more advanced examples, attendees will learn how to start using ARIA right away.

Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Billy Gregory is a Sr. Accessibility Engineer with The Paciello Group. Billy can relate to many of the challenges and the apprehension faced by developers who are new to accessibility. He enjoys working with developers of all levels of experience to strengthen their skills and understanding of accessibility. Billy is active in the Accessibility Community as Co-Organizer of Accessibility Camp Toronto and it's monthly meet-up group.

Keynote
By Derek Featherstone

Derek Featherstone is an internationally recognized speaker and entrepreneur. An authority on accessibility and interaction design, he is the founder of Simply Accessible, an accessibility agency based in Ottawa, Ontario.

Derek always puts the user first. He strives to make the web a better place, by designing interactions that are easy to use for everyone, including people with disabilities. Derek’s ideal user experience combines deeply engaging content with brilliant design and technical excellence. That user-centered focus sets the course for Simply Accessible, and, more importantly, for their clients

Is It WCAG 2.0 Compliant?
by Rabab Gomaa

Topic: Learn how to assess a web page against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 checkpoints. At the end of the session, you will able to measure the accessibility compliance of a web page, use web accessibility tools effectively and run screen reader tests. If you are reporting on the web accessibility of your website, or you want to know how to evaluate the accessibility of your work, this session is for you.

Speaker: Rabab Gomaa is a web developer with over 15 years of experience. Her primary focus has been web accessibility following refinement study at the university of Montreal in 2009. Currently, Rabab works at increasing the awareness of web accessibility in organizations & communities and studying for a Master of Information Studies (Information Management) at University of Ottawa.

Inform, Integrate, and Advocate: Prioritizing Web Accessibility in Your Company Culture
by Helena Zubkow

Audience: Anyone who works in the web development industry - everyone can make a difference!

Topic: Many web development shops still view web accessibility as a ‘luxury' or a ‘frill'. This presentation is an informative session about how to tactfully press the issue and get web accessibility integrated as a firm priority in your place of work. Learn to speak the language of clients, shareholders, and project managers about this important issue.

Speaker: Helena Zubkow is a front-end developer at Lullabot who has a great passion for web accessibility. She can be found on Twitter at @misshelenasue. Questions or comments may be sent to helena@lullabot.com.

Techniques showdown: 4 hot web accessibility issues from 1999, still issues in 2015
by David MacDonald

Audience: Beginners to experts, HTML coders

Topic: For years, ambiguous links, table summaries, complex tables and long descriptions have been problems. Things are changing, or are they? Let’s have a techniques showdown. In this talk we will have a showdown, to see what techniques emerge as the winners in terms of elegance, browser support, accessibility support, ease of programming, and overall usability. In this interactive discussion we will demonstrate how a screen reader announces and display these solutions and we let the audience decide.

Speaker: David MacDonald, President CanAdapt Solutions Inc., veteran Invited Expert on the WCAG since 2002. Past advisor to TBS, has taught WCAG to 100’s of GC developers, consulted for the DOJ, CRTC, PWGSC, CNSC, NRCANs earthquake reports, audited Air Canada, Westjet, Via Rail, etc. for the CTA, lead WCAG consultant for Intel, and other Fortune 500 organizations. He teaches WCAG at UofO in English and French. He is editor of W3C “Using WAI-ARIA in HTML” and is an Invited Expert on the HTML5 Working Group. His talks are fun, interactive, and informative. His YouTube WCAG theme song has over 40,000 combined views. Twitter @davidmacd LinkedIN davidmacdonald100 www.Can-Adapt.com

The WCAG 2 roll-out in the Government of Canada: how did we do?
by David MacDonald

Audience: All levels (its about large organization strategy, not code)

Topic: In response to the Donna Jodhan court case, 106 GC departments embarked on an epic migration of 10,000,000 web pages to WCAG. Over 2000 web developers were trained, hundreds of contractors engaged. What is the value to people with disabilities? How can we maintain conformance? What lessons can provincial, municipal governments, NGOs and private sector learn as they meet the WCAG under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)?

Speaker: David MacDonald, President CanAdapt Solutions Inc., veteran Invited Expert on the WCAG since 2002. Past advisor to TBS, has taught WCAG to 100’s of GC developers, consulted for the DOJ, CRTC, PWGSC, CNSC, NRCANs earthquake reports, audited Air Canada, Westjet, Via Rail, etc. for the CTA, lead WCAG consultant for Intel, and other Fortune 500 organizations. He teaches WCAG at UofO in English and French. He is editor of W3C “Using WAI-ARIA in HTML” and is an Invited Expert on the HTML5 Working Group. His talks are fun, interactive, and informative. His YouTube WCAG theme song has over 40,000 combined views. Twitter @davidmacd LinkedIN davidmacdonald100 www.Can-Adapt.com

Optimizing images for Web
by Brad Souster

Audience: Beginners, general accessibility folks

Topic: A discussion and collaboration on handling image optimization across screen sizes and devices. This is your chance to share your ideas and techniques for handling images accessibility and responsive design, and expand on what you already know.

Speaker: Brad Souster is an Accessibility Specialist for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Brad has been making websites accessible for the Government of Canada for over six years.

Preparing Word docs for Accessible Web publication
by Brad Souster

Audience: Content creators, managers, Web developers

Topic: A discussion and collaboration on writing Word docs for accessible Web publication. You should come out of this discussion with techniques for quicker turnaround on Web requests, and a checklist of techniques to make it possible. This is also an opportunity to share your own ideas and techniques for preparing content for Web publication.

Speaker: Brad Souster is an Accessibility Specialist for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Brad has been making websites accessible for the Government of Canada for over six years.

Developer F Bombs - Fear is not a motivator
by Billy Gregory

Topic: This discussion with moderator Billy Gregory will look at the negative effects of using fear as a motivator when engaging developers and other stakeholders in conversations on accessibility.

Speaker: Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Billy Gregory is a Sr. Accessibility Engineer with The Paciello Group. Billy can relate to many of the challenges and the apprehension faced by developers who are new to accessibility. He enjoys working with developers of all levels of experience to strengthen their skills and understanding of accessibility. Billy is active in the Accessibility Community as Co-Organizer of Accessibility Camp Toronto and it's monthly meet-up group.

The Mobile Revolution: we are all disabled, or soon will be
by Denis Boudreau

Topic: Mobile has completely changed the game and how people use the Web. In this session, we’ll explore some of the reasons why accessibility is finally becoming something no organization can afford to avoid.

Speaker: Denis is a senior Web Accessibility consultant working for Deque Systems and an invited expert of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in various working groups, including Education and Outreach (EOWG) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). He has been advocating social inclusion on the Web since 2001 and has been running the annual a11yMTL conference in Montreal, Canada since 2010. He actively tweets about Web accessibility and digital inclusion at @dboudreau.