I spent a great weekend up in London at the Scripting Enabled conference and hack day. It was really great to catch up with people I haven’t seen in a while and to meet new people as well. There were a couple of “click” moments like bumping into Peter Abrahams while scanning through the alphabetically-challenged name tags and then figuring out that the lovely lady from Devon was Laura Whitehead who had recently blogged about my list of accessibility videos!

The Scripting Enabled difference

I come away from web conferences and geek meets inspired and chomping at the bit to get working on some of the ideas that have come out of such events. I get back to my cave, start blogging about something that I need to get out there, get distracted by something I wanted to look up (“Right, let’s open that in another tab and deal with it later”), rarely properly finish the entry, get back to doing proper work and not find the time to work on that cool idea or at least put the idea out there. Well, no more, damn it!

What has been the difference at Scripting Enabled this week? The hack day which followed the day of talks and discussion made sure I took the time out to do something with an idea.

Doing the hack day straight after the talks meant things were fresh in our minds and a lot of the clever people who were at the conference were on hand for the day of hacking to work with on an idea and to bounce ideas off of. Having people in the same room with different abilities and disabilities really made the hack day a hive of activity.

On top of that, the event was free to attend. Christian did a fantastic job of pulling together the sponsorship, venues, speakers, hackers… There are lots of people who have given to this event to bring together great people to produce results. I can’t wait for the next one now!

What did I do? I worked in a group of beautiful people to improve accessibility of maps on the Web using the Google Maps API. We were so chuffed to have something to show at the end of the day, but we’re not quite ready to show the world yet. Expect more words from me on that.

In the meantime, check out the photos from the event and keep an eye on the Scripting Enabled site.

Most people with an interest in web accessibility are likely to have at some point stumbled across the work of the Accessibility Institute at the University of Texas in Austin, which was founded by the late Dr. John Slatin.

The University of Texas has decided to close the Accessibility Institute, which has been a guiding light in our field, giving important opportunity for research and providing useful resources to the world. It would be a real blow to web accessibility to see it go.

If you care about web accessibility, please show your support by putting your name on the petition to save the Accessibility Institute that Knowbility have set up. It only takes a few seconds to do.

There are some great thoughts and comments from people who have signed the petition. Henny Swan has also given some reasons to keep the Institute going on her blog:

Reasons for saving the Accessibility Institute include:

• Need for research based findings to support accessible design practice.
• Opportunity for a world class institution like UT to serve as an example to other institutions.
• Place where emerging practices can be tested and modelled.
• Contributions to international body of knowledge on inclusion.
• Maintain thought leadership in Texas, easily disseminated to state agencies that have accessibility mandates.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Extra special thanks if you have signed the petition.

Read more

• Call-to-action: Save the UT Accessibility Institute on the WaSP blog.
• Petition to save John Slatin’s Accessibility Institute on Henny Swan’s blog.
• Petition to save the Accessibility Institute.