Accessibility Bootcamp, Baltimore/ DC, October 10 & 11, 2017

Throughout my 15-year long career in accessibility, I've trained several hundred developers, QA, design, and product staff. Unfortunately, all of this training was done privately, for groups of web staff at a single client at a time. I think it is time we opened training to individuals and small groups who may not have the budget for a large training event.

Join me during this two-day training where we go all-in on accessibility, from project management to implementation.

Tuesday October 10, 2017: Executive Overview and Stem-to-Stern Accessibility

Executive Overview (Free!): 8am - 10am

This is a free overview of accessibility including a discussion of the background of accessibility legislation, regulatory requirements, and current legal landscape.

Workshop: Stem-to-Stern Accessibility: 10am - 5pm

This workshop is a general overview workshop aimed at everyone involved in IT from executives to PMs, designers, developers, and QA. There is no code in this workshop. At the end of this workshop, you'll know all of the various places to consider accessibility and the best practices for doing so.

Description:

Depending on the audience, Accessibility is often treated as either a coding discussion or a compliance discussion, without considering the relationship between the two. Worse, it is almost never discussed as part of the larger discussion of quality. This results in projects that are inaccessible, expensive, and late.

The path to an inclusively-designed and compliant product is paved through the integration of accessibility at all phases of the development lifecycle. Accessibility must begin and continue through management commitment, vision, and planning, through design and coding, to testing, documentation and delivery. In this workshop, Karl Groves will explore ways for integrating accessibility into software development. Whether you work in a large or small organization, follow an agile or waterfall process, are experienced or just starting out, this workshop will guide you toward reliably developing accessible and usable products. Integrating accessibility relies on a diverse set of skills across the product-development spectrum, so this workshop is structured to be inclusive and engaging to all skill sets and levels. Your participation will be encouraged through group interaction and shared experiences as we explore the process of building not only an accessible software product, but a culture that sustains cost-effective, ongoing delivery of accessible products.

Wednesday October 11, 2017: Accessibility for Web Staff. 8am - 5pm

This workshop is a crash course in Web Accessibility. During this workshop, attendees will explore and learn about a wide array of topics. This workshop is aimed at designers, developers, and QA staff. While there will be a lot of code, there will also be a lot of hands-on learning about how the code impacts users. All that is required is a basic understanding of HTML, though more skilled developers will definitely get more out of this workshop.

1. Accessibility Laws, Policies, and Standards

2. Understanding disability types and assistive technologies

3. Accessibility by content type

The bulk of the training is discussing accessibility to specific content types, such as Forms, Frames, Tables, Document Structure, Keyboard Accessibility & Focus control, etc.

4. Advanced topics

JavaScript, WAI-ARIA, custom controls, and richly interactive widgets.

About Karl Groves and Tenon, LLC

Karl Groves – a developer and Accessibility & Usability consultant from the Washington DC area, founded Tenon LLC in April 2014. Initially formed to develop & market the tenon.io accessibility-testing platform. In February 2017, Karl began offering development and consulting services through Tenon, LLC as well.

Karl has worked with over 90 of the largest private companies, educational institutions, and federal agencies in the United States and he has trained several hundred developers, QA, design, and product staff at many of these clients. He has also spoken at conferences on accessibility in 15 countries over the last 5 years. His work has won awards ranging from the CUES Diamond Award to a product that was named as one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2006. His work has been cited in a dozen books, white papers, and academic research in accessibility.

The Tenon services team also includes a number of full-stack developers with on-the-ground experience in developing accessible web-based applications for the US Federal Government.

Tenon’s customer list expands throughout all seven continents including consulting & development customers throughout North America and Europe.