If you can’t make it to Ottawa, are interested in other workshops, or if you’d like us to bring the workshop to another location, let us know where and when you’d like us to make the workshop happen and we’ll be happy to investigate bringing it to your area or to your in-house team.

If you can’t wait until June 15th, you might also check out what we’re doing at other conferences in the next few months (please, check out the full list of events where I’m speaking)

Web App Summit, Newport Beach, CA, April 19-22

I spoke at the Web App Summit last year, and it was a fantastic experience; I’m really excited that the UIE team has asked me back for the 2009 Web App Summit. This event brings together an amazing pool of talent — the attendees, the conference organizers and the other speakers.

In addition to my main conference talk, I’m turning out a new full-day workshop for this conference that pulls together foundational concepts in Ajax technology and design with best practices for implementation and execution. The workshop — Designing Great Interactive Experiences for Everyone: Implementing Ajax and Accessibility — is for those that are looking for a kick start with Ajax, those that are looking for opportunities to use Ajax in their new or existing web apps, and those that need to ensure they follow best practices for developing with Ajax.

Use the promo code FEATHER to get your discount.

Access U, Austin, TX, May 11-14

Access U 2009 is full-on accessibility. I’ve been speaking at Access U since 2005 for Knowbility. If you’re looking for more accessibility than you can handle, this is the place to get it. From Accessibility 101, to CSS, JavaScript, Accessibility Policy, PDF, Flash, and a lot more. New to this conference is the UPA track.

I’m also debuting a new full-day workshop: Breaking New Ground: Designing for Accessibility with Emerging Technologies. The workshop takes a look at different technologies: PDF, Flash, Flex, Silverlight and others from a fresh perspective: how do we work with these technologies in a modern world where WCAG 2.0 is the standard and the days of WCAG 1.0′s “use HTML or it isn’t accessible” are gone.

An Event Apart, Boston, MA, June 21-22

No workshops for me this time, just a brand new presentation that explores “Accessibility – Experiments at the Edges of Experience.” In this talk we walk through a host of examples of accessibility at the edge, looking at solutions that solve problems and shine light in some of the murkiest, greyest areas of accessibility for web sites and apps.

Use the promo code AEAVIP for your discount off the registration fee for An Event Apart Boston 2009.

• I believe that accessibility helps us to innovate and create.
• I believe that accessibility is something that must be provided.
• I believe that accessibility is different than interoperability.
• I believe that accessibility is not a hindrance to progress.

There is much kerfuffle over Bespin, a <canvas> based tool that was put out by Mozilla Labs. (Incidentally, I’m really hoping it is Bespin as an homage to Star Wars’ Bespin and not BeSpin, as in the conjoining of the two words “be” and “spin”)

Many people are crying foul saying that <canvas> is inherently inaccessible at this point, and therefore the accessibility problem must be solved before the launch of the product/project. This fits perfectly well with the notion that technologies/projects/products need to be accessible from the get go. Generally, I support this sentiment.

Reading the emails, blog posts and twitter reactions has me questioning one particular aspect of this accessibility challenge. The question is not whether or not a technology should be made accessible, but when?

Accessibility Investment

Many individuals and organizations take accessibility very seriously and invest a lot of time and effort into making their work accessible. These efforts and investment are not to be taken lightly; they are precious and should be undertaken wisely.

As an example, when faced with issues of limited budget, time and prioritization, we’ll often suggest that organizations ensure that when JavaScript is on, their applications work properly with assistive technology rather than ensuring that their applications work with both JavaScript on and off. JavaScript on/off is an issue of interoperability — if your app doesn’t work with JavaScript off it sucks for people with or without a disability. Interoperability is best practice, but it doesn’t discriminate based on disability.

So, given that significant investment needs to be made in accessibility in terms of time, effort and money, when is the appropriate time to make that investment?

Consider a couple of scenarios:

1. in dealing with an experimental technology such as Bespin, we don’t know if anyone is going to use it, let alone people with disabilities. What if it sucks for everyone? is there any reason to make that suckiness accessible to everyone?
2. in addition to not knowing if anyone will use it, we don’t necessarily know how they will use it. Accessibility is part of user experience. Simply providing an alternative may provide a basic level of technical accessibility but may be unusable by people with disabilities. I would suggest that it is at least possible that until we know how people are going to use something, we have no idea with the most appropriate alternative will be.

Other emerging technologies such as AIR and Silverlight did not address accessibility in their 1.0 release of their product. Should they have? What if the technology was fundamentally unusable? What if, after 1.0, they looked at the product and said “this stinks, we have to start over.” Would it have been worth the investment in accessibility for a product/project/platform that died on the vine?

Accessibility in Mind and Implementation

Is it possible to include accessibility support “too early?” I’m not saying it should be an add-on at the end of the process/project/product development cycle, but I’m very seriously wondering what the optimal time for integrating an actual accessibility implementation is? Is it enough to keep accessibility architecture in mind from the beginning, but not implement right away? Should we get the basics right first, and then build in accessibility support based on that previously envisioned architecture after we know we have a viable product? We continue to say that accessibility should happen throughout rather than just at the end, but would it actually be better if we left it out,  just for a little while, at the beginning?

Is it a better “business decision” to say very early on “we are committed to making this accessible, but we know we’ll fall short of the mark on our first cut; we want to get this right for everyone, and will, but in order to make it accessible, we need to get this out into the real world to see how people will use it, what they want from it, and then build in accessibility appropriately.”

My feeling — at least right now — is that our job is to ensure that accessibility and accessibility architecture is kept in mind from the outset of a project/product/technological exploration, but not necessarily implemented at the outset.

I’m just throwing these thoughts out there for discussion — there is nothing definitive in here, other than the fact that I don’t think there is going to be one correct answer for this. What do you think?

If you’re attending the Real World Accessibility for Ajax and Web Apps workshop tomorrow in Sydney as part of Web Directions South 08, feel free to leave a comment here, send me an email, an @reply on Twitter (I’m @feather on Twitter), or use the contact form here on the blog to get in touch and let me know if there is anything in particular that you want to look at tomorrow.

I can’t promise anything, but I’ll definitely take a look at what your thoughts and areas of interest are. (If you aren’t coming to the workshop, I’d still be interested in hearing what is troubling you lately, accessibility/Ajax/web app related of course!)

There has always been something special about that place for me — when I met Maxine and John at SXSW in 2005, I found two people with whom I immediately connected and provided me speaking opportunities on the world stage. Now, they have become great friends, and even business partners — Dave Shea and I brought Web Directions North to Canada with John’s and Maxine’s support and guidance.

My schedule is pretty open while in Sydney — a full-day workshop on Tuesday, and then a session in the main conference on Thursday. This is good — I get my speaking out of the way early and have time to enjoy the rest of the conference rather than my usual routine of scrambling to add slides to my presentation after seeing all the other sessions on the first day. Yes, I obsess over my presentations and sweat right up until the last minute.

I’ll also be at WebJam — this sounds über-cool — 18 presenters with 3 minutes each to show off their hottest web work.

Add to all of this the chance to reconnect with old friends and to meet new ones, and I can’t help but think this trip will be anything but special. Please come up and say “hi!” I’d love to chat with you about your work or play. If you want to talk WaSP, rugby, triathlon or anything else, count me in — it is all about the conversations!

We’ve traditionally teamed up to provide a one-two punch talking about DOM Scripting and Accessibility. Our winning formula usually begins with Jeremy laying the foundation with his incredibly easy-to-understand and hard-to-refute explanations of DOM Scripting. He’s always been the ultimate set-up man — paving the way for me to take the audience home, walking through examples, strategies and (what I hope to be) thought-provoking ways of using JavaScript to enhance user interfaces and improve accessibility.

Add in the fact that the words “octothorpe” and “intertwingle” simply roll off Jeremy’s tongue, and, well… I really couldn’t ask for much more, now could I?

This time will be a little different, though. It’s not the usual setup — yes, we’re both speaking at An Event Apart, San Francisco, but we’re not combining forces to battle evil as we normally do.

I’m really looking forward to Jeremy’s talk — Patterns in the Process, on the morning of Day 2. Earlier this year at UIE’s Web App Summit, both Jeremy and I whole-heartedly enjoyed Bill Scott‘s talk on Anti-patterns (seriously, it was outstanding), so it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Jeremy is exploring that territory.

Just before lunch on Day 2, I’ll be talking about one of my favourite topics: Accessibility Beyond Compliance. For me, this goes to the heart of accessibility: in the end, accessibility is about people, not checklists.

The entire schedule sounds great, so I’m looking forward to two days of hearing other people’s perspectives and stories about their work. I’ve been training pretty hard, so a few days of face to face with other web geeks like me and a couple of days of lighter workouts in San Francisco is most welcome!