Major take aways
- There is no one way to make everything perfectly accessible
- The main idea about accessibility is to meet the standards and make sure that you don’t do things like hard code to take control out of the user’s hands
Accidentally went to Willard instead of Wagner. Got to the training about 20 minutes late. Everyone was working on a document that the instructor had on the screen. Not once did she stop to ask me if I needed help with anything. She just went on pontificating about her philosophies on accessibility. She also went quickly about how to do what she was trying to teach without checking with those in the training whether they could actually do what she was showing us to do.
Sorry for the rant, but this drives me crazy! I just want a hands-on training that is actually hands on! This is a lecture/demo, and I’m not getting what I need which is a chance to try all of this with feedback from an expert.
At about 10:30 (more than 1 hour after I had been in the workshop), we had a break. At that time, another person in the training gave me the file that they had been working on. I finally got with the training. But everything that we did was a demo. There was no chance or context in which to apply anything that we were being shown. I feel like I wasted my time in this training.
I need to find another way (possibly lynda or just a google search) to get the training that I need to accomplish my goal of creating accessible content.
To improve the session, I would have…
- spent 15 minutes presenting the major, high-level take aways
- before the session started, I would have asked each participant to email 3 examples from their work (1 Word doc, 1 ppt, and 1 pdf)
- the presenter could have chose several that would be good examples to try to make more accessible
- break the large group into 3-5 individuals per group
- each group would have 3 files to make more accessible within a certain time limit
- the expert would provide feedback for each presentation and reinforce the major high-level ideas
This format would provide a better result for all involved.