Web Directions North | February 6 - 10, 2007 �

Tuesday

Workshops - February 6th 2007

Choose one of our two full day workshops at the Renaissance Vancouver Hotel Harbourside with experts Andy Clarke and Aaron Gustafson, or Derek Featherstone.

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Tuesday 6th February 9.00am to 5.00pm

Aaron Gustafson and Andy Clarke - CSS + Javascript = Magic

Derek Featherstone - Accessibility 2.0

Creative web development with CSS and DOM scripting

U.K. Design guru Andy Clarke and Ajax superstar Aaron Gustafson will take your CSS based skills and supercharge them with a little bit of Javascript magic. So all you designers out there, learn how to take your skills to the next level by combining CSS and Javascript.

Traditionally, CSS has been the domain of designers while JavaScript was for programmers, but these technologies can and should work together to improve the user experience. In this workshop, Andy and Aaron explore how CSS and JavaScript can work in concert, leading to beautiful (and functional) results.

Accessibility 2.0

Build applications the smart way: make them accessible and usable

Web applications are fundamentally different from web sites and their creation demands that we break out of our usual development routines and take a whole new approach. Reputations are built on web apps that excite rather than frustrate users — make sure your apps are as elegant and bulletproof as possible. Mastering relatively simple yet ingenious techniques, discovering creative solutions to frequently encountered challenges, dispelling the myths, and targeting the technologies you really need will all be covered in this energetic, full day workshop with Derek Featherstone.

We won’t just be covering the basics or theoretical situations. We’ll be examining original research conducted by Derek’s company and real-life test cases. We’ll see assistive technologies and prototypes of new techniques in action. During this intensive workshop we’ll even put a selection of existing web apps through their paces — zeroing in on how well they meet the needs of people with a variety of disabilities.

Who’s this workshop for?

To get the most out of this workshop you will have some experience handcoding (X)HTML AND CSS, and understand their basic principles and techniques. You’ll have a handle on at least the basics of Javascript and general web accessibility practices. You’ll have the drive to create top-notch web apps that are inspirational in the standard they set for universal accessibility.

What are the learning outcomes?

After this very full day you will be able to

• grasp the difference between accessibility for web apps and for websites
• build intelligently – plan for accessibility from the outset of a project
• understand the significance of Javascript and how to use it wisely
• implement simple HTML techniques that help ensure accessibility success
• recognize the impact of Ajax and dynamically-generated content on people with disabilities – and know what to do about it
• create an effective strategy for building more accessible applications that work with current assistive technology and anticipate future developments
• see how various assistive technologies interact with modern web development techniques such as DOM Scripting and know how to make developmental decisions based on this first-hand experience
• define best practices for testing the accessibility of your own web applications

The Deal

The only difficulty is choosing which workshop, as they both run Tuesday February 6th. Further information about pricing and what to expect from these workshops is available on the pricing page.

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