Beyond just "It's accessible"

I am often a provocateur when it comes to my care about accessibility; meaning I always say I don't want people to care about accessibility. It's not because I want others to lack empathy, it's because our systems in an ideal world would "Just Work" for everyone.

Sadly, we lack access to all of all abilities; and so, we're here with a world in need of improving access. This is where I situate accessibility; as access. We need to improve access to all things and all people through new and different ways then simply aria text, header tags and correct table usage. These topics are tired and we're speaking to the same audience about the same thing.

This talk will demonstrate the advanced ways we are trying to move the playing field forward. Tools like real time vision impairment and colorblindness simulation. Tools for improving experiences for dyslexics like Speed Reader, Open dyslexic fonts, and dyslexia simulators. Visually appealing ways to incentivize heading order like scrollspy. Content that dynamically rewrites itself based on the needs of users. Ableplayer, to provide interactive, searchable, read-a-long transcriptions from captioning files. Keyboard and even voice based interaction systems will be demonstrated to challenge notions of what is the web and the way we engage with courses and course technologies.

Lastly I will end the talk on an extension of access beyond traditional accessibility by showcasing a click and voice based system for generating complex HTML layout elements. All of these technologies will be demonstrated in the context of the ELMS Learning Network platform.