CSUN the Website

RantWoman is bemused by the following facts as they have wandered into one of RantWoman's email streams.

Consider CSUN, the 26th international Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference. RantWoman is stashing items from her various info streams on her blog mainly in an effort to find them again. If RantWoman's readers accidentally enjoy reading them too....

The conference home page
http://www.csunconference.org/index.cfm?EID=80000300


RantWoman does not have any trouble using the pages she has tried so far except for a large volume of material to wade through, including some that is boilerplate on every page (sigh). Remember, RantWoman is kind of clueless about many of her screen reader's more sophisticated functions.


Here is the CSUN website after it has been through two rounds of cleanup and simplification by crack blind programmers.

Now available at
http://EmpowermentZone.com/CSUN2011.htm

This attempts to be a comprehensive compilation of information about the upcoming International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference (March in San Diego), available on a single, structured web page. All information was gathered from the official CSUN conference site http://csunconference.org/


A table of contents at the top of the page links to about 400 subsequent
topics that each begin with a heading for easy navigation with assistive
technology. Extraneous information has been removed, including site
navigation links and redundant, boiler plate text. This helps readers
concentrate on significant, unique content.

A structured text version of the same document -- from which the HTML was generated -- is available at the same web address except for a .txt
extension, i.e.,
http://EmpowermentZone.com/CSUN2011.txt


These generic formats can be used on almost any portable device.

RantWoman's points: RantWoman is exactly the sort of naive blithering optimist who MIGHT expect that a website for the biggest technology and disability professional conference in the country if not the world would have a website using the most refined concepts in accessibility. RantWoman thus is bemused by the extra effort needed for blind users. RantWoman is permitting herself to wonder whether some other categories of users might want really different customizations.

Perhaps an additional point: accessibility is perpetually a moving target, a conversation highly specific to whom one is most interested in being accessible to.