Speaking at WordCamp Toronto 2014

Cool Schedule for WordCampTO, even if it does include @aardrian http://t.co/uo9o2aOiOM

— Karl Groves (@karlgroves) October 23, 2014

On Saturday, November 15 I will be kicking off WordCamp Toronto with my talk “Selfish Accessibility.” In case you haven’t been following my blog, I use the talk to make the case that supporting accessibility best practices is actually in your best interests as a user. Or I can let the event description explain it for me:

We can all pretend that we’re helping others by making web sites accessible, but we are really making the web better for our future selves. Learn some fundamentals of web accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review simple testing techniques, basic features and enhancements, coming trends, and where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive into ARIA, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start nor how it helps them.

What will attendees learn from this presentation?

1. Recognize that they are all going to qualify as disabled users.
2. Recognize that non-disabled users benefit from accessibility affordances.
3. Perform simple accessibility testing.
4. Have reference material and resources to continue self-education.
5. Write code that uses ARIA properly.
6. Write basic HTML that isn’t a barrier to accessibility.
7. Apply these skills to any platform.

While I may start off the accessibility track on Saturday, there are talks all day Saturday and all day Sunday. It’s a full plate of great content — some of which is from speakers I have seen before, so I know it will be good. Check out the schedule to see what’s available.

Registration for the weekend is only $30, so you may want to register now to make sure you get a spot. Whether or not you can make it, you’ll be able to follow tweets from attendees (and organizers) on Twitter with the hash tag #WCTO.

The event is taking place a few miles to the left of downtown Toronto at at Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus in the media study building (building L):