Outreach Update - My First Conference Presentation

Hi All,

On Monday, I did my first conference presentation to the Higher  
Education Web Developers Conference [1] in Rochester, NY.

I talked about web accessibility evaluation tools and techniques that  
we use at Michigan State University.   For being my first conference  
presentation/talk, it was a very positive experience.  There were  
about 40-50 people there from universities across the United States.

I used the presentation to plug a lot of the W3C/WAI resources,  
especially "Involving Users in Web Accessibility Evaluation."  The  
idea that they should be involving users in the development process  
seemed to resonate very well.

One interesting "trend" was that I got a lot of questions about the  
accessibility of content management systems (CMS).  I mentioned how a  
CMS was covered by ATAG.  I got a lot of blank stares at what ATAG  
was.  I explained it and they were all very interested.

I really enjoyed giving the presentation.  I received lots of  
positive comments.  People said they learned a lot.  I hope I get the  
opportunity to do it again.

Sincerely,
Justin Thorp

[1] http://www.highedweb.org/2005/


***************************************************
Justin Thorp

Technical Assistant
Michigan State University
Academic Computing & Network Services - Applications Programming
http://approg.msu.edu/

my NEW personal blog - http://www.justinthorp.com
my web development blog - http://thinkthentype.blogspot.com