Conference Sessions
Keynote Speaker
Pina D’Intino
Pina D’Intino is a passionate advocate for accessibility and equity in the workplace for people with disabilities. An executive at Scotiabank Canada since 1986, D’Intino lost her sight 10 years ago after unsuccessful surgery for a rare form of glaucoma. Currently, she is the founder and senior manager of Enabling Solutions and Support Management at Scotiabank, a program that addresses accessibility strategy from an IT perspective and ensures that standards and guidelines for accessibility are embedded in all processes within the bank for customers as well as employees.
Pina is a member of the Employment Relationship Council, a former member of the Information Technology & Solutions Group for the advancement of women and chair of the Canadian Financial Institution on Assistive Technology (CFIAT), which brings together financial organizations to leverage and share accessibility best practices and strategies. She is also is a member of the AODA Information and Communication Standards Development Committee.
A sought-after public speaker on accessibility issues, Pina has been invited to such international events as the American Financial Round Table, the Brazil Federation of International Banks, and the 2008 E-Commerce Symposium in Orlando, Florida. Pina travels with her service dog, Gilligan, a four-year-old standard poodle.
View the full day Session Schedule
Conference Streams
Introduction and Awareness Building
AODA Information & Communication Standards
Jeanette M. Parsons, Accessibility & Equity Coordinator, Equity Office, Queen's University
About the session
Jeanette Parsons will present an overview of the Proposed Information & Communication Standard, highlighting the major elements while focusing on implications the Standard will have for Ontario universities. Consequently, she will also explain some of the objectives the Committee tried to achieve in the proposed standard as well as some of the biggest challenges the Committee faced. Finally, Jeanette will speak about the considerable feedback the Committee received during the public review process and how it considered this feedback in crafting the final standard.
About the presenter
Jeanette Parsons is the Accessibility Coordinator for Queen ’s University with responsibility for overseeing the University’s response to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and its accompanying regulations. Jeanette, a University of Guelph Alumnus (M.Sc. in Family Studies), also holds a Masters degree in Public Administration. In addition to representing the Council of Ontario Universities on the Information and Communication Standard, Jeanette has taken a leadership role in developing an online tool for use by Ontario universities for meeting requirement of the Customer Service Standard.
Designing & Developing for Accessibility throughout the Life Cycle
Olive Au, IBM
About the session
Designing a quality accessible application, such as a web site, is a life cycle that speaks to the quality of design, development, testing and reporting. This lecture presents a set of best practices for injecting accessibility throughout the development life-cycle.
About the presenter
Olive Au is a member of the IBM Interaction Design's User Experience team where she specializes in accessibility. As an Accessibility Specialist, she has worked with various clients to ensure the integration of accessibility design standards into their application development processes. In this role, she has conducted usability and accessibility tests, provided remediation recommendations, and developed and delivered training to developers. In addition, as a previous member of the Application Maintenance Services team, she has worked with many clients to develop, and support their web applications using J2EE technology. Olive has a Computer Science degree with a concentration in Human Computer Interaction.
The Plain Language Imperative in an Information-Intensive World
Laurence Mussio, Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Communication Studies and Multimedia, McMaster University
About the session
Professionals both inside and outside the university live and work in an increasingly information-intensive world. An expanding number of information channels has produced exponential leaps in the volume of information available to us. At the same time, the deepening complexity and specialization of that information have also become potentially serious barriers to understanding and action. Those developments have made a plain language approach to both information and communication an imperative. Dr. Mussio will examine some of the simple strategies professionals can use to simplify and streamline their work.
About the presenter
Laurence B. Mussio is an historian and senior research and communications consultant specializing in telecommunications, the study of information technology, the financial sector, corporate culture, and government policy and regulation. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University.
An Introduction to Web Accessibility
Athol Gow, Coordinator, Library Centre for Students with Disabilities, University of Guelph
About the session
Athol Gow will talk about how people with disabilities experience the Web and basic design practices that enable them to share the potential of the Internet more fully. He will demonstrate how adaptive software programs such as screen readers interact with the Web and provide attendees with information on accessible web design tools and resources.
About the presenter
Athol Gow is the Coordinator of the University of Guelph’s Library Centre for Students with Disabilities where he has provided adaptive technology and alternate-format text support to students for over eight years. Athol also serves on the University’s accessibility committee and has been involved in a number of campus projects related to information and communication accessibility, adaptive technology and improving services for people with disabilities
Software Applications and Uses for the Physically Disabled
Don MacLaurin, Associate Professor, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Guelph
About the session
Continuous advances in computing and software technologies have enabled an increasing number of persons with disabilities to continue productive contributions in mainstream teaching/instruction and student learning roles. Familiarity and appreciation of the critically important role played by new and improved software programs is essential for understanding the use and functionality for physically disabled users. Additionally, many software programs that improve learning and instruction productivity can also play a helpful role in improving the learning environment for non-disabled users. This presentation will focus on the use of, and interaction between, six different software programs.
About the presenter
Prof. MacLaurin joined the University of Guelph faculty in 1991 and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1996. He has experienced a moderate level of physical disability over time and now uses a scooter for personal mobility and several unique computer software applications to compensate for challenges with fine motor skills such as keyboarding.
Teaching and Learning
Beyond alt Tags: Creating Accessible Courses in a Learning Management System
Kyle Mackie, Manager, Courseware Services, University of Guelph and Sandra Earl, Accessibility & Sustainability Coordinator, Desire2Learn Inc
About the session
Content creators and course facilitators play a key role in ensuring that their course material is accessible to all learners, regardless of learning needs. Instructional practices should focus on helping people learn, and should not be limited by the learning environment the material is delivered in. Learning Management Systems (LMS) have a number of tools that allow content creators to create inclusive environments. The online learning environment should be an enabler, offering options and solutions to meet the needs of all learners.
This presentation will highlight some ways in which LMS tools can be used to meet the needs of users with different abilities and learning needs, including:
- Creation and organization of content inside an LMS.
- Use and configuration of online course components to meet different user needs.
- Use of course tools to create a supportive environment for all users.
About the presenters
Kyle and Sandra are active members of the Desire2Learn Accessibility Interest Group, a consortium with representatives from several Canadian and US educational institutions working directly with D2L Product Designers to address accessibility issues within the product itself, as well as working to raise awareness of accessibility issues in their individual institutions and among all users.
Making a Distance Education Course Website Accessible: Lessons Learned
Jayne Butler, Distance Learning Program Development Specialist, University of Guelph and Carin Headrick, Web Accessibility Consultant
About the session
The Office of Open Learning undertook a pilot project to make one of our distance education courses as accessible as possible. The purpose was to see what we could learn that would help with our accessibility planning process. This presentation will look at lessons learned for website design and demonstrate how Jaws works. Participants will gain insight into website design related to this particular form of accessibility software.
About the presenters
Jayne Butler is an adult educator who works as a Distance Learning Program Development Specialist at Office of Open Learning, University of Guelph in Ontario Canada. As a DLPDS Jayne consults with faculty with regard to pedagogical and instructional design issues related to distance education course development.
Carin Headrick worked with members of Open Learning’s staff to provide input on how course websites worked when a screen-reader was used to interact with them. She also provided similar input to Desire2Learn, a company which provides the interface for distance education programs at many universities, including the University of Guelph. In addition, Carin was part of a team which conducted an accessibility audit of the University of Guelph’s departmental websites examining and making recommendations of changes to increase their usability for those with screen-readers.
7 Questions – Designing for Inclusion
Jaellayna Palmer, Distance Learning Program Development Specialist, University of Guelph
About the session
This session will begin by introducing the 7 principles of “Universal Instructional Design”. Then we will explore teaching strategies and learning experiences that are inclusive, practical and effective in an on-line teaching/learning environment.
We will do this by posing 7 questions, each intended to guide us through the challenges of extending our reach to more diverse learners. Before our session ends we will have identified several possible solutions associated with this goal.
About the presenter
Jaellayna Palmer works for the University of Guelph's Office of Open Learning as a Distance Learning Program Development Specialist. She also served for two years as Project Manager for the University of Guelph's Teaching Support Services, the Universal Instructional Design project. She was self-employed for many years as an educational consultant, including working for eight years overseas. Jaellayna has a B.A. in Social Psychology from Michigan State University and a M.Sc. in Adult Education from University of Surrey (UK). Other key areas of professional interest include the 4MAT™ model of curriculum design and facilitating hands-on workshops.
Accessible Web Programming, Document and Multimedia Design
Accessibility for Rich Internet Applications: Fluid, jQuery, Dojo, and Beyond
Colin Clark, Technical Lead, Fluid Project, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
About the session
This presentation will provide an overview of the challenges and techniques of making Rich Internet Applications more accessible and usable. We'll cover the pitfalls and difficulties of DHTML accessibility, give you a tour of the standards and technologies that propose to fix them, and show you some the accessible solutions available within the Dojo, jQuery, and Fluid Infusion toolkits. We'll also highlight the work of the Fluid Project, an open source community dedicated to improving the usability and accessibility of open Web applications.
About the presenter
Colin Clark is the technical lead for the Fluid Project. He is currently building software for visitor engagement at galleries and museums using mobile devices and open web technologies. Colin has worked in the field of inclusive software design at the University of Toronto's Adaptive Technology Resource Centre for over ten years, and is a contributor to the uPortal, CollectionSpace, and jQuery UI communities.
Can You Hear Me Now? Video Captioning Tools and Techniques
Jeff Morrison, Agency eLearning Development Specialist, Co-operators General Insurance Company
About the session
Learn about video captioning tools, techniques and issues based on the speaker’s personal involvement in a captioning project run by the University of Guelph's Office of Open Learning. Presentation topics include: The advantages and disadvantages of a range of both free and purchased captioning tools; obtaining video transcriptions; testing captioned video; and video description. There will also be short demonstrations of both open and closed captioning.
About the presenter
Jeff is an eLearning Development Specialist at the Cooperators head office in Guelph where he is involved in the planning and development of a wide range of online training programs for staff. Previous to this, Jeff was the Multimedia Project Manager at the Office of Open Learning here at U of G. He worked with instructional designers to produce pedagogically sound media for distance and continuing education programs. Jeff served as a member of the Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities Advisory Committee (APDAC) while working at the University of Guelph which benefited him from both sharing and learning expertise in the field of accessibility.
Jeff has over 10 years of experience and education in the field of adult and distance education with an emphasis on eLearning, Training, and Development. This has given Jeff the opportunity to be involved in both the technological and pedagogical sides of education as a learner, instructor and developer. Realizing that all students learn differently, Jeff's focus has been on diversity when developing eLearning programs. Accessible teaching and learning tools and techniques are a critical part of this approach.
Document Accessibility - Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF and Lotus Symphony
Dan Shire, IBM Interactive
About the session
Dan Shire will discuss leading-practices for accessible documentation - MS Office, Lotus Symphony (open source) and Adobe PDF with specific techniques to follow to ensure your written communication is delivered in accessible format.
About the presenter
TBA
The Path to Accessible Math
Neil Soiffer, Senior Scientist, Design Science, Inc
About the session
Math anxiety is a fear that goes beyond being worried about how to solve a math problem -- it strikes fear in the hearts of those who need to make the math accessible. To overcome this fear, the presentation will cover what accessible math means and why the needs are not so different from accessible material in general. Neil will demonstrate several ways to make math accessible on the web and why doing so is easy, hard, and ugly...and why that isn't a contradiction.
The key to math accessibility is MathML. Design Science and other vendors make tools that create MathML, serve MathML, and display MathML. The presentation will show how easy it is to do all of these steps. Unfortunately, no one solution will work in all situations, which makes the general problem hard and the attempts at general solutions ugly. After talking about some of the problems and the workarounds, we'll spend time talking about the specific math accessibility needs of people in the audience and how they might be addressed. The goal of the presentation is have the audience leave with the knowledge that they can deliver documents that contain accessible math, and that doing so is not something they have to fear.
About the presenter
Neil Soiffer received his PhD in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley. He was a member of Tektronix's Computer Research Lab, where he created experimental math computation systems, math editors, and tools for embedded systems. Neil moved to Wolfram Research, where he was responsible for a number of user elements that are part of Mathematica, including the WYSIWYG math editor and programmability of Mathematica's notebook interface. He joined Design Science in 2003 and has worked on math accessibility in their MathPlayer plug-in for Internet Explorer and in their other programs. Neil was a principal architect of MathML and was chair of the MathML in DAISY standard. He continues to have an active role in the W3C math effort along with several accessibility-related standards efforts including PDF/UA, an effort to define what an accessible PDF document is.
Real World Web Accessibility Moving the CIO Website to the Drupal Platform
Rob Geddes, Senior Analyst, Computing and Communication etc
About the session
Ever wonder what web accessibility really looks and feels like? Join Rob Geddes and Sean Yo, analysts with Computing and Communication Services, as they present a case study of their recent project which migrated the University of Guelph Chief Information Officer website. Rob and Sean share their common-sense approach to accessibility and the story of how they engaged web accessibility in moving the CIO website to Drupal platform, a popular open source content management system. Join us for this real world report from the tranches of web accessibility.
About the presenter
Rob Geddes, Senior Analyst, Computing and Communication Services, University of Guelph and Sean Yo, Analyst III, Computing and Communication Services, University of Guelph
WCAG Explained
Stuart Robertson, Manager, University Website, University of Guelph
About the session
University of Guelph Web Manager Stuart Robertson will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Versions 1 and 2, and provide practical advice on how to apply these standards in your Web design.
About the presenter
TBA
Moderated Panel
Panelist TBA
