Last week, I was lucky enough to attend John Slatin Access U 2011. It was my first foray into learning more about accessibility beyond regular web standards.

It turned out to be one of the best professional experiences I’ve had. Here’s what I learned:

1. Accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought or addition to web design and development – it should be part of it.
2. Accessibility isn’t that hard, but there are always compromises to be made when it comes to a project’s specs and its true needs.
3. Sometimes, even if you show big companies how important and easy accessibility is, they still don’t get it.
4. The basics will get you a long way.
5. Even with a few small tweaks, WordPress can be made more accessible.
6. There are a ton of myths floating around about javascript and accessibility. The big one that IS FALSE: if you want to be accessible, you can’t use javascript.
7. You can be well on your way with accessibility testing thanks to a number of free testing tools.

Did You Attend?

If so, let’s collect the great resources that were shared at Access U. I started this list of bookmarks on Pinboard that anyone can add to, so fee free to add stuff there.

Image by Jill Wright.