It struck me that having web standards group meetings is all very well, but really, you are preaching to the converted.

Web standards group people are there because they believe in standards and want to learn as much as possible about standards and accessibility. They might bring people along who they want to “show the light” to, so I guess there’s value in that.

But at our ColdFusion User Group meeting last night, the conversation turned to accessibility and I was surprised to find people’s attitudes – some of them honestly believed that accessibility was some kind of mystical, unknowable topic and not something that applied to everyday web sites. Derek Featherstone’s first stage of accessibility – Denial – also surfaced, as in “those accessibility guys aren’t talking about web applications”. Derek’s presentation itself is not online – I don’t know if he’s planning to do that – but you can download the Web Essentials podcast, it’s very informative AND entertaining. And there’s some photos taken during the presentation on flickr, including one showing the funny denial slide.

So anyway, I might have to do a talk on that topic for my CFUG buddies some time soon. Cos basic accessibility is easy, really!

Speaking of Mr Featherstone – who I made sure was well versed in the basics of “Australian Shout Etiquette” – how great is SimplyAccessible.org? Awesome examples, and now with one of those star shapes :)

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