Off down to London later today to attend the WaSP meeting on accessibility. WaSP stands for the Web Standards Project (don’t ask me why there’s an "a" in the middle) and ‘is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.’

An RNIB  Beyond the Basics course leader, Ann McMeekin, is one of the guest speakers. She is an accessibility consultant with the RNIB and she ran the morning session at the Beyond the Basics workshop I attended last month.

Also speaking is Mike Davies, Yahoo UK developer, and Niqui Merret who is a Flash developer, instructor and consultant

Will report back on the event shortly.

Just got back from a Beyond the Basics training course run by the Royal National Institute for the Blind, in London. So if this is a little incoherent please forgive me, and pass the coffee and a couple of Pro-Plus - thanks.

The course is a hands on look at how to design web sites to a high degree of accessibility for those with disabilities. The morning session consisted of taking a look at site structure, navigation and design issues from the disabled person’s viewpoint. A number of common obstacles were highlighted and discussed. The afternoon session covered forms and javascript.

A very valid point made by our trainer, Bem, a near blind person herself, was that at the very point where a visitor would want to make contact with the site owner the web form could, and often was a severe obstacle and test of a disabled person’s patience and resolve. We were taken through a poorly designed web form to enable us to appreciate what could go wrong for a disabled person.

After that we were given working examples of properly designed forms. Finally, the last session covered javascript and its uses and abuses. Personally, I’ve always favoured server-side solutions in preference to javascript, but at least I left feeling that some javascript was useful.

I’d recommend anyone involved in web design to go on this course; it really does help to see the issues from a different perspective.