WWDC Keynote yesterday, DA meeting today!

If you were underwhelmed by Steve Jobs’ keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) yesterday, then perhaps today’s Design Alliance meeting from 12–1:30 p.m. will add some excitement back to your life.

(Really, the “new” features in Leopard didn’t wow you? EA Games on Mac OS X? No? What about Safari on Windows? Not really? Wow. Tough crowd. Okay, see you at the meeting.)

(In case it’s not clear, Steve Jobs is not coming to the DA meeting. Just wanted to make sure my potentially misleading headline wasn’t actually misleading.)

Design Alliance meeting tomorrow

Okay, folks,

I’ve decided to make up for last week’s short notice in announcing tomorrow’s Design Alliance meeting—

June 12, 2007
12–1:30 p.m.
Residential and Student Services Programs
2610 Channing Way (just up from Bowditch)
4th Floor Berkeley Room

—by making constant reminders of said upcoming meeting.

In case you didn’t get Friday’s reminder/update, here’s some of what the meeting will include:

• A presentation from the 2006 CASE Design Institute, “Visual Branding: Centralized and Decentralized Models”
• A revisit of a question from last year’s Design Alliance general meeting, “How can the Design Alliance serve you?”
• A discussion on Design Alliance forays into electronic communication

Okay, just eight or ten more reminders to go before tomorrow’s meeting. ;-)

Next Design Alliance meeting: June 12th

Greetings, all,

Sorry for the short notice, but the date has been finalized for the next
Design Alliance meeting!

Set your calendars for:

June 12, 2007
12–1:30 p.m.

And your maps for:

Residential and Student Services Programs
2610 Channing Way (just up from Bowditch)
4th Floor Berkeley Room

Yes, folks, that’s next Tuesday. An agenda for the meeting is coming soon.

Web accessibility 101

via Debra Goldentyer, Webnet:

Join us on Tuesday, May 29, for what's sure to be an interesting conversation on Web Accessibility.

Date: Tuesday, May 29

Time: 12 noon to 1:30 pm

Place: 150 University Hall. NOTE ONE-TIME CHANGE OF VENUE

Speaker: Dianne Walker, Project Engineer, IST, and the Web Accessibility Group

Topic: Web accessibility at Berkeley

Why does it make sense to (re)design your website with accessibility in mind early in the process? In the words of one campus web developer:

• You're going to be changing all that code anyway as part of the redesign; why not do it the right way, and start from the ground up with accessible practices?


• Adhere to web standards, and accessibility will be almost automatic. Plus, your site will be far less likely to encounter problems with current or future web browsers.


• Making your site as accessible as possible to disabled visitors also means improved accessibility for web crawlers, spiders, and bots. The likely result: Improved rankings with Google and other search engines.


• If you follow best practices like semantic markup (using the proper HTML element for each type of content) and separating content from design (via CSS), you may have a higher learning curve at the beginning if you've not done this in the past. But future site changes will be vastly easier because of the structure you will have put in place. In fact, if you plan things right, you could completely change the appearance of your site next year or next month without having to open and modify any of the pages; just tweak the CSS stylesheet.

Easier site changes? Less time and therefore less expense? Yes. And you get accessibility too? What? Doing the right thing saves money? YES! So, why not make your website accessible?

WebAccess, the campus web accessibility group, will review Section 508 standards and W3C guidelines on web accessibility as well as the campus commitment to technology accessibility. Then they'll take you though a WebAccess clinic, where they'll be evaluating a newly designed campus website from an accessibility point of view.

Helpful links to get you started:

(Re)designing your website with accessibility in mind:
istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Spring2007/993.html

Tips for improving web accessibility:
istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Fall2006/927.html

Tips for improving web accessibility — round 2:
istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Spring2007/991.html

Got a conflict? Can't be there? Contact Dianne Walker, WebAccess Lead, for more information.