PAS78 - Conference and launch event

I spent to today in London at the launch event for Publicly Available Specification 78 - Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites.

All in all, an interesting day, a good range of speakers, good case studies and good ideas. The PAS has been well positioned as a guide for the people who pay for website rather than as a guide for designers and developers, there are plenty of guidelines for developers and designers already.

Two key messages I took away are:

1. When you commission a website delegate, don't abdicate responsibility.
2. The effort you make to create an accessible website should be reasonable.

Two outcomes form this conference:

1. I believe there are some distinct opportunities to help clients set their initial accessibility policies.
2. Offering clients a range of usability testing by representative groups of disabled people will be critical for a credible accessible design solution.

I did have one moment of worry during the conference... would the Tesco case study use examples of it's website circa 1999/2000, that I worked on, to illustrate VERY bad practice. Thankfully it was not to be.