Nicolas Steenhout to Present at OSDC 2008

My presentation proposal to the Open Source Developers Conference 2008 was accepted. The presentation, titled “Web Accessibility and Content Management Systems”, will be one of the “Extended Talks” available at the Conference. There is a lot of room for improvement in the level of accessibility of CMS, and I am both excited and honoured at the chance to discuss these issues with fellow open source developers.

The Conference takes place in early December 2008, in Sydney, Australia. I am not sure when the presentation will happen, exactly, as the programme has not yet been finalised.

The Conference organisers required a paper be submitted to them by mid-September to support the presentation. This paper will be made available later on, both through the conference’s site (or so I am told) and through this very site. After the presentation, I also intend to make the slides available.

Presentation Abstract

Web accessibility is an issue that is being spoken about more and more, yet very few Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Content Management Systems (CMS) are truly accessible. A growing number of countries are adopting legislation and regulations requiring a variety of websites to be accessible. Further, commercial interests suggest that a website that is fully accessible and usable by all visitors would increase revenues. This paper will review the basic concepts of web accessibility and discuss the challenges of implementing accessibility into existing CMS, using Mambo CMS as a case study.

I look forward to speak at the conference, and hope to see you there!