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Day two of the event was a “hack day” style event, where lots of geeks gathered with the speakers to try and build something useful. There were lots of mini-projects on the go.

I did a bit of hacking with some bookmarklets and javascript to switch to user-defined style sheets, giving the option of looking at any website as reversed video with much larger text, for instance. Here are a couple of screenshots:

[Regular video Flickr,  but with large text]

[Reversed-video style sheet is easier for users with some visual impairments or other disabilities]

I hope to be able to use some of the techniques in future projects.

I was also rather amused  by the tshirt one of the other geeks was wearing:

[Clueless!]

I attended the excellent Scripting Enabled conference and developer day recently held in London. It was extremely enlightening about various aspects of the web and how users with varied access difficulties are affected by the decisions us developers make every day.

There were some excellent panels – links to the trascripts, slides and audio etc:

• Denise Stephens talking about her life with Multiple Sclerosis.
• Antonia Hyde from United Response talked about learning disabilities.
• Jonathan Hassell of t he BBC on Dyslexia
• Kath Moonan from Abilitynet talked about Why she hates the Interweb.
• Artur Ortega & Leonie Watson shared their expertise on screen readers and JavaScript
• Audio files for most of the session are available now too

[Kath  hates the interweb!]

[Leonie and Artur talk about Screenreaders and JavaScript]

[The panel takes questions at the end of the day]

I realise I’m hideously behind with blogging about lots of geeky stuff, but here goes. Apologies if you were expecting this sooner!

This year’s dConstruct was a lot larger than I was expecting: the last time I went in 2006 there was a comfortable number of folks there, and it felt really friendly. I didn’t go in 2007 as it clashed with the Rugby World Cup opening game in Paris. But this year there were about 500 attendees who gathered at the Dome in Brighton for the event. I found it a little difficult to find people, even though I knew they were there, as there were so many folks milling about during the breaks.

Here are a few photos I took during the event:

[Above] Aleks Krotoski on Playing the Web: how gaming makes the internet (and the world) a better place. Listen to the audio (mp3).

[Left] Joshua Porter talks about Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design. Listen to the audio (mp3).

Daniel Burka [below] talked about Designing For Interaction. Listen to the audio (mp3).

Next up was Tantek Çelik, talking at length about Social Network Portability and how Microformats can help you to take your friends with you to a new network. Listen to the audio (mp3).

The two Matts, Biddulph and Jones, [below] did a two-handed presentation called Designing For The Coral Reef. They talked about “delighters” – little things which are present in design which can really make the difference to the user experience. Listen to the audio (mp3).

Clearlefter Jeremy Keith wrapped up the event with a thought-provoking session entitled The System Of The World. There doesn’t seem to be an adio transcript of that available.