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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]