WAC Workshops

The WAC is committed to helping OSU implement the OSU Minimum Web Accessibility Standards in its program, department, college, course, and professional web sites and web applications.

Join us for informational and hands-on workshops designed to help you explore, develop, and implement strategies for accessible web design and development.

Workshops are free to OSU faculty, staff, and students. Priority is given to faculty, staff, and graduate students.

Non-OSU affiliates may register for workshops at minimal cost and will be accommodated after OSU affiliates:

• Not-for-profit schools and organizations: $30 per workshop
• For-profit businesses: $70 per workshop

Want to receive updates about our upcoming workshops? Join the WAC Listserv.

Note about workshop lab space: Our workshops are given in OSU computer labs (see the registration form for details). To have internet access on the lab workstations, OSU affiliates must use their OSU username and password. Please have that information when attending the workshops. If you are not affiliated with OSU, please write to us at wac@osu.edu and we will attempt to secure a temporary account for you.

Winter 2008 Workshops and Registration

Below is our Winter quarter schedule of workshops. Workshops for Spring quarter will be posted toward the beginning of Spring.

Below the schedule is a form for registering for workshops.

Descriptions of Winter 2008 Workshops

PDF Best Practices

Date, Time, Location
Wednesday, February 20, 12:30 to 4:30 PM, Ramseyer Hall (RA) 009
·registration form·

Overview of Workshop
This informational and hands-on workshop will cover best practices for Microsoft Word to maximize its usefulness as a writing tool and to get it to produce well-structured and accessible PDF documents (via Adobe Acrobat). We will also look at the ability of OpenOffice.org's Writer to natively produce tagged and bookmarked (accessible) PDF. OpenOffice.org is an open source, free alternative to the Microsoft Suite and its Writer (a MS Word equivalent) can produce accessible PDF, preventing you from having to buy Adobe Acrobat.

We will also cover using Adobe LiveCycle Designer, a program that ships with Acrobat Professional, to create highly usable and accessible PDF forms. Time permitting, we will discuss the limitations of using OpenOffice for PDF forms.

One goal of this workshop is to ensure that PDF and Word can be more easily navigated by general users, and, in particular, users of screen reading programs and other assistive technologies. The workshop will include advice on using styles and descriptive text in Word and will present overviews of tagging and other accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat. We will also discuss limitations in producing accessible PDF from scanners.

The range of strategies and techniques will help content creators, staff, and faculty improve the general usability and accessibility of course materials in Carmen and elsewhere. We will also discuss how best to link to PDFs from within Carmen to maximize universal usability.

We will be using Acrobat 8 Professional, but skills you acquire in this workshop can be applied to earlier versions of the product.

Testing Web Pages for Universal Usability

Date, Time, Location
Friday, February 22, 12:30 to 4:30 PM, Ramseyer Hall (RA) 009
·registration form·

Overview of Workshop
This hands-on workshop will explore online and browser-based tools and techniques for determining the accessibility of web pages, in order to bring them into compliance with OSU policy and increase their usability, generally. We will tour a number of "add-ons" to the Firefox web browser, including a free screen reader. We will also discuss the merits and best use of online validators and testing and analysis web sites.

A portion of this workshop will be devoted to reading pages with JAWS, the most used screen reader at OSU. Attendees will learn how JAWS users tend to navigate web pages and will gain basic facility in using the program for testing purposes. (Note: We will be using JAWS in "40-minute mode," available to users for free.)

Dead-Simple Web Design: Structured HTML and CSS

Date, Time, Location
Wednesday, February 27, 12:30 PM to 4:30 PM, Ramseyer Hall (RA) 009
·registration form·

Overview for "Dead-Simple" Workshops
Maybe you have written some pages. Maybe even looked at the code and monkeyed around with it some. Now firm up and extend those skills.

In this series of hands-on workshops, you will learn the basics of how to write valid and accessible web pages with proper HTML structures and nice-looking but simple CSS styles. We will work toward constructing a clean and elegant, fully accessible and valid web site with multiple columns, a tab navigation scheme, a data table, and a form. You will learn how to style your pages using CSS and properly incorporate images and logos, tables, forms, and links in ways that promote best practices for universal usability. You will leave with code and ideas that you can modify for use in your own web projects.

You do not have to attend the first workshop to attend the others, but consider it, especially if you are fairly new to web design. If you have some direct experience with HTML and CSS and have a good handle on HTML structures and basic use of CSS, register just for the later workshops.

In all workshops, we will hand-code our pages. You may use whatever text editor you want, but lab computers will have Aptana installed, along with typical Windows text editors, such as WordPad and NotePad.

The workshop series aims to teach HTML and CSS skills with an emphasis on functional accessibility to fully satisfy OSU's Web Accessibility Policy and make your sites more usable, robust, and aesthetically pleasing.

Overview of Dead-Simple Web Design: Structured HTML and Basic CSS workshop
This workshop is aimed beginners who want to learn HTML and CSS the right way from the ground up.

Hands-on, we will take some text and mark it up with HTML, emphasizing the appropriate uses of the major HTML markup structures, including headings, lists, links, adding emphasis to text, simple tables, simple forms, and displaying images. We will code a few pages, emphasizing structural and semantic correctness and accessibility. We will code a basic form. We will then introduce CSS for improving the presentation of your web documents. The emphasis here will be on basic modifications to the appearance of HTML elements, and we will discuss how to ensure that your CSS helps improve page accessibility.

This is the first part of a workshop series (see overview, above).

(Almost) Dead-Simple Web Design: CSS for Universal Usability

Date, Time, Location
Thursday, February 28, 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM, Ramseyer Hall (RA) 009
·registration form·

Overview of Workshop
The second part of the Dead-Simple workshop series develops a multiple-page web site, based on the HTML and CSS code from the first workshop (which will be provided for those who did not attend). An unordered list will be transformed with CSS into a highly accessible and efficient navigation bar. We will add markup to pages with a form and a complex table to make these key HTML structures as accessible as possible and then radically improve their appearance using CSS. We will implement skip navigation and accessible CSS "hiding" techniques that provide extra structure to people using screen readers to access web pages, without altering the appearance for sighted users. And we will discuss when it is advisable to use a CSS background image.

This is the second part of a workshop series (see overview, above).

(Not So) Dead-Simple Web Design: Multiple Columns and More

Date, Time, Location
Friday, August 17, 12:30 to 4:30 PM, Ramseyer Hall (RA) 009
·registration form·

Overview of Workshop
This workshop extends techniques covered in the previous "Dead-Simple" workshops and explores new territory in CSS. You will code multiple-column layouts, write bread-crumb navigation and "more" links that optimize accessibility, learn how to make CSS background images clickable, and improve the appearance of tab navigation systems using CSS background images. We will also examine the Yahoo! User Interface grid layouts.

This is the third part of a workshop series (see overview, above).

Workshop Locations

We offer a number of our workshops jointly with the College of Education and Human Ecology. They have generously allowed us to use the lab in 009 Ramseyer for workshops. Ramseyer is located at 29 West Woodruff Ave., on the southeast corner of Woodruff and High Street.

• To get to RA 009, go to the rear (wheelchair accessible) entrance of Ramseyer, which can be reached from the driveway on Woodruff, between College and High, or from College, via the walkway on the North side of Arps garage. 009 is in the basement of Ramseyer Hall. Take the ramp into the basement. Take your first right. The first room on the left is 009.

  Here is a picture of the entrance to Ramseyer, coming from the walkway next to Arps garage. The ramp is visible next to the large air conditioning unit.

  

Thanks to the on-going generous support of TELR, we also often hold workshops either in the Digital Union or the Digital Union Computer Lab (SEL 390). Both are located on the third floor of the Science and Engineering Library. The library is located between 17th and 18th Ave next to Denney and Brown Hall. When you enter the building, turn right just past the gates and make another immediate right into the hallway/elevator area.

• The Digital Union is on the third floor directly across from the elevators. If there is no one at the front desk, turn right as you enter and go around the corner to the conference areas.
• To get to SEL 390, turn left as you exit the elevators, then another left just before you reach the stacks. SEL 390 is on the left-side of the room closest to the windows/study areas. Look for the standing sign.

Off-Campus Visitor Parking Information

The links in the workshop locations, above, will show you where the buildings are. The Tuttle garage is probably your best bet for visitor parking. If the workshop is in Ramseyer, you might also try the Union garage—it's a nice walk through the Wexner and Mershon arts centers to Ramseyer.

• Traffic and Parking map, showing Tuttle and Union garages.

If you need further information, please call the WAC at 614-292-1760.