Refresh DC - Justin Thorpe

Yesterday marked another installment of Refresh DC which now brings the grand total up to a year’s worth (Congrats to all, keep up the amazing work). Our speaker was Justin Thorpe and he spoke about “Understanding The Real World Wide Web and Why Web Accessibility Is Crucial.” Justin’s daily grind finds him working for CACI at The Library of Congress in Washington DC.

It was a great talk and it ended with a surprise, yep that is right.

When you say the word accessibility, I think of 508 compliance (or WCAG come to mind if you are in other parts of the world) and persons with disabilities. After this talk, I won’t be thinking that way anymore. It is more about different devices reaching one web page. It could be JAWS, it could be a cell phone, it could even be the Nintendo Wii (yep that’s right, it has a web browser) and designing your site so it can be accessed by all. Around 3-5 years ago people would send different code to different devices. This is incorrect for a number of reasons, the most basic being that it is hard to maintain. Taking your site and optimizing it to be accessible to all devices is the better option. In some cases you might find you have to think twice about the layout you first you had in mind, you might have to change some colors, etc. Although you are making some coIn the long run you will be getting more traffic and that is ultimately what every site wants, hits.

Now for the surprise.

Justin had in his possession an XO Laptop (often referred to as the “$100 laptop”) It was really cool to see it in person, watching it boot up and checking out the different apps that had been installed on it. It is a great piece of technology, and it was very well thought out. The design is different that most laptops, it is built for function, but has one hell of a form factor. The rumor on the street that it was one of only three in the United States at this time (other two being at MIT in MA)

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