Who You Calling A Jesse?

This Saturday is BarCampWaterloo (number 6!) from 1pm to around 7pm (we may retire to the pub before that) at the Accelerator Centre. A much more toned down event compared to StartupCampWaterloo, BarCampWaterloo is where people come to explore ideas and maybe get themselves ready for a DemoCampGuelph (which happens to be April 9th at the Albion in Guelph). I might show some of the stuff I have been working on this weekend ;)

DesignCampWaterloo is March 26th (Wednesday)27th (Thursday) starting at 4:30pm in the Tathum Centre on the University of Waterloo campus. The first one was a bit difficult to follow being in the SLC and all so I am really looking forward to it in the TC. Plus I just have to go up two floors from my office to attend!

There is also a RailsNite next week on Monday at Ceaser Martini’s. Not sure of the start time but I think 7ish might work.

Update: RailsNite does start at 7pm and there is a Facebook event created for it.

Another update: Rick Segal is not coming to Waterloo for his VC roundtable, but he is coming to Guelph on April 28th… Perhaps Ali is influencing people now.

Yet another update: DesignCampWaterloo is Thursday not Wednesday.

You work on something for a couple weeks and then the due date comes close. There is a realization that you won’t meet the milestone unless you get a lot of code written today and deal with whatever UI issues and browser bugs you can. You order in some pizza, fill up on caffeine, and push through a 16 hour or more work day. There is something about that role you get on when you don’t leave your computer, things just make more sense.

My GUI team of co-op students have been pushing themselves this past week and this evening I think they achieved more tonight than all of last week. People will have to wait until May 1st to see it but our internal deadline is much earlier (demos to some stakeholders first and we need April to bug hunt). Maybe I will demo a bit at DemoCampGuelph in April or BarCampWaterloo ;)

Just wanted to post a just over mid-term thanks to Daniel, Shawn, Allen, and Michael for the commitment. They have gone from CS or Engineering students to fairly good AJAX developers in a very short time period. They have made some cool stuff, can’t wait to show it off.

Interesting conversation today that started off with (edited for dramatic effect):

• me: “I am pretty sure what we are doing is not going to be accessible and is going to cause us grief” (me went on about Ontarians with Disabilities Act, University’s commitment to accessibility, etc)
• softeng1: “What will? AJAX? I am sure it can be made accessible” – goes to google, pulls up an article from Juicy Studio
• softeng2: “What exactly is not following the law?”

At this point I probably got annoying because the problem with accessibility is that it is an art over a science. Laws are vague for good reason—there is no black and white, if there was technology would make the law redundant quickly (thinking PDF being a ‘bad technology’ in Australia). I went into the fact screen readers have a heck of a time when things change and there is no page refresh and how stuff not working, at least a little, without js is a problem.

The conversation went on with the software developers insisting there is a software solution. Which is understandable but that is because I got annoyed with the brush off instead of going into the problem. Making a web application accessible isn’t only about using screen reader, I missed that but I am not sure that would have helped…

After the conversation dragged on for a bit we started talking a similar language although the focus was on fixing it with software and testing. I am all for testing but I certainly don’t want to go back and test it in a year and then fix it. I would much rather consider it now. Making a web application accessible is as much about a philosophy as it is the technical considerations.

This left me thinking, my approach was wrong for how these folks think and their experience. Plus I was annoyed by the number of JavaScript reliant things we have already. My concerns are that even though we are spending a lot of time on user testing and usability analysis, technical accessibility would be sacrificed. Are my fears warranted? Probably given the amount of JavaScript, however if we approach it smartly from start we should be ok—that means now.

I have run into a similar conversation quite a few years ago when the web developers on campus weren’t sure what to think about web accessibility. They were far more open to the problem though, not software engineers (or Computer Scientists) as they can build a fix—so they think. What is missing from their world is the appreciation for how annoying web browsers can be and how people interact with them. With software there is more control over presentation and the user expectations are different.

I will need to think about an approach to ensure that the issue of accessibility is more relevant to them. Taking away their mice as they navigate the app might be a good start ;) Or degrading its performance. Most web developers seem to get the problem now but they have likely spent time reading about in the context of the web. Curious as to how others have approached this situation with those that build software, not web apps.

First I think I need to get a few good nights of sleep. The lack of that lately does not help!