What Is This Thing and What Does It Do?

Karl Groves

Twitter

@karlgroves

Bio

An unstoppable force for change and thought-leader in an industry regarded for saying 'No,' Karl would rather lead by example in saying 'Yes, and here's how…' He seeks to offer solutions to complex problems relating to universal usability. He believes that together we can meet both our goals: your business goals and his goals to lead the way in accessible user experiences. Karl has over a decade of experience in doing IT consulting for the biggest companies in the world and biggest agencies in the U.S. government. Widely regarded as a pragmatic solution-finder, his work is cited in nearly a dozen books and used on curricula in Human-Computer Interaction across the globe. He leads by doing, teaches from experience, and succeeds by facilitating others' success. When others say, 'That can't be done,' Karl shows them how.

Talk Time

11:00 AM

Talk Description

According to the principle of least astonishment, things should operate in a way that’s predictable. The collaborative nature between designer and developer is necessary for a universally usable system. The designer creates something that is visually predictable while the developer creates something programatically predictable.

As web developers we like to think that our hard work creating HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is what makes our sites so great. Then we realize the reality: all our hard work is really just a request saying, “Please, Mr. Browser, can you make this website do all the cool stuff I’ve designed here?” When the user’s browser receives your web page and all of its assets, your control of the situation entirely ceases. How your site really looks and operates is entirely in the hands of the browser.

In this talk, Karl provides important technical insight into accessibility by describing the interactions between HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript, the DOM, the BOM, Accessibility APIs and Assistive Technologies.