Monday 13 October 2008

Been a while

This Blog has been at the back of my mind since September and I realised with horror that I hadn't posted anything since August 20th! This doesn't mean I've not been thinking about issues relating to Web 2.0, accessibility and assistive technology. Far from it, it just means I've moved jobs! To Leeds University Equality Service - an exciting new job and one with loads of new challenges.

I did wonder at first if I'd have time to do any assistive techie stuff seeing as the job doesn't really have any of that in it's description, but, in my own way, I've made sure I've got access to JAWS (ah, Daniel, I knew you'd come back into my life!) and I've also been drafted onto IT Accessibility meetings with our IT Accessibility Officer. He'sbeen looking at accessibility of University software - anything from the giant HR system to the VLE. There's not much difference between Oxford and Leeds really - the big companies still don't give much thought to accessibility until afterwards.

However, some emails earlier this morning made me wonder if we might get somewhere with the VLE. They've recently moved from a nice accessible in-house created VLE to a bought in service which isn't accessible (probably best for me not to get started on why they did this!) , but the high heid yins in this bought-in service have agreed to meet up and discuss accessibility - maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge commercial companies?? Let's see how we get on - and once I get JAWS back up and running, I'll have a wee play around with it too..... always like to be prepared!