Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite
I was fortunate enough today to witness yet another awesome demonstration of the Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite and it’s seamless use of technologies to deliver a user experience only limited by your imagination.
I have a tentative date booked with Mark Szulc, Senior Technical Consultant Adobe Systems Asia Pacific to deliver a demonstration and QA session to the user group on the 4th February. You will truly see the entire Adobe delivery platform come to life as Mark weaves his magick. Stay tuned for more details.
Cheers,
R
Adobe on Accessibility
Adobe is an industry leader for accessibility and takes the needs of all users into consideration during product development. Adobe products promote the creation of accessible content by encouraging designers and developers to produce rich, engaging experiences that are accessible to all. Through standards support and work to ensure that user needs can be met, Adobe delivers products that include visual, mobility, and cognitive accessibility support and continually improves this support to ensure the best experience for all users.
Adobe participates on the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee (TEITAC), http://webaim.org/teitac/ providing recommendations for updates of accessibility standards issued under Section 508 http://www.section508.gov/ of the United States Rehabilitation Act. Additionally, our participation extends to several standards committees that address accessibility, including the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) working groups and AIIM’s PDF/Universal Accessibility (PDF/UA) work group. http://www.aiim.org/article.aspx?ID=27861
The PDF file format is an ISO Standard (ISO 32000-1) http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1141 . PDF includes support for people with disabilities that is comparable to other formats, such as HTML. Authors addressing accessibility can use Adobe products to create PDF files with accessibility enhancements for documents, forms, and interactive content that accommodates visual, mobility, and cognitive disabilities.
Flash creates accessible web, desktop and eLearning content that includes rich media. A core set of accessible UI components is provided in Adobe Flash to enable accessible application development. These components automate many of the most common accessibility practices related to labeling, keyboard access, and testing to ensure a consistent user experience across rich applications.
Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader supports accessibility in a variety of ways. Features include compatibility with assistive technologies such as screen readers or screen magnifiers, built in accessibility features such as easy font resizing, contrast settings, keyboard navigation, built in text to speech with the “Read Out Loud” feature.
The Adobe Flash Player displays Adobe Flash content in web browsers and Adobe Flex applications. Flash Player works with assistive technologies to accommodate users with visual disabilities. It also provides keyboard access for users with mobility impairments and support for users with hearing impairments through the ability to display subtitles and captions.
Adobe believes issues of accessibility around PDF and Flash are a direct result of “Authors” of content, not correctly leveraging and using the many methods and best practice at their disposal, within the Adobe applications to deliver accessible content. It is this lack of use/ignorance that produces “less than accessible” content.
The Accessibility Resource Center http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/ provides numerous materials to aid developers and designers in the efficient creation of accessible content.
There is a wealth of Best Practice documents at: http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/training.html that speaks to creating, checking, repairing etc PDF documents and PDF Forms to address and conform to the the issues of Accessibility.
Additionally their are individual Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPATs) that Adobe has prepared specifying the details of the US Law relating to Accessibility (called Section 508) and outlining the accessibility-related features of various Adobe Products. A VPAT is a standardized form that lists all of the regulations of Section 508 and explains how a given product helps people comply with each regulation. The VPAT was developed by the US Information Technology Industry Council to be used across the software industry.
These can been accessed here: http://www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/tools/vpat/
Additional Resources:
Adobe also fosters an Accessibility Blog and again, it has a wealth of information: http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility/
Summary Information on Accessibility and PDF creation (via Acrobat):
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/acrobat/
Read Adobe PDF content
Learn how to configure free Adobe Reader software to work with assistive technologies that you use and to obtain greater access to PDF files with this how-to guide 3.8M):
http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/reader/pdfs/reader7_accessibility.pdf
Best Practices for Accessible Flash design (700K):
http://www.adobe.com/resources/accessibility/best_practices/best_practices_acc_flash.pdf
Adobe Flash CS3 accessibility:
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash/
Accessibility best practices for Flex:
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flex/best_practices.html
The Best Ever WebDU Gala Event
Finally I have arrived back in Canberra after 6 hectic days away, WebDU was absolutely awesome, thanks Geoff and the Daemon team, you are simply the best!
It’s been 3 years since I last attended MXDU held at Star City Casino way back in February 2005. It was wonderful to catch up with so many old friends, particularly Tim Buntel from the US. I also had the pleasure of meeting the beautiful Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis.
I caught up with many fellow User Group Managers, and had the pleasure of assisting with the User Group event held on the night of the 11th, Code Wars at the Connections Bar at the Crowne Plaza on Day Street in Sydney. I have pics to upload, I will create a slide show and upload them to slideshare as quickly as possible.
The trading card game was a huge hit with almost everyone I spoke to, it was a lot of fun and tended to dominate the conversation, loved your horns Kai, I should have kept my extra card of you, it was a struggle to let go of the unique cards and hand them in.
The Gala Event for WebDU 2008, was held at King Pin in Darling Harbour, it was sooo much fun, umm until the end of the evening when we decided after a few drinks to do the 10 pin bowling, Rae is nursing a possible torn ligament in her right arm, best case scenario a bad sprain. The night was so much fun, I would not give up a thing, not even the sore arm 
My favourite part of the evening was the Laser Tag, it was like playing Quake 2 Capture the Flag for real. My solemn vow is to get my butt into gear and get fit before the next WebDU, I ache in places I had forgotten existed.
One last thing, the Keynote on the first day blew me away totally, things to come are awesome, but don’t look here for spoilers, I saw nothing 
I have a particularly good pic of Andrew Muller on a clear blue Sydney day against the Sydney skyline, with a perfect daytime crescent moon to upload.
Looking forward to next year with much anticipation!
Cheers,
Rae
PS. Simon J, great to catch up with you again after a couple of years, and Mark Mandel please ORM me
Call for New Members
Now that I’ve crawled out from under the rock of responding to three RFT’s concurrently, taking a deep breath, relaxing the shoulders OM, OM, OM!
It’s time to focus on the User Group. Proud to announce that I’m now on the AUG list and received a hearty welcome from many.
Here is a link to the Google group for discussions, please, please join http://groups.google.com/group/actapug tell all your developer and non-developer Adobe users about us and encourage them to join. Although the group in Canberra based, outside members are more than welcome.
Remember the group is not product specific and covers all Adobe products, the more members we have in the group the more useful and successful it will be.
