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 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

Paul fresh off a plane from Seoul Korea, made his way to Canberra and blew everyone away, the audience included print designers, web designers/developers and Federal Government agencies.  In the 1.5 hour impromptu presentation Paul managed to cover the most mind blowing features of CS4 and yet only touched the tip of the massive iceberg.

Thank you to awesome co-manager Simon Janssens for organising this meeting, I could not have done it without him.  The co-manager program put in place by Adobe for User Groups WORKS a treat!

Lots of interest generated in CS4, seems everyone wanted it right there and then, and hey, who could blame them.  My only lament is ‘OMG… soon all the really sexy parts of dev work will be automated… oh no says my developer persona ‘

Adobe… high five… you guys totally rock the planet!

Cheers,

R

Just wanted to get everyone to put Thursday the 16th down for the October user group meeting. The meeting will kick off from 6pm as usual.

I’m just waiting to confirm ZOO for the venue and will update once I know for sure.

Cheers,

Simon

UPDATE: ZOO have kindly agreed to host the meeting once again. See everyone there @ 6pm.

Andrew has been kind enough to zip up the examples he showed us on the night so we can all take a peak under the hood and have a tinker.

Click here to download the zipped demos.

Cheers,

Simon

We are lucky enough to have Andrew Muller from webqem down from Sydney to have a chat. The topic is most likely going to be everything Flash, Flex, AIR and RIA.

Join our google group and let us know if you’ll be coming.

Cheers,

Simon

Welcome Simon, please feel free to co-blog here

Cheers,

Rae

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

Other Adobe Codie award winner were:

Best Collaboration Solution

• Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Best Corporate Learning Solution

• Adobe Captivate 3, Adobe Systems, Inc.

Industry news links:

Computer World

Info World

Software Information Industry Association

Newz Fire

Yahoo