Recently, as you may or may not know, John Slatin, highly-regarded Web accessibility expert and advocate, passed away. John's involvement in the accessibility community included serving as Co-Chair of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group in 2005 and 2006, as well as founding Director of the Accessibility Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He also authored several publications regarding accessibility, including co-authoring Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone.

On the heels of a very different technology extravaganza, South by Southwest Interactive, I wanted to take a few minutes to do some sidelines commentary on the good Web accessibility work of a team of three Convians and our partner at Causeway Interactive.

Two weeks ago, Team ConAIR won the 2008 Accessibility Internet Rally (aka AIR Interactive) competition. AIR is an annual challenge to design and build new, highly accessible websites for Austin-area artists and musicians. The team created a new site for local duo Byrd and Street, which is worth exploring because it is both a) innovative in its accessibility, and b) generally groovy.

(Warning: Web Accessibility and AIR mavens among you can skip the background and head right on down to “what’s cool.”)

First, the challenge: The team was tasked with creating a new browsing experience for all visitors to Byrdandstreet.com – from users with disabilities, like vision, auditory, cognitive or motor impairments, to users accessing the site from slow Internet connections, or old browsers, or small monitors. The goal is a compelling online experience that’s flexible enough to accommodate everyone’s browsing needs.

As those of you who’ve tried this before know, it’s no easy task.

The approach: Team ConAIR team met with the Byrd & Street duo – musicians and artists who were ready to start publishing more of their songs and visual art online – to learn about what their ideal site should be and do, who their visitors are, their future plans. Then, the team sat down and developed an information architecture, visual design, and implementation plan, and started coding.

So, what’s cool: 

• Accessibility and good design are one and the same. If there was ever a doubt, Byrd & Street’s new design just goes to show that accessibility, usability, and enjoy-ability are not contradictory terms. It's visually compelling, clean, and moves the Byrd & Street brand in a new direction.
  
  
• There’s multi-media everyone can enjoy. Visitors can choose their sensory mode, either listening to songs or reading lyrics, or listen to descriptions of artist drawings instead of looking at them.
  
  
• The control is in the hands (or feet, or keyboard) of the users. Whatever your browsing needs are, you can “customize view” to display the site in a way that works for you. Want a larger text size, or a font that’s easier to read? Want to turn off visual styles and have your screen-reader (which is reading the page aloud to you) skip the navigation and get straight to the content? This is all built into the basic structure of the site.
  
  
• It’s navigable, readable, adaptable, and easy to use. And for the geeks among us, it’s XHTML Strict 1.0 that validates, and completely separates structure from presentation. This baby reads as well with styles disabled as it does in its full graphic glory – and offers some great alternatives for assistive technologies that the standard visitor would never encounter.

Check out Byrd & Street’s new site for yourself, and give a virtual huzzah for Team ConAIR on a job accessibly done.

Welcome to Connection Café, a blog created from the hearts and minds of the employees of Convio. Our vision for this blog is to aggregate the latest trends, ideas and best practices for nonprofits online. Through discussions about online communication tactics, the latest in Web 2.0 strategies and integration of offline and online campaigns, we hope to share insight and create an open and honest dialogue in the nonprofit technology world.  

Unlike other corporate blogs you may have looked at, you won’t find information or sales pitches about our latest product and service offerings here. Instead, we are venturing out and doing something different - we’ll be writing about the issues you care about and the topics that can help you succeed online. From time to time that means our products and technologies and how clients are using them to get results will be part of the discussion, but we don’t want it to be a sales pitch, so let us know if we cross that line.

Connection Café will discuss how the Internet is fundamentally changing the way people connect with causes, forcing nonprofits to rethink the traditional models for communication, advocacy and fundraising. We want to share our internal resources and expertise with you, as well as information from our Fusion Partners and point you to other online sources that are having the same, or better, discussions. Bottom line, we want to keep you better connected and engaged with the people, ideas and technology that are driving the industry.

Over the past eight years, we’ve kept you connected with our Convio Connection newsletter, presence at industry events and our online client community. Now I’m inviting you - the nonprofit Executive Director, the weekend volunteer, the marketing/communications expert – to connect with us once again by being a part of our online discussion.

So, when we think we have something valuable to share, you’ll see it here. And while it may be natural for us to draw from past work experience, this blog is not about Convio as a company but rather the people, ideas and technology that are fueling the industry we serve. If you see us veering off that path or becoming too Convio-centric, send a note or post a comment to let us know. You have my word that we’ll listen to what you have to say.

I hope that each person who reads this blog will find something beneficial in the editorials, news and multimedia content we produce.  We also want to read your comments, get your suggestions and do our best to answer your questions – or find someone to answer them.  I encourage you to reach out and give us feedback from time to time on what we’re doing well and what we can improve on.

 -Gene, CEO