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Our membership has grown so much this past year that we need our member’s input to be sure we are meeting the needs of our community. We’ve created a survey to try & gather more information from everyone. Topic ideas for meetups, locations for additional meetups, experience levels, and more. We know there are other ways to share & interact – small one-off gatherings, meetups in different parts of town, sub-groups, etc. We just need data to use as a starting point.

Please take some time to fill it out. The group gets its strength from all the amazing members in it. This is just one way for greater participation. If you have any thoughts or ideas that we’ve missed, please use the last field in the survey to submit those.

Update: Survey’s closed for this time around
Thanks for filling out the survey, your input will help us greatly.

Tonight we passed the 1300 member mark on Meetup.com. I’m excited & thrilled that we’ve grown so much over the last few years. We’ve got a great community made up of amazing & passionate people and I love being a part of it. There are some neat stats in Meetup.com for our group that we’ll go through & note later. Right now I want to say “Thanks” to everyone.

The group wouldn’t be what it is without everyone’s involvement, so a big thanks to everyone who’s come out to the meetups, helped out at WordCamp, showed someone less-experienced how to do something, or offered up a nugget of knowledge they discovered to the group.

Big thanks to Nick, Sandi & Jackie, who really stepped up to help run the group. Along with them, we’ve seen Bill, Clark, Bobby, Bobbie, Sherry, Debra, V help out more, especially since we began our second monthly meetup.

Capital Factory, Build A Sign, and the team at WP Engine also deserve some great thanks. Jason, Shayda, Trafton, Austin and the whole team have always been ready to help. I don’t think I’ve heard them ever say they couldn’t do what it was that we needed. Y’all are simply great.

Raise a pint, give yourselves a hand, dance a jig. Way to go WP Austin!

Rich Schwerdtfeger
CTO Accessibility IBM Software
Chair, W3C WAI-ARIA Working Group

ARIA

A way for authors to apply rich accessibility semantics in Web content

A way to reproduce the keyboard fuctionality of desktop apps

Accessibility API defines a standard contract between an application component and an assistive technology

• Role
• State
• Actions
• Caret
• Selection
• Text
• Hypertext
• Value
• Name
• Descrtipion
• Children
• Changes
• Relations

Early problem with HTML accessibility depends on tag names

JavaScript creates custom widgets using HTML, user imput, and CSS changing their meaning and purpose.

HTML lacked the accessibility meta data to support accessibilty APIs to repurpose HTML content

Dependence on excessive tabbing makes keyboard access unusable

What is WAI-ARIA?

• role attribute
• states
• properties

TABINDEX modification allows script to set focus on all elements with or without affecting tab order

implement TABINDEX

Browser manufacturers map HTML semantics and WAI-ARIA metadata to platform accssibility APIs

e.g. <div tabindex=”-1″ role=”menuitem” aria-disabled=”true”>

– Delivers semantics and desktop keyboard functionality to provide full interoperability with ATs

• typical widget states
• relationships
• new AJAX live region properties
• drag/drop
• miscellaneous
• role (widgets and navigational landmarks)
• tabindex

Role navigation Landmarks facilitates stuctural navigation

Browser Accessibility API Mapping – WAI-ARIA-enabled Checkbox

Web 2.0 / ARIA Navigation Paradigm Shift Navigation

• navigation tab and click
• everything but forms are browsed by AT
• pages reloads for new content

goes to:

• tabs to links, form elements, widgets, read-only text
• arrow key nav within widgets
• keyboard accellerators to widgets
• ATs to supply region nav

ARIA Landmarks

• application
• contentinfo
• main
• search
• complentary
• form

First thing to do on ALL web pages – apply regional landmarks

• define all Regional Landmarks
• ensure that all content resides in each nav landmark
• ensure landmarks have the same role have a label within the region
• where possible ensure labels are visible
• where possible make the labels an H1 to facility heading nav
• headning nav must be properly formed within landmark regions
• avoid role=”application” where possible

Keyboard Nav (manging focus) basics

• Tabindex=”-1″ – can set focus on and elemvnt without adding to tab order
• 0 – place focusable element in tab order in doc order
• >0 Same as today’s tabindex

Author-managed arrow key nav within widgets

• Capture key strokes at widget managing focus
• move focus to the child using tabindex
• managing parent indicate which child has focus using active descendant

WordPress password reset – A big bang with minor tweaks

• demonstration

Markup

e.g <div id=”pass-strength-result” aria-live=”assertive” class=”hide-if-no-js”>

WAI-ARIA is an extension to what you already know.

For tonight’s attendees: http://stage.knowbility.org/moodle/

Announcements

AIR – Austin: competition sponsored by Knowbility. Signups through mid-October. Learn about accessible web design, CSS, theme development, etc.

Google Hangout recording of the meetup:

Pat Ramsey:

Follow Pat’s Presentation: http://wpsocial.slash25.com/

Why are we using social media?

• put people in contact with one another
• participate in contents
• new networking
• everyone has something in their hands
• more visitors to your site
• look like you have a clue
• clients want it because everyone else is using it

Ideally you only want to have buttons where it matters – like on individual blog posts.

Plugins vs DIY:

• Plugins: Jetpack, Social Share, ShareThis: you get updates, you don’t have to code anything
• DIY: one less item to update; tailor to your needs (you can put the buttons anywhere you want, make them look how you want)

Social Media Badges (“Likes” on Facebook etc): only serve to give more hits to the social media site. Slow, clunky, don’t do you any good.

Things to keep in mind using social media and WordPress:

• ease of use and setup
• can you override it? choose what gets published?
• what content actually gets published? Title? Excerpt? Photo?
• Keep an eye on social media API changes

Nick Batik:

Follow Nick’s Presentation: http://presentations.pleiadesservices.com/category/wordpress-meetup-2012-09-25-connecting-social-media

What is social media:

• how people share with you
• how people share with others
• keep track of your own interests and sites through bookmark sites
• connecting users to your site
• exchanging content

Clark Wimberley:

Slides at Clarklab.com

Building community

• Learn who your audience is
• Where do they hang out – how do they consume your content, what social media do they use

For his site Android and Me: Clark sees Twitter as a major referrer to their site, and recommends WP to Twitter. This will be different for other sites.

Bit.ly – URL shortener and tracking; can see trends

Buffer app – schedules social media

Google+ – lots of ways to track, promote, and connect with Google; Google Hangouts

MailChimp – for mailing lists; can lose you money so only use a mailing list if you need it

• other options for mailing lists
• Paper.li
• SendPress
• Jetpack has a subscription option as well

Google Currents – magazine style content delivery. Nice way to display content, very easy to set up.