KATH:  I'd like to start off by introducing you to Robin Christopherson. Robin is the Head of Accessibility Services at AbilityNet and I was wondering if we can start off, Robin, by telling us a bit about yourself and what you do at AbilityNet.
ROBIN:  I head the team who has been delivering accessibility consultancy to all the sectors - public, commercial and voluntary - for about 8 and a half years now, so we've been a long time in this game, and I think the main area where we've got something very special to offer is the fact we're complete pan disability, we're right across the spectrum, including areas of impairment where they wouldn't  consider themselves disabled for one minute, like someone with dyslexia, literacy difficulties or age related conditions. All areas of technologies, so not just web, hardware, hand-held devices, WebTV, ATMs - the whole panoply of technology. And the other area where we're really special - we are, and always have been, end user focused. So it's all about the end user. We were the first to do disabled user testing and that's still very much at the heart of what we do, making sure that the end users are the ones we defer to where there is some qualitative issue to do with accessibility that isn't a black and white issue.
KATH:  Sure - that's great.  In terms of web applications, 'cause that's one of the areas we're going to be focusing on during the conference, what are your favourites?
ROBIN:  The BBC has recently re-launched their home page and it's got these portals or portlets, not quite sure what their proper name is. We did some work with them on that and they are really nice from an accessibility point of view. They are very JavaScript heavy. There are dynamic areas of the page that you can open and close and you change the content in them without any page refreshing, but for a screen reader user like myself they are spot on. As you refresh the content, the focus remains exactly where you are and the content of the pane is right there in the reading order for you and the link name changes, to tell you whether the content has been updated, whether you have opened or closed an area or pane of the page etc...  So that's my current favourite at the moment and I found that a bit of a challenge but they really came through on that I think.
KATH:  What about some of the big household names, like FaceBook, Google Maps, blogging, for example WordPress or Blogger. How have you found those to use? 
ROBIN:  I've been bitten by a few. I was really struggling with FaceBook the other day to try and add some friends, I felt very aggrieved that I wasn't able to easily add friends, or in fact at all. I was completely frustrated and was actually thwarted in the end. I struggled with MySpace as well. I think generally speaking they are a challenge.  There aren't any I particularly find easy to get on with in their full AJAX implementation. Something like Google Maps is fantastic because they've got - it's not signposted at all, it was flagged in a blog - but there is a text only alternative. If you put output equals html as the switch at the end of maps.google.com then you get a text only version with much clearer, cleaner, text-only descriptions from start to finish. Now that's obviously not an example of doing AJAX well, but we also have to face up to the fact that sometimes if you can offer a cleaner alternative it's not only going to benefit screen reader users like myself but also people who are using a smaller screen, or limited bandwidth, or behind a fire wall where you can't access JavaScript or AJAX content. I think Google are a good example where you've got a CAPTCHA alternative, you've got alternatives to their new Google mail AJAX implementation where it points you back at the classic Gmail pages. So they do it well.
KATH:  Sure. In terms of Web2.0, how do you think it could benefit people with disabilities?
ROBIN:  I think it is very empowering and there's this whole idea of democratisation of the internet. UGC is making it much easier for people to contribute to the web and to make their space and plant their flag and say this is me, and here I am and to have a much bigger voice. Whereas previously they would have to get into coding in HTML (often hand coding, If you are a blind user for example, because the authoring tools are not accessible by enlarge), so that's made much more easy. Obviously blogs and things like that make it far easier to do things - and to do things with some imagination and to feel quite pleased with the result. But the issue is the tools and the interface and the fact that it's a lot more difficult to make a truly accessible Web2.0 application.
KATH:  Sure, that's interesting that you say that Robin, because one of the things I've been thinking about  is the whole way that web applications are built - there's a whole start up culture that's begun that I don't  really think we've seen since .com years and one of the things that's emerged from that is the launch now, fix later idea. And the problem with that might be that you put the first version up and it's not accessible. Accessibility is somehow seen as being a component, or iteration, that you would add on at a later stage.
ROBIN:  You're absolutely right
KATH:  How do you think we can intervene at that stage and persuade people that they can do start-up but do it accessibly?
ROBIN:  Absolutely, we've both seen that. When we go into clients building Web2.0 and AJAX applications for example they see it as a big enough challenge - they've got a long enough to-do list without throwing in accessibility from square one,  which as we all know (I'm sure everyone whose listening to this appreciates) is where it needs to be factored in right from day 1.  So it gets addressed at the end, at the user acceptance stage and low and behold there is some significant issues and retrofitting is ghastly, costly, time consuming and is put off until the second iteration six months down the line. And often because of the choices and decisions made through the dev process it's actually not realised because they've made the wrong decisions - and accessibility is pretty much locked out because it would just be too ghastly to rebuild it.
KATH:  Do you think accessibility can enable innovation?
ROBIN:  I think so. It certainly takes people out of their comfort zone. They've got lots of new tools to play with and people are having real fun, but you know it's an extra complication, it's another thing to think about and often because we're still in a standards-non-compliant world as far as browsers are concerned it's still messy and there are lots of hacks to think about, so it's like an extra complication. But the very fact that you have to factor in all those things means you have to really be someone who can design accessibly - with liquid design and progressive enhancement. It makes you a better coder and innovation comes out because you've then got a site or web application that is that much better as you've really had to think out of the box throughout the dev process. And you've got a site that's doing things slightly differently from the others that are just making it look like as much of a desktop application as possible - and as a consequence throwing a lot of barriers in the way not just for disabled users, but also in general usability terms. We are almost back to the stage where we were when Flash first came out and everything was done in Flash, or with DHTML, and there was a lot of mouseover activity and people just didn't know what behaviour to expect from one website to the next. So there's going to be a bedding down period and those people that can do it well will be finding they've got a site that is innovative - different from the rest because it's going to be a viable Web2.0 application.
KATH:  Sure, you're absolutely right. There is this whole new wave of new tools on the web at the moment, but the other thing we've got on the horizon is the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the new ARIA accessible road map for internet applications which I know Steve Faulkner is going to be talking about during the day. Do you think the new guidelines will make a big impact on the development of Web2.0 products?
ROBIN:  Hopefully
ROBIN and KATH:  Laughing
KATH:  Would you like to make a bet (laughing)
ROBIN:  No, I think the ARIA guys are doing a really good job. Hopefully the Accessible Rich Internet Applications guys are going to bring off some really useable guidelines that are going to be widely accepted - there's going to be wide take-up - and it's going to address some of the issues that Accessibility2.0 is definitely going to highlight. There is an awful lot to be said for accessibility on Web2.0 applications, which is the exact reason why we are running this event and I'm just hoping that when that's finalised those guys will have done a really good job and there's going to be universal take-up on that and we'll see that people change the way that they are doing things. At the moment there's the first wave of guys with the tools they've got and the first wave of web applications aren't obviously able to take advantage of these guidelines to the full. So when these are mature and browsers are a bit more compliant in the not too distant future we'll be able to get some real results there.
KATH:  That's great, the conference is coming up in a couple of weeks now, you're going to be the host of the day which I'm really excited about 'cause I know that you're good (Robin: laughing) for slipping in a few jokes as well as introducing everyone and being an expert in the field. How are you feeling about hosting the day?
ROBIN:  Oh yeah - fantastic line up, really, really good line up and the credit for that goes to you obviously Kath as you're the mastermind behind today. But it's going to be really, really, good and I think everyone is going to have a really good time and if there is anyone out there that hasn't decided yet whether they're going to book their place or not then I think that you're going to see the top names in the field giving some really in-depth advice and it's going to be an absolutely 'must see' definitely - and an annual event hopefully from now on. 
KATH:  That's great and we'll leave it at that. Thank you Robin and we hope to see you all on the 25th April  at City University in London , for the first ever Accessibility2.0. Thank you.
ROBIN:  Thank you Kath
KATH:  Thank you Robin.