In June of this year I started the Los Angeles Accessibility and Inclusive Design Group. We now have 45 members. Our August meetup was at the Santa Monica Apple Third Street Promenade store. Cara Quinn, an iOS developer, did a demo of VoiceOver on iOS. Cara develops iOS apps at LookTell.
Cara uses VoiceOver constantly so this was an expert guided tour. She demonstrated an inaccessible app, and compared that with accessible apps. Very enlightening.
For just one example: developers, please don’t name your buttons but1, but2, but3. If a user depends on the name of the button they will be lost. Name your buttons semantically, and meaningfully. You will enhance your product and elevate its reputation.
We are working with other Los Angeles Meetup groups to spread the word, The Los Angeles PHP Developers Group (LAPHP), and The Los Angeles User Experience Meetup with thousands of members each.
The incredible wealth of support and information represented by Meetup groups in Santa Monica is a sign of very healthy economic development. Santa Monica is known as Silicon Beach because of all the tech development happening here. I’m glad to be making accessiblity a part of it with the Los Angeles Accessibility and Inclusive Design Group.