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Gian Sampson-Wild – Managing accessibility compliance for the Commonwealth Games

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2006.

Session description

Melbourne recently hosted the 18th Commonwealth Games. Gian Sampson-Wild worked as the accessibility specialist for the Games for over two years, responsible for a variety of issues including the accessibility compliance of the web site and training of on-site and off-site developers such as Ticketmaster7 and Microsoft. Management at the Commonwealth Games were particularly cognisant of the precedent set by SOCOG and therefore made accessibility a priority. Gian will talk about the accessibility issues relevant to such a major event, such as creating accessible versions of venue maps and ensuring HTML fragments provided by third parties did not contravene accessibility requirements.

About Gian Sampson-Wild

Gian Sampson-Wild has worked in the accessibility industry for over seven years. She ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop for five years and built the automated accessibility testing tool PurpleCop. Gian worked as the accessibility consultant for the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games for over two years and trained Microsoft developers on how to maintain the accessibility of the site. Gian has been a Member of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group for over six years and has spent a significant amount of time working on WCAG, Version 2.0. She is currently working with Monash University.

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