Lightly Toasted

A big thank you to the core members of the Web Essentials ‘04 group(Russ Weakley, Peter Firminger, John Allsopp, Maxine Sherrin) and all those that helped yesterday’s event come together so beautifully. It was a free briefing session for the Government and Education sector about Web Standards, adherence to code semantics and Accessibility(WAI). The Speakers included Russ Weakley, Roger Hudson, Dean Jackson about raising the consciousness in the Government and Education sector with focus on:

• What legal issues do government and education developers face?
• Are you doing everything possible to ensure the widest accessibility to your content and services?
• Learn how easy it can be to improve accessibility, while saving development time and bandwidth costs
• How visible is your site to Search Engines such as Google?

You just cannot thank them enough for the good they are doing to the society at large, the results may not be seen rightaway but this will(is) usher(ing) Australia and very particularly Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to a very Web conscientious user base.

Some results are gradually starting to show and given another year or thereabouts it is no doubt these cities will scale right up in the Web Standards world thereby promoting education, information, knowledge not only to the average Joe but also to the disabled — to one and all.

Isn’t this such a beautiful cause to fight for. Isn’t this something to stand up for. And there is enough love in the Web Standards Group to help others out… all you need to do is ask…

If you haven’t been to any of the WebStandardsGroup meetings in Sydney here is your golden opportunity ..come along for the Sydney September meeting this 16^th September,

(Corner of College and William Streets - entry via William Street entrance)
Map and parking info

Thank you all for making this effort to bridge the difference, for helping many out there get on the standards curve and for sharing your knowledge with the world.

Presentation links

• The benefits of Web Standards to your visitors, your clients and you!
• Web Standards Checklist
• Universal Accessibility — with some very interesting demonstrations
• Web Standards in Education and Government