CSUN Tweetup and “Testing for Standards Compliant and Accessible Websites Using Opera” Slides

I was at CSUN last week, the technology and persons with disabilities conference held in Los Angeles. It's one of my favorite conferences as you get a chance to talk with some of the great and the good of the web development world and talk about all things accessibility.

I had a fantastic few days kicked off by a Tweetup sponsored by the Opera Developer Network together with WebAim, The Paciello Group and Infoaxia. We had over 120 Twitterer's there who kept up the Twittering throughout the conference. You can catch up on what people were talking about by tracking #csun09. We'll also be posting podcasts of lightning talks that people gave. My favorite was from Glenda Sims on the new WaSP Interact education Framework, a web standards curriculum for both educators and learners alike that the Opera Web Standards Curriculum is part of.

I was lucky enough to get a slot presenting on testing standards compliant and accessible websites using Opera. I really enjoyed the session which had a few of my favorite people attend such as Glenda Sims, Lisa Herrod, Jim Thatcher, Ralph Brandi, Jim Allan, Kazuhito Kidachi and Makoto Ukedi to name just a few.

Rather than just focus on testing tools we have in the browser I decided to also cover some of the non-testing related features Opera has that I find myself using daily to help me develop and test sites such as Sessions, Speed Dial, Notes and the Sidebar tools. I then looked at the Debug menu and Opera Dragonfly and how you can use these to validate pages, test images, link text, scripts, plugins, CSS and more.

You can get a copy of my slides below. They're written in HTML and can be viewed in any browser but are best viewed in Opera using Opera Show. They're written in such a way that they can be used as a stand alone tutorial so feel free to share them amongst friends or colleagues.

Testing with Opera - 1.8MB zip

If you have any questions, comments or feedback then let me know, I'd love to hear from you.