Chris is a web technologist, open standards evangelist and education agitator, currently working at Opera Software in the developer relations team.
He spends most of his time writing articles about web standards for dev.opera.com and other publications (such as .net mag and A List Apart), giving talks at universities and industry conferences, and lobbying universities to improve their web education courses.
He believes that education is the answer to everything, but in particular he is passionate about using education to improve the overall content quality, accessibility, usability and future-viability of the Web.
He is the creator of the Opera Web standards curriculum, contributor to the WaSP InterACT project, and coauthor of InterACT with web standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design.
In August 2011, he also accepted the position of co-chair of the newly-formed Web Education Community Group.
Outside work he is a heavy metal drummer, proud father of three and lover of good beer.
Accessibility doesn’t exist
Accessibility is just a matter of passing the WCAG conformance criteria, or bolting on an accessibility widget to your existing site. But it is costly. Right? Spare me! Accessibility is a very misunderstood discipline.
In this talk, Chris Mills will share his opinions on the subject including sensible approaches to testing, using conformance criteria and online tools, building accessibility around cost and environment limitations, and good old common sense.
He will also argue that real accessibility isn’t just about people with disabilities, and that accessibility – as a separate discipline – shouldn’t in fact exist at all.
