Training overview

AccessibilityOz’s training is unique in that we train your staff in accessibility by category (such as forms and images) instead of focusing on relevant success criteria. This takes a lot of the complexity out of WCAG2 and provides trainees with immediately usable techniques, code and examples.

Our accessibility seminars and training is designed to suit you – web content authors, web developers, business analysts, technical writers, testers and web managers.

Our training:

• Takes the complexity out of WCAG2
• Includes practical hands-on exercises
• Provides in-depth training manuals
• Is available on-site at your location, anywhere in the world
• Is available virtually, both live and pre-recorded
• Can accommodate a maximum 25 attendees (we don’t recommend less than four people per course)

Some statistics about our courses

We have surveyed more than 115 participants across 18 individual courses. Of those participants:

• 99% of respondents found the course useful to their work
• 99% of respondents thought the trainer was very knowledgeable in the area
• 94% of respondents would recommend our courses to a colleague
• 94% of respondents rated our courses ‘Good’, ‘Very Good’ or ‘Excellent’
• Only 1% of our respondents rated our courses ‘Below average’

Comments from our feedback forms

“Very useful. I feel with this new knowledge that now I can help empower the community I work for through accessibility.”

“Gian is the kind of ‘we’re all in this together’ expert who readily acknowledges and thanks attendees for helpful input and questions. She is attentive to comments, responds to questions, and generally makes everyone feel at ease.”

“This workshop is very well put together with lots to take away and I would highly recommend for all digital developers not only those focussed on mobile.”

“Training was exceptionally useful. It was like drinking from the fire hose, but I will be drinking from the fire buckets for several months (or years) as I process this information.”

“Bring back year after year. Wonderful training.”

“It really made me realise how important accessibility training is as I felt empathy towards people with disabilities. It was a bit emotional at times!”

“Gian obviously has a huge amount of experience and she uses so many real-world examples successfully.”

“I walked away feeling like creating accessible documents, web pages, and communications is easy to do as a common practice, that I can implement from here on out.”

“Gian was a great teacher. She not only had the knowledge but was very conscientious of the audience, if we were understood or were behind.”

“The presenter’s knowledge, passion, and presentation skills were inspiring.”

“I wish this session would have been longer. The speaker was amazing and the topic extremely compelling.”

“The construction of the material around the webpage uses, rather than going by the guideline order, helped give the techniques context and application… making them easier (hopefully) to remember.”

“Even though the trainer is not a developer, she was still very knowledgeable on the theory behind why certain things in JavaScript had to be done for accessibility purposes.”

“As a designer who is already knowledgeable in WCAG and visual accessibility things, I still learned lots of new stuff that I can pass on to my team… Gian was a great lead for the session and I enjoyed her passion of the a11y space.”

“I would say I am quite comfortable with HTML, however, as I discovered in training, there are actually a lot of elements that I have not used before or even knew about.”

“Alt text for images – I had no idea that even existed, also the heading styles, making borders around text to make them look like text boxes, all of it!”

Some testimonials from previous attendees

Jason Markou, Digital Accessibility Lead

University of Sydney

In 2017, AccessibilityOz was hired to provide several days of WCAG 2.0 training for content authors and web developers. The training was engaging and informative, and our staff responded very enthusiastically. The training team’s knowledge of WCAG requirements was encyclopaedic, and the training used real-world examples and hands-on exercises to keep attendees on track. The provision of additional resources and tools, such as the OzWiki (library of digital accessibility resources), has been of ongoing value.

Karen Herr, Accessibility Engineer

Optum

I recently attended a workshop on Mobile Web accessibility testing presented by Gian. It’s difficult to find good documentation and direction on mobile web, but Gian put forth some great techniques, boundaries, and pitfalls to look for. I recommend this workshop to anyone looking for a more in-depth look at Mobile Web accessibility – you’ll walk away with some new tools in your personal toolbox.

Dave Chia, Owlnet Coordinator (Web Services Section)

Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

I would like to thank you for running Accessibility Week. Before I attended, I was wondering if accessibility was just a bunch of hoo haa – a chance for organisations to make more money? I believed that it created a lot of work with little returns.

But as I sat and listened, I realised that I was sadly mistaken. I came to realise the importance of accessibility. Additionally, I also found out that the work that needed to be done wasn’t massive. Just small simple steps taken in creating the document would greatly improve the accessibility and usability of the documents.

Thank you for opening my eyes and helping me to understand the importance of accessibility.

Christian Brenner, Technical Lead

NOW media

As Technical Lead for a company that prides itself on producing accessible, easy-to-use and high-quality websites, I jumped at the opportunity to have Gian teach our staff the finer points of meeting WCAG guidelines. Initially, I wasn’t sure how much the team would get out of the training because as a general rule we make a point of being versed in the requirements of accessibility, even though up until now there has never been any real specific requirement (or request) to do so. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Gian’s training was first-rate, easy to understand and very informative and pertinent. She uses specific code examples to keep the information relevant to practical development, rather than talk about things at a high-level and lose the engagement of the developers involved. As an experienced developer of 12 years who makes a point of focussing on accessibility and usability, even I managed to learn a lot, a testament to Gian’s knowledge of the subject and the fact that you really do never stop learning.

I would strongly recommend all developers, experienced or not, partake in the training Gian provides, because not only will it help to formalise and structure the information that they already know, it will help them to build better quality websites and they’ll probably also find (as I did) that they don’t really know as much as they think they do.