This blog was written by Coleman who attended the E-Accessibility Forum held yesterday at Singapore Polytechnic. Thanks Coleman!

“Imagine a world…” began Ian Leo, President of the Disabled People’s Association in his welcome address. He went on to paint a scenario where the blind can easily access websites in Singapore, including filling their income tax forms at the Iras website unaided.

His speech was so moving that when Penny Low (the Guest of Honour and Member of Parliament) gave her speech, she admitted that she such a “rush of emotion” that she decided not to stick with her prepared speech.

Then began the Forum on e-Accessibility in Singapore itself, moderated by Mr Oh Lih Bin from National University of Singapore.

The first speaker, Grace Goh, Volunteer of DPA and Marketing Manager of Design AFA, gave an introduction to web accessibility - the usual arguments for accessibility, including access for older browsers, slow connections, and other web devices like smart phones. She also claimed that making a site accessible will “increase usability by 80%”.

Shashank Bharat Agrawal, the second speaker, and Amit Padwal, the fourth and final speaker, are also from Design AFA. Shashank covered the more technical aspects of web accessibility, including some guidelines. Some of his guidelines were interesting, particularly the one on “avoid italic text” (especially since the WCAG uses italics extensively).

Preetam Rai from Ngee Ann Polytechnic gave an entertaining and informative talk about rich media accessibility. He gave a quick demo on MAGpie, a free tool for adding subtitles to (or “subbing”) your video. He also showed some accessibility features in Flash to make Flash content accessible. Yup, Flash can be accessible.

Preetam also plugged our Web Standards Group here in Singapore during the Q&A, allowing me to announce the URL of this site. So if you’re visiting here because of the forum, welcome :)

While most of the presentations weren’t very good, it was still a good event because many of the attendees knew almost nothing about web accessibility before the event, and it helped them to be a little more aware that blind people can actually surf the web.

(As long as we make it accessible.)