Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

After months of anticipation, the details are finally finalized: I am presenting at WordCamp Las Vegas at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Yes, the Left Thumb Blogger live in Vegas!

Together with WordPress’ parent company Automattic’s “User Interface Goddess” Jane Wells, who will be appearing via video, and Damien Patton, founder and CEO of FindAnyFloor.com (plus countless other projects on his plate!), we will be presenting the “Three Faces of Blog Accessibility” . We’ll be discussing blog accessibility from three perspectives:

• barriers bloggers with disabilities face and tips for increasing your blog’s accessibility;
• benefits to businesses for implementing the web accessibility guidelines; and
• the blogging platform WordPress’ commitment to accessibility accessibility.

Please join us!

When: Saturday, October 17th, 2009, at 1pm
Where: Las Vegas Convention Center, towards the back of the Exhibit Hall

I’d like to thank BlogWorld Co-founder and CEO Rick Calvert and BlogWorld’s Social Media Director Jim Turner for including accessibility on the blogging agenda, and john Hawkins for welcoming our panel presentation onto the WordCamp Las Vegas schedule. Having blog accessibility included at such an event is a huge step forward for increasing awareness of this issue.

See you in Vegas!

One perk of being a blogger is that readers often email me with interesting information and tidbits. Today, my loyal reader Lori-ann emailed me about a speech-to-speech relay service that enables individuals with speech impairments to make phone calls.

The phone is definitely not my best friend. I’ve had callers hang up on me, swear at me; my husband warns his contacts that I might answer the phone and to be patient. As for me calling someone unfamiliar with Glenda-ish, forget it!

So, I was definitely intrigued by the service. This fully captioned video explains how the process works:

I am somewhat skeptical that a complete stranger would understand me, particularly on the phone, perhaps because, in 42 years, it has yet to happen. Unfortunately, I may never know if this service may be a viable option for me because it isn’t available in Canada. It is, however, available other countries, such as the United States, Australia, Sweden and Puerto Rico.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if, through using this new social media, we convinced the powers-that-be to make one of oldest form of communication accessible to Canadians with speech impairments?

Liz Strauss challenges us to write 25 words on social media advice or wisdom,  which she will then compile into an amazingly creative blog post.

Here’s my contribution:

Social media gives voices to individuals marginalized and ignored by traditional media, enabling the world to hear these voices for the first time in history.

What would be your contribution?  Share your thoughts in the comments below or in a post on your own blog with a link back to Liz’s post.

Copying an idea from Chris Brogan, who copied from Copyblogger Brian Clark, I’d like to invite you to connect with me on Twitter, if you use that social media tool.

On Twitter, I share links related to accessibility and such,  thoughts and ponderings in the moment they occur, whatever else I feel like sharing in 140 characters or less. In other words, the stuff that happens in between blog posts.

Check out my Twitter profile and you’ll discover the special landing page I’ve created especially for fellow tweeters – an idea I copied from the brilliant social media diva Laura Fitton (@Pistachio on Twitter).

Hope see you in Twitterville!

I have been home from Chicago for a week and I still have SOBCon: Biz School for Bloggers on the brain. For me, the experience was more about the people than what I learned from the content.

Interacting with people via blog comments or 140 characters at a time on Twitter and recognizing them by their tiny avatar is one thing, but being together in three-dimensions and being able to talk, laugh or cry together is something much more powerful; something that is often missing when we become more and more connected online.

The one thing that really awed me while I was looking around and taking in all of who was in the room: most of us were there because of one person. We either knew her directly, we knew someone who knew her or we admired what she does. Liz Strauss has built such a strong and connected community online, one relationship at a time, that 125 of us did whatever was necessary to come together at the same time, at one location, in the same room. Now, that is trust! And inspiring.

As for my presentation “How POUR is Your Blog", well, I kinda rocked SOBCon! But, don’t take my word for it. Here’s what others were saying:

• Tweets during and shortly after my presentation
• making me cry by Jon Swanson
• What I learned at SOBcon (Day 1) – video by Jen Chicago (Unfortunately its not yet captioned.)
• Whrrl: SOBCon Blog Conference, Glenda Watson Hyatt by WhiteTrashMom
• Glenda Watson Hyatt: Is Your Blog Disabled? by Lorelle VanFossen
• You can be on Oprah and Larry King by Giovanna Garcia
• Accessibility isn’t hard once you’re aware by Richard Reeve
• Inspired by Glenda Watson Hyatt at SOBCon09 by Lorelle VanFossen
• Glenda can change your life!! Just give her a chance by Beth Rosen

Thanks everyone!

Finally, my trip photos are now available on Flickr. As soon as I figure out how to collect the photos others took of me, I will post that link too.

Now, to implement what I actually did learn…