Jodi, who has recently completed her Masters in interactive gaming, started her discussion by exploring what pervasive gaming meant to different people. It was clear that while there several gamers (both hobbyists and hardcore) in the audience, there weren’t a lot of people with a lot of experience in this field. From the discussions it was also apparent that the phenomenon had a larger following in Europe and UK rather than in Australia. It is not currently clear whether this is a cultural issue – or driven by the physical environment. For instance, it is a lot easier to undertake pervasive gaming in a built up area as there are more people and locations to interact with.

Part of the discussion focussed on an emerging trend whereby the traditional boundary between ‘game play’ and ‘real life’ is blurring so that real life and in-world activities may be undertaken at the same time. A similar parallel is that of work and leisure time becoming more blended – this just takes it one step further.

One of the challenges Jodi mentioned preventing wider uptake of this hobby is reliability of technology – many games are GPS or mobile depdendent and if there are reception issues gameplay is inhibited.

Gian Wild works in accessibility at Monash University and has been heavily involved in web and accessibility standards development, including the eGovernment web accessibility toolkit for Victorian Government. The point of adhering to accessibility standards is to ensure that people with disabilities are able to achieve the same objective with a website as a person without a disability. This requirement is embodied in the 1992 Disability Discrimination Act (C’th), with which Australian organisations must comply.

At first the need to make websites, applications and user interfaces is not obvious – why spend so much effort catering for a small percentage of the population? However, as Gian highlighted, approximately 19% of the Australian population has some form of disability – including cognitive disabilities such as dyslexia, and excluding those with a minor vision impairments – such as those people who wear glasses or contact lenses.

The enforcement of the Act is done by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Their most famous enforcement act is that initiated by Bruce Maguire, who is visually impaired. During run up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, SOCOG (the organising body for the Games) released a website that was inaccessible to those using a screen reader (such as Bruce). HREOC requested that SOCOG take remedial action to bring the site up to standard. They did not, and were fined $20,000 (with around $500,000 in legal costs). Not being accessibility standards compliant can cost you dearly – financially and in terms of reputation. It is not just the fear of legal action however that should drive accessibility compliant websites and applications – making a website accessible and easy to use means that people will want to use it – increasing the chances that the site will meet the objectives it was created for.

One question from the audience was whether open source CMS applications were WCAG accessibility compliant. Gian indicated that generally they weren’t but that WordPress was reasonable, and that she would like to investigate this further. This got me thinking whether or not this work had been previously attempted – so headed on over to check out http://cmsmatrix.org/. I’m  not sure how deep CMS Matrix checks in terms of accessibility, however none of the top CMSs stack up very wel…

Gian went on to discuss the differences between WCAG Version 1 and the newly released Version 2 – essentially Version 2 attempts to be technology agnostic and provide general guidance.

When questions about effective ways to promote accessibility practices, Gian responded

“If you already adhere to best practices – you’re 80% of the way there. If people know what they’re doing, then it shouldn’t cost any more to develop a standards compliant website”

Along with Ben Balbo, Dave Hall (aka ‘skwashd’), Donna Benjamin (aka ‘KatteKrab’) and Joshua May (aka ‘notjosh’) I’ve been helping to organise a BarCamp in central Victoria, known as StixCamp. The location for this year’s StixCamp is Welshman’s Reef Vineyard, near Newstead. After swapping cars with my sister, who has a large station wagon that drives smoothly up treacherous hills and handles curves better than my buzzbox, I was off to pick up my passenger, Jackson. All was rosy. Half way to Waurn Ponds and stuck at traffic lights, a stranger came up to me in traffic to let me know that my tyre was flat! Grr! Well, Jackson was very adept at changing tyres and earnt his ride . Soon we were on the road again.

I choose to go through Ballan, Daylesford, Hepburn Springs then Newstead to Welshmans Reef because if anything else went wrong with the car at least it would be in a populated area. These towns are simply beautiful – the scenary is amazing. One shudders to think how close they all came to being destroyed in the recent Black Saturday bushfires.

Finally, we arrived at Welshmans Reef Vineyard where I met the lovely Julia and Ron (Jackson’s parents). The vineyard building itself is pretty amazing – hand built by Ron from mudbrick and timber, with a cellar cut into the ground that has a drive in entrance on the opposite side of the building.

Dave had pitched a tent for me so that I wouldn’t have to pitch one in the dark (thanks Dave) and needless to say I slept like a baby.

Note to self: next time zip up the flyscreen on the tent to stop mozzies biting you.