http://accessify.com/news Accessibility news: WCAG, WAI, PAS 78 ... and all manner of other weird acronyms and stuff Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:13:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As Birmingham bruiser Brucey pointed out over the weekend, the W3C are keen for web developers to start embracing WAI-ARIA techniques now. As he said: The Web Accessiiblity Initiative’s Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, WAI-ARIA is a simple way to add information to HTML that can make Ajax ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/09/aria-on-the-fast-track/ Apologies for those who've already seen this posted elsewhere (lateness excuse: on holiday, no internet etc etc). It should be no surprise that it's getting so much coverage, though - the Accessibility Institute at the University of Texas has been a leading light in this field of research. When I ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/09/keep-the-ut-accessibility-institute/ Following coments on Twitter, one might think that the case of the National Federation of the Blind v. Target lawsuit ended up with a big win for accessibility. On the face of it, this may appear to be true - sure, it's cost Target $6 million to finally put this ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/08/target-accessibility-case-settled/ It almost slipped my mind - I was too busy marvelling at the speed and efficiency with which Firefox 3 handle multiple open tabs compared to Firefox 2 - but with that browser's v3 release last week came a big accessibility enhancement in the form of WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/06/firefox-3s-lovely-wai-aria-goodness/ There are some web sites that, when they start to use certain certain technologies, it becomes a 'seal of approval'. When a massive site like the BBC starts using technology X, it's a fairly good indication that the technology involved has gone through various assessments before being declared safe. The ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/06/bbc-withdrawing-some-microformats-over-accessibility-concerns/ The RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People), in conjunction with The Paciello Group (pronounced 'pass-ee-ello', not 'patchy yellow' as I'd always assumed!), has announced a beta release of the Surf Right toolbar, an addition for Internet Explorer that reveals numerous settings that are tucked away in various options in ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/06/rnib-release-surf-right-toolbar/ If you happen to find yourself in the lovely surrounds of Boulder, Colorado in November, you may want to make a note of this event taking place (details quoted from press release with some minor editing): The 11th Annual Accessing Higher Ground: Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference for ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/06/accessible-media-conference-in-boulder/ So, I'm a bit late in posting about this, as the site was launched earlier in the week, but you still may not know that Captioning Sucks. Joe Clark would like you to know why this is. The site itself looks like an explosion in a paint factory - something ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/04/captioning-sucks/ It was not long ago that we learnt of John Slatin's passing. As a long-time active member of the accessibility world who worked with the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative and co-authored a book on the topic, John was passionate about the topic. In his memory is a ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/04/introducing-the-john-slatin-fund-accessibility-project/ I almost forgot to put a mention on this site about something that I have been working on over the last few months, namely SitePoint's HTML Reference. While it is not specifically an accessibility resource it does cover the basics of accessibility, highlighting the various HTML elements and attributes that ... http://accessify.com/news/2008/03/html-reference-with-accessibility-features/