Latest Accessibility News on Accessify

Catching Up With the Email

Well, the heading says it all really. There’s no rhyme or reason for this post
- other than I have been going through a small backlog of mail and had some
people tell me about their sites, a few others ask questions that I was unable
to answer and so on. So, I thought I should just post this mish-mash for all
to see.

• http://www.dudleycol.ac.uk
  - "Well, we’ve tried to make out site accessible. We thought it was,
  then the RNIB audited it. A month or so later, we fixed what they found and
  the result is on-line. But we do use tables and things!" - David King.
• Paul Weddell wrote to us: "Gez Lemmon and Jane Wilcock’s study of UK
  Government web sites is not actually a survey of UK Government web
  sites. It is a survey of LOCAL Government web sites. It would be interesting
  to see something similar for Parish Councils and National Government web sites.
  For instance, the DWP, Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise to name but 3
  and also the Dept of Health." - Any takers?
• Many people write: "Your list-o-matic
  tool creates broken links and are reporting them on a regular basis."
  No - the broken links are coming from yourselves. Let me explain - you need
  to include the ‘http://’ part when you enter the URL. If you leave it out,
  you will create a link that looks like this: <a href="www.mysite.com">
  in the source code but, because you are testing it within the context of this
  site, the browser interprets it as ‘https://accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/list-o-matic/www.mysite.com’.
  Add in the http folks, and your links will work. Besides, how dare you suggest
  something on this site doesn’t work properly
• Finally, Matthew Lindop from Webprojects
  got in touch to let us know about some work that they recently completed that
  readers of this site might want to take a look at. First up the Associated
  Board of Music (ABRSM), the world’s largest music exam board, which you’ll
  find at www.abrsm.org .  The site
  aims to be accessible, standards-compliant and usable (Accessify contributor
  Dennis Kessler was involved in the usability side of things). One area of
  the site that Matthew admits they were not able to ensure was fully accessible
  was the network of message boards (so he should be interested in Nigel’s post
  below regarding AccessifyForum). The other site Matthew brought to our attention
  is City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
  which has just been relaunched with better use of CSS and a new colour switcher
  widget.

That is all, people. Nothing more to see, please move along …

Discussion of: Catching Up With the Email

Accessify Forum: Forum Index

After making a lot of changes to the forum index I now consider it to be accessible. Tables have been disposed of completely and the page passes as WCAG/Bobby AAA. I am of course open to suggestions for further improvements, the other pages of the site still need work to bring them up to this standard.

Discussion of: Accessify Forum: Forum Index

Back in the Land of the Living

Phew! That was a strange 24 hours. Accessify disappeared off everyone’s radars as the domain name expired. I had not received notification that it was due to (truth is, I thought I’d registered it for two years anyway!). This picture tells the story quite succinctly:

Regardless, the site’s back up now (no-one stole the domain name while I wasn’t looking!), so perhaps I should point out some subtle changes to the site that I made just prior to losing the whole shooting match:

• I’ve decided to try hosting Google Adwords on the site, and I hope that they don’t get in the way. I’ve avoided putting them on the home page for the time being - let’s see how they do residing on the articles, tutorials and reviews pages (and other miscellaneous pages) for now. [As some of you will have read, I'm off on a sabattical very soon, and need to make the site pay for itself and, if possible, give me some kind of return for the tools I've made available for free so far].
• I’ve also included a space for sponsored links at the foot of each page. This, too, is not present on the home page at present, but will be added shortly (just a trifling admin issue). The mechanics of how this will work are yet to be defined, but if you are interested in sponsoring a page, please drop me a line. In my 12-month absence, Nigel Peck will be managing this on my behalf.
• As a result of these changes, and as a general tidy-up, I’ve also made some subtle changes to style sheets. If you see any weirdness going on, just Shift+Refresh (or whatever your browser’s equivalent of force reloading is) - it’ll probably be a caching issue. If that still doesn’t solve it, please report a bug and I’ll investigate.

Thanks to Nick Finck, Nigel Peck and Dave Shea who helped me to stop hyperventilating/panicking when the site went down. Whatever I know about web design/markup/accessibility, it certainly doesn’t help in any way when it comes to understanding domain name registration. Doofus? You betcha

WebXACT from Watchfire (the maker’s of Bobby)

Michael Cooper from Watchfire has been kind enough to join us on the forum to discuss the accessibility of their new accessibility checking tool WebXACT.

Accessify Forum: Watchfire: WebXACT

Austin Internet Rally (AIR) Sites for 2003 Announced

Thanks to James Craig for mentioning that the AIR 2003 sites are now live. For those that don’t know about AIR, go check out the FAQs. Anyway, on with the post - if you are after examples of accessible sites that are visually appealing you could do worse than check out For The Children, Casa of Travis County, Austin Adaptive Sports and the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities.

The complete list of entries for this year are here, grouped into two categories - ’stock car’ and ‘formula one’. They’re not all great - in fact some look downright awful - but take encouragement from the fact that people are trying.

Tables vs CSS for Layout Presentation

I can’t think of any kind of visitor to this site who wouldn’t be interested in seeing this presentation, the content is excellent, the design is really nice and it’s also funny, check it out.

When you’re done with it, discuss it in the forum.

Cheers,

Nigel.

Holding Out The Begging Bowl

Since I started Accessify I have never asked for anything in return for any of the articles,
tools or anything else. I’ve simply
enjoyed positive feedback and the feeling that I’ve been able to help in some
way (as have others who also contribute to this site now). However …

As some of you may know, I am taking a break soon - from the web (partially),
from the UK (totally), from my job (which I have quit) - and am going to be
going travelling around the world for a year. Accessify will carry on, though,
and I have a babysitter all lined up
for my absence. But to take this break I have not only quit the job, I’ve
also remortgaged the house to finance the trip. It’s all a little bit scary.

On this site, I’ve always proudly claimed that Accessify is a not-for-profit
site, but I get many emails from people telling me how much time and effort
I’ve saved them for one thing or another (mainly the tools
and wizards on this site), and as I sit here contemplating a year without
income, I wonder about how much I’ve helped others to profit from my sharing.
With this in mind, I’ve decided that I should see how useful this site really
is to you, the visitors.

If you use, or have used, any of the tools on this site and feel that I have
saved you development time or cut down your learning curve, I’d really appreciate
a donation (using Paypal). It’s voluntary, of course. I don’t know what the
response will be, but if you value the site, you may be able to help me stay
at a reasonable hostel (not hotel, hostel) rather than a crappy one every now
and then - it’s as simple as that!

I will be putting a donation button on all of the tools in the tools and wizards
section, and there will be permanent link on the home page somewhere to make
a donation. It’s not something that I’ve ever done before, and it’s not something
that I would intend to keep once I am back in the UK and once more in gainful
employment, but if this site is really useful for people in the interim it seems
silly not to at least try to get something back from it.

Trust me, it’s not in my nature to do this normally and I hope that visitors,
regular or otherwise, don’t think I’m trying to force people to pay for anything.
It is totally voluntary.

Please note: This is entirely separate from the donation facility on AccessifyForum. Donations made on the forum go directly to Nigel for running/admin costs of the forum.

Thank you, all.

1-day Introduction to Accessibility

The Usability Company is now offering a one-day Accessibility Training course. The course aims to cover the most important issues surrounding accessibility on the Internet and Intranet and help managers (or anyone responsible for website development/success) to gain a clear understanding of the digital accessible arena. Course objectives are to help the attendee to:

• make sense of web accessibility by aggregating and clarifying the current issues, guidelines and legislations
• gain a clear understanding of the digital accessible arena
  • the key issues from a business, legal, technical and moral standpoint
  • the key guidelines and real world examples of problems and solutions
• receive clear advice on implementing a simple, practical and effective approach to accessibility on the Internet and Intranet within organisations and projects

We’re not sure who’s actually taking the course, but if you’re interested, the next dates are 23 October 2003, 20 November 2003 and 16 December 2003.

2004 1 Day Courses In Sheffield

Added by Nigel.

If the above dates are no good to you and you’re close to Sheffield you could always try a course I will be delivering in 2004 (but forgot to post about).

Another way of looking at accessibility

Lorraine Ireland contacted us about her experiences of learning about web accessibility, having been in the business of selling adaptive technology for a number of years. We thought that it deserved somewhere more public than a personal email, so here’s what Lorraine had to say.

Discussion of: Another way of looking at accessibility

You Can’t Beat This Beta

Get yourselves
to Matthew Ogston’s AccessibleNet.org and check out all the resources listed there. The site is currently a beta and Matthew is after any feedback that all you good people can provide. From the site itself:

AccessibleNet.org is an independent, online directory of links and resources about Web Accessibility.

Included are some of most popular, well-researched resources available in this field. New resources are always welcome and those that are accepted will be added to the directory. The database is updated daily with news, resources, reviews or ratings.

Topics are listed as follows:

• Books
• Campaigns and Initiatives
• Checklists
• Companies and Consultants
• 
  Directories and Resources
• 
  Disability Research
• Groups
• Journals
• Legal
• News
• Organisations
• Other Media
• People
• Policies
• Reference
• Standards and Guidelines
• Tools and Software
• Training and eLearning

Phew. Quite a list.