As pointed out by Michael on the forum:
SkyFrames and The Canadian Hearing Society Sign Letter of Intent to Establish International Satellite WiFi Hotspots in Support of Deaf and Hard of Hearing People
Canadian Hearing Society and SkyFrames to Create Satcom / WiFi POPs for Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Discussion of: Canada: Satcom / WiFi POPs for Deaf and Hard of Hearing
The RNIB has often come in for criticism in the past for ‘hijacking’ web accessibility (sometimes a little unfairly, I would say). And if it’s not that it’s something else - like this animated icon, for example:
On the BCAB list Leon Gilbert writes: “The average frame duration is just 2 tenths of a second, and you get about 3 seconds to read the whole thing. Which is surely likely to cause eye strain (ironic). & The whole animation is just 120 x 60 pixels in size & is set to loop just 3 times.”
But Damon Rose (a writer on the BBC website’s Ouch microsite) goes even further:
Does anyone ever go to the RNIB website anyway?
Isn’t it really more aimed at sighted people who need reassurance and/or advice about elderly relatives? Or, more importantly, it’s about fundraising!
I put it to you, fellow debaters, that the RNIB website, with its distancing weird language and its begging cup out, is not really there for its ‘members’ or users.
I would like to see a really good lifestyle hub for blind people that doesn’t give me details about how bad my glaucoma might get … But might tell me the latest talking books being recorded are so I can look forward to it.
Come on RNIB, make this website blind friendly in content as well as in design innit!
I’ve just published my interview with Julie Howell at the RNIB:
As you have probably read elsewhere (e.g. Tom Gilmore, Jeffrey Zeldman, WaSP, What Do I Know), Microsoft have revealed how they are going to cripple their browser in an attempt to avoide infringing the patent that they have already been sued a cool $500m+ for. There is developer documentation already available out there - Apple have already provided the following:
One of the recommendations is to use an external script to write the <embed> tag - this is quite common practice anyway, normally for reasons of sniffing for the correct version of a plug-in and serving the appropriate content. However, others may need to convert plain old HTML into a script. And here’s where we can help …
First things first: putting anything into a <script> block causes accessibility problems - what if scripts are turned off? What if the browser does not support scripting? Well, I take a pragmatic approach - that being that the majority of content that would be linked in this manner is likely (but not certain) to be largely inaccessible anyway. If this does not ring true to you, I apologise. But if we take it that we’re looking at embedding Flash, it’s highly unlikely to be fully accessible. I won’t run through all the reasons why here - let’s get to the point!
If you do decide to embed an external file such as a Flash movie, and you do decide to use a <script> block to do that, be sure to make proper use of the <noscript> element. But hey, you knew that anyway, right?
Anil Dash writes today: “I’d guess most companies will start seeing a rash of error reports (”Why do I get a popup on your site?”) around January, and then they’ll want to start moving all their OBJECT tags to javascript document.writes. Macromedia’s announced that they’ll be creating a tool to automate this, I assume Microsoft will as well, and it would seem likely for Real and Apple’s QuickTime group to follow suit.”
Well, there’s already one such tool available on this very site - HTML to JavaScript convertor.
As an example, here’s a before-and-after, performed simply by copying/pasting and pressing one button:
<OBJECT CLASSID="yahtzee.py" CODETYPE="application/x-python" STANDBY="Ready to play Yahtzee?" TITLE="My Yahtzee Game">
</OBJECT>
<OBJECT CLASSID="java:Yahtzee.class" CODETYPE="application/java" WIDTH=400 HEIGHT=250 STANDBY="Ready to play Yahtzee?" TITLE="My Yahtzee Game">
</OBJECT>
<OBJECT DATA="yahtzee.gif" TYPE="image/gif" TITLE="A Yahtzee animation" WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=100>
Yahtzee is my <EM>favorite</EM> game!
</OBJECT>
Gets converted to:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
function writeJS() {
var str='';
str+='<OBJECT CLASSID="yahtzee.py" CODETYPE="application\/x-python" STANDBY="Ready to play Yahtzee?" TITLE="My Yahtzee Game">';
str+='<\/OBJECT>';
str+='<OBJECT CLASSID="java:Yahtzee.class" CODETYPE="application\/java" WIDTH=400 HEIGHT=250 STANDBY="Ready to play Yahtzee?" TITLE="My Yahtzee Game">';
str+='<\/OBJECT>';
str+='<OBJECT DATA="yahtzee.gif" TYPE="image\/gif" TITLE="A Yahtzee animation" WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=100>';
str+='Yahtzee is my <EM>favorite<\/EM> game!';
str+='<\/OBJECT>';
str+='';
document.write(str);
}
writeJS();
//-->
</script>
It’s a basic tool, admittedly, but it may be useful for some. I leave you to decide.
mikea has provided a nice overview of the European legislation on the forum:
Some time ago I put together a small article demonstrating that accessible
sites did not need to be pig-ugly - they could actually be things of beauty!
Initially, I was hoping to get examples of large corporate sites but I’ve since
come to the conclusion that this is about as likely as me growing a second head.
Nevertheless, I have been sent lots of examples of accessible sites that a worth
a look, but there’s just one thing to clarify …
A CSS-based site does not automatically mean an accessible one. Some people
have pointed this out to me before, as it is not clear from the previous article
that this is the case. It just so happens that the sites are both accessible
and table-free CSS-based designs.A table-based design may actually
be far more accessible for a large audience - for example, the content may have
far more navigation tools to take you around the page and the content may be
excellent, well-written copy that is totally relevent to the person browsing
the site and as such may be far better than a CSS-based layout.
There’s no hard-and-fast
rule, but the general trend seems to be that the people who have taken steps
to learn how to make a site accessible usually don’t stop at simply providing
alt attributes and providing <noscript> elements - they invariably go
‘the whole hog’ and take the accessible site to its extreme. Thus nearly all
of the sites submitted will work on a handheld almost as well as they might
on a PC/Mac. Anyway, now that I’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, shall
we look at what I’ve been sent?
Each of the entries below include quotes from the people who submitted the
URLs - I leave it up to you to decide how genuine the claims are or whether!
Ian hasn’t mentioned it here so I thought I would, Ian’s popped the question. Congratulations and good luck.
Hot off the press from the DRC:
New DRC campaign: Open 4 All
On the 3rd of October the Disability Rights Commission is launching a year-long campaign to raise awareness of new duties under the Disability Discrimination Act that come into force on the 1st of October 2004. These duties will mean service providers such as pubs, clubs, gyms and swimming pools, hospitals, restaurants and shops will all have to make ?reasonable adjustments? to their premises or the way they provide their services to ensure they are not unreasonably difficult for disabled people.
The launch of this campaign will see:
- publication of research illustrating the experiences of disabled people in accessing services in England, Scotland and Wales, targeted at national media;
- a series of photos of disabled celebrities appearing in consumer media, taken by celebrity photographer James Gooding, aimed at raising awareness of the issues disabled people face when trying to access buildings;
- ?Inside Out? PR stunts aimed at regional media in Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Cardiff, which will transplant poor access scenarios (such as a visit to the dentist or restaurant) onto the street
- the launch of a new “Open 4 All” microsite, www.open4all.org, giving service providers and disabled people information about the law and practical information on how services providers can meet their duties.
The DRC will undertake a range of activities aimed at local authorities, the health, leisure and retail sectors over the next six months. From April next year, with six months to go before the legislation comes into force, we will focus on raising disabled people?s awareness of their new rights.
To find out about other campaign activities going on, please visit the Open 4 All microsite soon.
To order the Code of Practice, which set out the legal position for these new duties, contact the Stationary Office by:
Telephone: 0870 600 5533
Email: book.orders@tso.co.uk
For practical advice and information targeted at different kinds of service provider, visit the microsite, www.open4all.org or contact the Disability Rights Commission?s Helpline:
Telephone: 08457 622 633
Textphone: 08457 622 644
Fax: 08457 778 878
Email: enquiry@drc-gb.org.
First there was the unordered list. And it was good. But soon people got bored
of it. "I know," said one enlightened follower of CSS, "Let’s
sex it up a bit". And lo, soon there were many lists and very sexy they
were too, but they were much dispersed and needed to find their own place where
they could all be happy little CSS lists together. Along came Listamatic and
everyone was happy. For a while.
But soon it came to pass that the Listamatic was not-a-matic,
and so List-O-Matic was created. It was Automatic.
For the People.
Then, just because he could, JZ threw down a gauntlet: "Let he who is
without sloppy code craft the first Dreamweaver extension." A one-time
tarot card reader from the East stepped into the fray and picked up the gauntlet
and asked one of his servants to do his bidding. It was good and the people celebrated
the third coming of of the tool now known as List-o-rama.
The end? I’m waiting for the List-O-Ramifier-Omatic to come
along 
Well, in all the excitement of sending the URL to other people for initial feedback, and the feedback and links back being nothing short of brilliant, I almost forgot to mention on this page a new tool that I put live:
List-O-Matic - A tool for generating list-based navigation styled with CSS
That pretty much sums up what the tool does, but feel free to play around with it for yourself. The styles there at the moment are based entirely on Listamatic’s interpretations/re-workings of existing sites, but it would be easy to add in new styles. If you want to suggest a CSS file, drop us a line using the contact us page and we’ll check it out. If it’s good, it’ll be added to the tool with a credit/link back to yourself.
Update: Expect a Dreamweaver Extension that does something VERY similar in the next couple of days … watch this space for a link