August 4, 2003
Blind Users Hate Spam Too
Many people have commented on the use of certain techniques employed by some free e-mail
providers to stop spammers abusing the service and how they affect blind (or visually impaired) users. On Cookiecrook today, James Craig gives another example - a service called Knowspam. However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Read the update at the bottom and you’ll find a refreshing attitude from the people (or person) at Knowspam about a potential solution. If only the big boys would do the same thing …
August 1, 2003
UK Disability Rights Commision Inaccessible Website Demonstration
The DRC have published a demonstration showing the different ways that web sites can be inaccessible
. [Ian comments: This is really well worth a visit, as it demonstrates difficulties with using a mouse, how a blind user hears the site with a screen reader, how it might look to a visually impaired user and then finally how the web page should be built for accessibility. A good one to bookmark. PS - back from Crete and getting back in to the work ethic. Bummer, eh?]
July 31, 2003
Wanted!
I’m looking for a handful of people who’d be willing to help out testing the Accessify Fourm site before going live. If you’ve got some spare time and you’d like to help out please email me at nigel@accessifyforum.com.
Link Partnership between Macromedia Accessibility and AccessifyForum.com
Thanks to Bob Regan at Macromedia for agreeing to a link partnership between AccessifyForum.com and the Macromedia Accessibility Resource Site. Don’t forget to email gone.live@accessifyforum.com to find out when the forums goes live.
Bob’s Blog
If you haven’t already seen it and Accessibility of Macromedia products interests you check out Bob Regan’s blog.
AccessifyForum.com
Accessify Forum will be launching in the near future, where you will be able to discuss anything and everything related to Web Accessibility and get to know other people in the Accessibility community.
If you’d like to be informed when it goes live, send a blank email to gone.live@accessifyforum.com, you will only receive one email (when the site goes live) and your address will not be passed on to anyone else (promise).
If you have any comments about this please direct them to webmaster@accessifyforum.com.
July 30, 2003
EuroAccessibility Consortium
As usual I’ve not had a chance to read it yet but there’s an article about the EuroAccessibility Consortium over at the RNIB:
RNIB EuroAccessibility Consortium Article
July 17, 2003
UK Disability Rights Commission Formal Investigation into Web Accessibility
There is a meeting to get an update on the above investigation on the 8th of August in London.
If you are interested in attending then you should contact Steve Beesley at the DRC, the best place to find contact details is on the DRC Website.
July 16, 2003
New Accessible Macromedia Release
Macromedia have a new release to be announced today, Contribute Version 2.0. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to try it as I’d hoped to but here’s the low down I got from Bob Regan at Macromedia (Accessibility Product Manager). Once I’ve tried it out I’ll post a link to the review here.
If you haven’t seen Contribute before it’s a tool for non-technical users to build web pages, it integrates with Dreamweaver templates and makes web page creation possible for people with no access to a Web designer, some templates come with the product and more are available to download. And reasonably priced at $99.
The interesting thing from an Accessibility point of view is that it has an “Enforce Accessibility” option. This doesn’t change the look and feel of the product but does things like:
- Asking for alt text after adding an image,
- Using strong and em instead of b and i and
- Using relative font sizes.
Enforce accessibility is off by default. One thing that is on by default is asking for a table summary when a table is created. There’s also a set of Accessible templates available that Bob created in 2001/2002 which will work with the product.
The product itself has been designed to work with screen readers so it also makes content creation itself accessible, feedback from users of version 1 (with special needs) has been taken into account during development.
The National Federation of the Blind (the American version of the RNIB) has been given a copy for each of it’s chapters on request. Setup of the product can be achieved through a connection key (which can include turning on the Accessibility option) to simplify the process of distributing the product to content creators within an organization.
Well that’s a quick rundown of my notes from my conversation with Bob, you can get (a lot) more details from the Contribute Site, if you don’t see anything about version 2 yet then just check back later on in the day or tomorrow, although the information should be there today. I nearly forgot, it’s also available for Mac (version 1 was not).
Related to Macromedia Accessibility, there is also an Interview with Bob Regan, not related to Contribute.
July 13, 2003
Whether or not you like the author’s “witty” writing style, it cannot be denied that Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites is certainly to be regarded required reading for anybody involved in the field of web accessibility.
After hitting stores in October 2002, the entire contents of the book is now available online, broken into chapters, at the author’s site. Happy reading…
July 3, 2003
Unconfirmed Information Relating to DDA Court Cases
I was told the other day that this has been going on for a while (RNIB pursuing cases with a view to going to court) but the legislation says sites must be given a chance to rectify the problem before going to court (understandably) and to date no case has made it to court because the sites have been rectified in time.
I would guess that this is simply continuing but the reporter has only just got wind of it. This seems fair to me as many site owners don’t know that problems exist until they are told.
This information is unconfirmed.
