February 26, 2007
Spotted in today’s BBC News:The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) is getting a make-over and is dropping the ‘man holding white cane’ from its logo:
It said the current design suggested the charity was only for the blind when in fact it helped the partially sighted and works to prevent blindness.
…
“The logo as it stands promotes the idea that we are a charity that only helps blind people rather than also partially sighted people.” [Ciara Smyth, head of communications at RNIB]
The article also revealed that the RNIB is changing its marketing pitch from “helping you live with sight loss” to “supporting blind and partially sighted people”.
Given that many people on the fringes of web accessibility equate accessible web sites/pages with those that can be used by blind users, it will be interesting to find out whether this re-branding filters down and changes these perceptions.
February 25, 2007
A thought-provoking piece by Mike Davies:
Creating an accessible web experience involves the co-ordination number of independent groups. The website builders have an important role, but they cannot cover the entire spectrum of accessibility issues. The user-agent vendors (typically browsers, but not limited to that) play an equally important role, taking accessible content and rendering it in an accessible way. They are also tasked with the responsibility of easing visitor access to content by features such as font-resizing, alternate stylesheets, colour filters, print functionality. The assistive technology provider also plays an important role, making sure that content is conveyed to the user in a way they can perceive and operate…
To that, I’d add a question: what about the responsibility of the end users? The onus also needs to be on them to know which tools are available to them and how to use them properly?
GAWDS has failed. Accessifyforum has failed. Accessites is fundamentally flawed. WCAG 2.0 is in trouble. Joe Clark’s WCAG Samurai remains as a glimmer of hope, so to is WaSP’s Accessibility Task Force. We need something that doesn’t repeat the same mistakes as GAWDS and Accessifyforum, but at the same time be open to involvement by the community, for the community
BarCamp London 2: Accessibility Panel Thoughts.
February 24, 2007
Mark “dive into mark” Pilgrim delivers a nice little extension for keyboard users:
Firefox toolbar buttons are not in the tab order; there is no way to reach them with the keyboard. This is an accessibility problem, because everything should be navigable with the keyboard. Actually, that’s a misstatement. It is more correct to say that every function must be possible with the keyboard. It is acceptable to duplicate each button’s functionality in menus, which are fully keyboard navigable. This is the route Firefox has historically taken…
It doesn’t work yet with dropdown menu type buttons, but it’s an excellent start: Tabbable toolbar buttons in Firefox.
February 22, 2007
To mark the imminent release of Web Standards Creativity - a book that covers a wide range of inventive web techniques, using tricks from the world of DOM scripting, CSS and more, and all with web standards front and centre - the whole posse of authors (well, apart from one notable exception) are going to be having a little competition at this year’s SXSW Interactive. Coincidence or otherwise, all of the individual chapter authors are not only going to be at SXSW, but we’re all speaking at one or more sessions (Patrick and I are doing a session entitled Accessified: Practical Accessibility Fixes Any Web Developer Can Use); your task is to track each and every one of us down to get a chance to win a copy of the book.
There are ten copies to give away and all you need to do is:
- Print out the PDF below
- Track each of us down (the flyer has a picture of each of us and where we’ll be speaking)
- Ask us nicely to stamp the relevant section on the flyer.
- Buy us a beer (optional)
- Offer up some mindless chit chat (optional) before finding your next victim, I mean author
- When you’ve got the whole set, be sure to ask your final stamper to mark the time/date and sign it for you (the final stamper will need to retain the flyer or just tear off that bottom section as proof)
The first ten people to complete the flyers will each get a copy of the book, once it’s available to ship. Good luck!
[tags]SXSW, SXSW2007, WSC, Web Standards Creativity, Competition[/tags]
February 4, 2007
The Universal Usability site houses an unabridged, online version of Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers, by Sarah Horton, published in 2005 by New Riders Press. You’ll find the complete text and illustrations from the printed book here under Access by Design Online. The online version also offers links to texts and tutorials that support and expand on the concepts covered in the book.
A wonderful book and now a great online resource…thanks Sarah!
January 25, 2007
Last week I attended a 1-day conference hosted at BT’s head office in London entitled Extending Horizons - Accessibility to Next Generation Networks. It was one of those conferences that gets bandied about by email at work along the lines of ’so-and-so might want to go to that’. So-and-so was me, this time! I had little in the way of expectations, to be honest, knowing very little about the COST219ter initiative which this conference was tied in with. After the day’s events I’m still not entirely clear, as it seemed to be, to some extent, a lot of ‘preaching to the converted’. Maybe I got this wrong, but I felt that many of the audience knew a fair amount about this initiative and that my interest in web accessibility was not a big item on the agenda.
Regardless, I got a free book!
OK, so it’s a very academic book and not one that you’d want to read while waiting for a flight, perhaps, but there are some useful sections in there that readers of this site may find useful - a way of jumping outside the web accessibility bubble and seeing some of the bigger picture, specifically the issues that may face users with so much emerging mobile and wireless technology.
The book is available in hard copy (by request in writing) or you can download PDF or HTML formats of the individual chapters.
Note to the conference organisers
- If you are providing name badges, please please include the company or organisation name that the delegate is representing; a logo is also a great addition, where possible.
- Allow time for speakers to answer questions. If people over run slightly, be a little flexible and allow this to eat in to coffee time or lunch time, or be more strict with speakers’ timing
- Announce where speakers’ slides are going to be posted after the event. Many slides were zipped past, some of it content heavy and impossible to make notes about, but none of the speakers said “‘ll post my slides in x location”
January 17, 2007
The fine conference that is @Media once again takes place this year - or should that be ‘thrice again’? The teaser site has been up for a while but today we get to see the proper site including more information about the speakers for this year’s events which take place in San Francisco, Hong Kong and London
If you want to support the event with a link, then you can get a choice of linkybuttons from the appropriate page (e.g. here are buttons for Europe)
December 27, 2006
You may think that it’s a lost cause trying to get web apps/pages that use AJAX and the like to work on today’s browsers and assistive technology. Sure, it’s a pig of a thing to sort out but you, dear reader, are not powerless. Some time back (September this year), the W3C working group for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) set out plans to address the various issues surrounding these types of non-trivial web pages (in other words, web pages that look/behave more like desktop applications).
Now they are after your help. The draft suite of documents that form the basis of ARIA’s work is up for public review. The three documents for review are:
Closing date for public review is 19th January. So, if you’ve been lamenting the state of play of AJAX and accessibility, now’s your chance to do something practical to help out.
December 14, 2006
Many times in the past I have been asked “How did you get into accessibility?”, and I often interpret this as “Why do you care about it so much? Do you know someone who’s affected?” Usually, I respond by clarifying that I did not start preaching about accessibility for my own selfish reasons (if selfish is the right word), but that I found out about it almost by accident. I realised that there was a general gap in people’s knowledge about it and it just seemed like the right thing to do to let people know what it was all about. This very site came about as the result of the various tools and wizards that I had created and scattered around the web to help people make their pages more accessible.
Today, as I sit at work pondering how to get other people in the organisation I work for as passionate (or at least half as passionate) abut this thing we know as web accessibility I’ve been thinking about what my drivers were for this again. I have come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that I am atypical, and that I cannot expect other people to be interested in it to the same level as I am. Or can I.
So, this post is a bit different - I would encourage you, dear reader, to comment on this post and tell me and all other readers:
- How did you get into web accessibility? Was it because you have a relative that is affected and you felt the need to spread the word, or did you do it simply because it seemed like a niche market that you could become an expert in? Go on, be honest. I’d really like to know where we got to where we are in this field.
- And if you have found yourself in a similar situation to me - feeling like you’re the guy at the bottom of a pit ranting about accessibility and trying to be heard - what did you do (or are still doing) to get other people as enthusiastic about the topic when they do not have personal reasons for doing so. Because let’s be honest, it’s not the most sexy or exciting topic on earth and many people would much rather be picking their toenails or pulling out belly-button fluff.
Really looking forward to reading people’s responses to this one.
[And before anyone suggests this, yes I have read the chapter about implementing accessibility in the enterprise in the Friends of Ed accessibility 'bible'].
December 11, 2006
Spotted on Jeremy’s blog - his entry about judging some awards at the BIENE Accessibility Awards event. It sounds like Jeremy got to see many fine examples of quality sites with well built markup, something that you can admire in any language (although it helps if you understand some of the lingo, too, as Jeremy does). But it was this part of his posting that really stood out for me (emphasis added is mine):
My personal favourite is the website of the Media Management department of the Wiesbaden Technical College. I like the nice clean design. They also offer material in plain language and sign language. It scales nicely, it’s usable and it’s accessible. But what impressed me most was the story behind the site.
The website was created by students. A small group put the whole thing together in three months. They did this as just 12.5% of their coursework, so there was a ton of other work they needed to attend to at the same time. Under the guidance of professor Stephan Schwarz, they learned about structuring documents with markup and styling with CSS. The end result is something that would put many “professional†agencies to shame. What a debut! An accessible, good-looking site from people who have learned Web design the right way, without ever having to nest a table.
Like the man says, a great achievement and hopefully it’s testamament to changing methods of education. There is a whole heap of bad teaching materials out there that people can learn from, but thankfully I’m seeing more people in the educational sphere who are finally teaching things the right way. Wouldn’t it be great if, a few years from now, reporting on an achievement like this would seem like a waste of words because everone did things the right way? Of course we’re not there yet so, for now, this is something to celebrate. Well done on your award, students of Wiesbaden - go spread the word of good markup even further!
