Author: Dennis

Podcast #90: Articles, Events, Jobs, Twitter

Post author By Dennis
Post date April 15, 2011
No Comments on Podcast #90: Articles, Events, Jobs, Twitter

Dennis and Ross discuss a variety of topics including recent articles, conferences and events, some accessibility-related job openings and resources, and updates on Accessible Twitter.

Download Web Axe Episode 90 (Articles, Events, Twitter)

Transcript of podcast 90

What’s New

About Ross’ book deal!
TweetList now free with ad support (accessible Twitter iPhone app).
Fixing Alt
- 6 Reasons Bacon Is Better Than True Love
- How one decides to build a web browser

Articles

How blind people see the Internet (MSNBC)
Font Resizing Widgets: A Help or A Hindrance to Accessibility? (Glenda Watson Hyatt)
Accessible Tabs – Part 2: The Solution (Nomensa)
Keyboard Accessibility For Web Applications (Jonathon Snook) Todd Kloots, Yahoo Mail
21 PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0 (W3C)
Web Accessibility: 10 Common Developer Mistakes by Joe Dolson

Conferences & Events

CSUN Wrapup: Tweetup, student contest, Web Axe Post-CSUN Resources.
John Slatin AccessU Accessibility Conference from Knowbility, May 17-19, Austin, Texas.
Free presentation on Evolving Standards in Accessibility, Wed, May 25, London, UK. A half-day event covering the new British Standard for web accessibility, BSI8878, and the international accessibility standards from W3C, together with practical examples.
jQuery ARIA Hackathon, July 11-12, Toronto.
Future Midwest – April 28th – 29th (UX focus).
Next year no overlap between CSUN and SXSW.

Jobs

Deque Systems seeks 508 Tester on-site in Washington, DC (on WebAIM)
WCAG2 Content & Compliance Officers (Australia)
Dartmouth college seeks an Experience Designer – Accessibility in Boston (on LinkedIn)
AbilityNet seeks Head of Accessibility and Accessibility/Usability Consultants (London, UK)
More:
- New! AT Work job board for accessibility and assistive tech specialties.
- On Twitter, follow @Accessible_jobs and @a11yjobs.

Accessible Twitter Updates

Accessible Twitter over 2 years old!
Accessible Twitter receives AFB 2011 Access Award.. Other recipients are CBS, Lexmark and Walt Disney Parks & Resorts.
Speech from AFB Awards

"fixing alt" alt

Fixing Alt – How one decides to build a web browser

Post author By Dennis
Post date April 7, 2011
1 Comment on Fixing Alt – How one decides to build a web browser

This is the next blog in a series titled “Fixing Alt” where I supply alternative text to graphics on the web that badly need it.

This time it’s How one decides to build a web browser, an hilarious comic which makes fun of Google and takes a (deserved?) low blow at Internet Explorer 6. So here is the text version (a definition list seemed to work semantically):

How one decides to build a web browser

Simple illustration with three panels, one for each browser.

Mozilla Firefox: Two people at a computer. One with a pensive look on his face, and the other says “Let’s create a better Internet experience that everyone can use.”
Google Chrome: Three people at a computer. One says “How else can Google control the Internet?” Another says “Let’s make a web browser!”
Microsoft IE6: A man squatting over a laptop computer with his pants half down and saying “I’m ganna shit on the keyboard and see what happens.”

review

AccessibleTech Website Analysis; No Joke

Post author By Dennis
Post date April 3, 2011
5 Comments on AccessibleTech Website Analysis; No Joke

Saw a new Google ad on Web Axe this past Friday, April 1, that I couldn’t help but click. After viewing the ad’s website briefly, I had slim hopes that this was yet another techie April Fool’s joke. Unfortunately, it was not. The website for AccessbileTech has many accessibility and usability issues when claiming to be accessibility experts/consultants. Let’s examine:

Skip nav link is visually unreadable (due to lack of contrast from background image).
Text links unclear; too many link styles; blue bullets appear to be links but not.
Headings not marked up as headings, such as Products & Services.
Mismatch in alternative text in News & Events heading image; alt says “events”.
The ordered list on the home page and on the Accessibility Goal page are not marked up as an ordered list; uses spans and break tags, yuck!
Hover states on links don’t have focus states.
Home tab is highlighted on all pages. Confusing, especially for those with cognitive disabilities.
Table layout, 5 levels of nesting. Nuff said.
No language declared (in HTML element).
CSS used for emphasis rather than markup (Company page) “.style1 {font-weight: bold}”
Small decorative image (203 by 141 pixels) on About Us page is almost 40K in file size! Needs web optimization to make smaller.
On home page News & Events section, audio and arrow icons are confusing, they appear to have functionality, but there’s no behavior attached to them.
Simple layout is fixed width; making flexible width would accommodate different screen resolutions.

Not funny. Agree?

Update

The owner of this website has contacted me. Most of the issues listed have been corrected.

administrative

Hosting Problems

If you haven’t noticed yet, the web hosting account which stores all of Web Axe’s CSS, images, and podcasts (EchoEchoPlus) has been down all day today and is still down. The CSS and most images have been restored by me a few minutes ago by moving them to another host. The podcasts are still unavailable. Big apologies for the inconvenience. And believe me, I’m more bummed (and pissed off) than you. -Dennis

Update:

Two days later, services restored. Fully functional now.

conference csun roundup

Post-CSUN Resources

My last podcast previewed CSUN (The 26th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference), which happened last week. It was a great success. Fortunately a few folks have written great summaries of the event, listed below. Also, I’ve posted some CSUN11 photos on Flickr.

Here are two excellent resources for session presentations and more:

The Great Big List from the 2011 CSUN Conference by Curb Cut.
CSUN 2011 Web highlights by Leonie Watson.

Some notable blog posts:

My March Madness – John Foliot.
CSUN 2011, jour 1 : compte-rendu des conférences (English translation) – Denis Boudreau.
Notes on #csun11 – Joshue O Connor
Lightening Talk on Accessible Twitter updates at CSUN Tweetup – Dennis Lembree.

Suggested presentations relating to web accessibility are:

Accessibility of HTML5 and Rich Internet Applications (WebAIM and The Paciello Group): ARIA Morning Session | ARIA Afternoon Session
Accessible HTML5 media players, captions, audio description and search (PDF) – Terrill Thompson.
Making rich internet applications accessible through jQuery (PDF) – Chris Blouch (AOL) and Hans Hillen (TPG)
Using the barcamp/unconference format – Jennison Asuncion, James Timony and John F Croston.
Improving Web Accessibility for the Elderly – Roger Hudson.
DISTCHA: an attempt to kill CAPTCHA – Vincent François & Samuel Sirois.

Any more to add? Please comment!

Additions

Successfully Integrating Accessibility in your Organization’s Web Development Lifecycle – Denis Boudreau.
Role of engineering best practices to create an inclusive web – Srinivasu Chakravarthula.
CSUN: A recap from the week in San Diego – Technology for the Blind.
CSUN 26th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, San Diego – Virtual Imaginings.
IBM CSUN 2011 presentations