Sunday, November 30th, 2008
WCAG 2.0 is coming of age. On tuesday, the W3C Advisory Committee Members will no longer be invited to send formal review comments to the W3C team on these guidelines. So what does this mean? Well, it means that WCAG 2.0 will soon become a fully endorsed W3C Recommendation.
What does this mean for the web developer? Not too much at all, if you’re doing your job right that is. The standard broadly describes ways of providing the information on your site to as wide an audience as possible. Such as:
- Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need.
- Provide alternatives for time-based media (subtitles, transcripts etc).
- Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout) without losing information or structure.
- Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.
- Make all functionality available from a keyboard.
- Provide users enough time to read and use content
- Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures
- Provide ways to help users navigate, find content and determine where they are
- Make text content readable and understandable - Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways
- Help users avoid and correct mistakes
- Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies
(The above guidelines were taken directly from the guideline’s table of content.)
Because naturally, developers are forward thinking beasts, we won’t see much of a difference in the industry. In educating the new crop of developers however it will be another step forward for the web, so I look forward to this with great enthusiasm. Bravo WCAG 2.0!
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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Today is a great day, Obama won the election to be the next, and first african-american president of the United States of America. But that really isn’t anything new, we all know this. My point is that out of the two candidates that ran, Obama had more charm and personality throughout the whole race than McCain. This can be said about previous elections too…
Bush - Kerry
Bush - Gore
Clinton - Dole
Clinton - Bush Senior
The list goes on, it’s quite a simple equasion really, the most photogenic, hollywood type figure wins. They capture the spirit and imagination of voters and by correlation get voted for. Of course other factors can be involved.
What does this have to do with the humble developer? Well today I was reading an interview with Ryan Carson by Paul Boag about building an online brand. It struck me that a lot of what makes a brand a success is the same as what makes a politician a success, especially on the web. It’s all about getting yourself out there as he who shouts loudest gets heard.
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
It has come to my attention today that Opera and Yahoo have teamed up to provide a Web Standards Curriculum. This is great news as I found education of web standards was really kept among the techy already web savvy developers. Although it is still vital we have books out there that people can read and learn from such as bulletproof web design by Dan Cederholm, there has always been a need for a ground up approach to educating people about web standards.
Bravo Opera and Yahoo!
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
I have just finished a preliminary (beta) version of twitter timeline ready for feedback, so anyone who uses it please comment here on any additions, changes you think might make it better.
Thanks 
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Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Accessibility is hot topic right now. As web developers we are still learning the potential of the medium and how it can affect our lives. We are realising the impact it can have on people, especially in liberating those with disabilities. But instead of ranking websites in favour of their accessibility to people with disabilities, Google are providing a separate search site for accessible content.
It would be easy to think that everyone developed for every common denominator, but that simply isn’t the case. There are a lot of developers out there glossing over the fact in favour of getting the job done. I don’t blame them, people have to start somewhere, and without looking into the issue how can you really know who you are catering for? However under UK law your site must be accessible to disabled people.
What does it mean to be accessible? Well to understand that we really need to know what kind of disabilities are out there, from Dyslexia to the hearing impaired there are a whole range of disabilities varying in complexity.
Disabled people have a lot of different ways of viewing web sites, sight impaired people would need to use screen readers to read the content for them, dyslexic people may need the content broken up for them and shown in high contrast. The hearing impaired would need video content served with subtitles.
So why if in a world where the search engines rule, do they not take a step forward and punish those sites that do not comply to web standards in terms of accessibility? Maybe it’s because there is a lot of complexity involved in the varying degrees of disabilities, maybe it’s because there is no hard or fast rule that suddenly makes a site fully accessible. But I believe Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have an obligation to push this field forward and make it an issue that affects a websites exposure and ultimately its profitability.
I’d be interested to hear anyone elses opinion on the subject, so what’s your view?
Tags: Accessibility, SEO
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