Author: vdebolt

Games and Accessibility

I did two things in the last few days.

  1. Participated in John Slatin AccessU in Austin, TX both as a presenter and as a participant in the some of the excellent classes and sessions offered on accessibility. If you’re self-taught on the topic of accessibility, this event is like getting your Ph.D. in accessibility. I urge you to make an effort to attend some time.
  2. Finished reading Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How they Can Change the World. This fascinating book opened my eyes to so many new concepts I could wax on about it for a long time. It has changed the way I look at many things – not just games. Anyone who is interested in modern technology and social change should read this book.

During AccessU, there was no discussion of games. That does not mean that people with disabilities don’t enjoy playing games. Today I opened my Google Reader and saw this article from ATMac: Time-Independent Games. If Jane McGonigal is right about what game design is going to mean to the future of the entire world, then we need to start thinking and talking about how games can be made accessible and compliant with WCAG 2.0. Particularly if a game is meant to have a real effect in the real world, we don’t want to bar the creative thinking that might come from the disabled who might play.

Dreamweaver Accessibility

Matt May & Dennis Lembree in Dreamweaver session at #AccessU

I went to Glenda Sims session at AccessU and ended up sitting by Matt May from Adobe and Dennis Lembree. You’d think with them right next to me, the iPhone camera would have done better, alas.

Glenda gave some great tips for making the most of Dreamweaver’s accessibility features. She also mentioned that WCAG 2.0 doesn’t require <th> cells to have scope=”row” or scope=”col” any longer. Instead, if the table is complex, use ids and headers.

Glenda also said that installing the WebAIM toolbar and the Worldspace plugin into Dreamweaver are two great tools to test for accessibility from within Dreamweaver.

Accessibility and the Law

Lainey Feingold discussing the civil rights aspects of accessibility at #AccessU

Attorney Lainey Feingold was the first speaker of the day at John Slatin AccessU. She talked about how to work cooperatively with companies to bring them into accessibility. In 15 years of helping companies implement accessibility – which she calls a civil right – she’s only had to go to litigation once.

AccessU, Here I Come

I’m trying to get myself organized to participate in AccessU where I’m slated to lead a 3 hour workshop in HTML5 and Accessibility. I’ll be out of pocket a bit, but hope to be able to post a few photos from the event here next week.

You could almost say that everything I’ve learned about accessibility, I owe to Knowbility. I’m happy to be giving back some of that knowledge at events like this.

BlueGriffon

A new web standards compliant WYSIWYG web editor is now available at bluegriffon.org. Features include that it’s open source and free, plus it does:

  • HTML5 – including forms, video and audio
  • CSS3 – including D Transforms, Transitions, Shadows, Linear/Radial Gradients and Repeating Gradients, Border Images, Columns, Flex Box Model
  • SVG
  • MathML
  • a user interface to work with some important ARIA attributes

It’s based on the Gecko rendering engine and works in Linux, Mac and Windows. Although the software is free, they are selling add ons for a few Euros each. The MathML, for example, is an add on.

You can, of course, toggle between code and design views.

A hat tip to @mollydotcom who tweeted the news.

Proud of @glazou – he made a very sweet WYSIWYG editor. x-platform, HTML5, CSS3, SVG, MathML – very cool! http://t.co/qnoV3CeWed May 11 11:54:36 via Tweet ButtonMolly E. Holzschlag
mollydotcom

Why, Jane McGonigal, why?

I am just getting into Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How they Can Change the World.

Already after just a few pages I found the answer to this problem:

Why do I keep coming back?

I call it the “Why the hell do I keep playing with her?” problem. If I could scroll through my phone for you, you would see screen after screen that looks just like this. Ladybug nearly always beats me. But I keep playing with her.

In reading McGonigal’s book, I discovered a few things about games that explain my willingness to keep losing to Ladybug. She quotes Bernard Suits, who said,

Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

In McGonigal’s list of how games are a fix for reality, fix #1 is,

Compared with games, reality is too easy. Games challenge us with voluntary obstacles and help us put our personal strengths to better use.

No surprise then that I’m drawn to word games, and that I’ll play even when I’m sure before I start that at least one opponent – my archenemy Ladybug – is going to beat me.

I’ve been interested in Jane McGonigal’s ideas about how games can improve the world since I heard her keynote at SXSW several years ago. I was similarly interested in Seth Priebatsch at this years SXSW.

Even though I’ve barely begun reading, I’m sure this is an important book. Check it out.