Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
The WCAG (Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines) theme song was written by David McDonald and originally posted at E-Ramp, along with a full transcript of the content.
Perhaps the best benefit of this song making the rounds is the discovery of E-Ramp, which has plenty of good accessibility information. Check it out!
The Internet Explorer blog released a story by JP Gonzalez-Castella, IE8’s accessibility program manager. Here’s a summary of their points and the changes in IE8 that will improve accessibility.
Social Media Breakfast Leverages Two Truckloads of Tyson Food Donation for Boston Food Bank! at Beth’s Blog is another story to add to the list of amazing things achieved with social media. In this case, blog comments were enough to raise 2 truckloads of food for a food bank in just 3.5 hours. How did we ever get anything accomplished before Twitter?
Web Standards: Where the ROI is from Molly writing at MIX online explains the business reasons for web standards. (MIX online has an interesting stylesheet, by the way.)
@font-face in IE: Making WEb Fonts Work is from Jon Tangerine. He says, “What we need to encourage designers and developers to use EOT today is a good tool to create EOT files in the first place. Perhaps even one hosted remotely, where we can buy a licence, convert the font to EOT, grab the same OTF subset for complaint browsers, and get the work using the typefaces we’ve always dreamed of. WEFT is not the tool right now to enable EOT usage. In fact it discourages it.”
Get your Knowbility accessibility training in California in 2009 at CalWAC. This training is aimed at university people. The conference brings together world renowned accessibility experts and webmasters from university and community colleges throughout the state of California for an intensive two day series of learning sessions on accessible information technology tools and techniques. Classes include practical instruction from basic accessibility awareness and resources to advanced assessment techniques, project management, and working with specific technologies such as Flash and PDF. There are also two optional post-conference sessions on Accessible AJAX, by Derek Featherstone and a CSS Intensive by Molly Holzschlag.
The action takes place January 12 – 14th 2009 in Long Beach. Students, faculty and staff from California State University get a discount. The conference hotel is the Marriott Long Beach Airport Hotel.
Added 12/5/08: The classes will meet at California State University in Long Beach.
Every fall the sandhill cranes return to the Rio Grande bosque and the wetlands along the Rio Grande for wintering. Watching them is a favorite annual activity. This year my Tai Chi instructor suggested we do Tai Chi with the cranes in an Open Space area near the river. A previous Open Space visitor left behind this small toy, which seemed to do Tai Chi with us, at least the lift hands part of the form.
In between several days a week of Tai Chi, I wrote these articles for eHow.
Another great place to observe the sandhill cranes and a multitude of other wintering birds is the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge, near Socorro. For those of you not from the southwest, bosque is Spanish for wood or woodland. The term is used here to mean any low-lying area near the Rio Grande, densely forested with cottonwoods and other deciduous trees.
I Hate Books at KnowIT. Miraz explains why books are obsolete and should be replaced with something better.
I provided several links in my post yesterday about WCAG 2. However, the information on this topic is vast. Here are two more.
WCAG 2 and mobileOK Basic Tests specs are proposed recommendations report at WaSP.
It’s possible that WCAG 2 could be the new accessibility standard by Christmas. What does that mean for you? The answer: it depends. If your approach to accessibility has been one of guidelines and ticking against checkpoints, you’ll need some reworking your test plans as the priorities, checkpoints and surrounding structures have changed from WCAG 1. But if your site was developed with an eye to real accessibility for real people rather than as a compliance issue, you should find that there is little difference.
Migrating from WCAG 1 to WCAG 2 at WIPA.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is a standards document from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Here’s a summary of what the guidelines are and a brief hint as to what the guidelines involve.
Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language. This will include sign language video for audio only files.
All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose. There are certain exceptions to this, including form input controls, alternatives for CAPTCHA, and making purely decorative images invisible to assistive technology. This recommendation is complex and there are a number of techniques suggested that may or may not be helpful in meeting it, for example, using label elements to associate text labels with form controls and using the title attribute to identify form controls when the label element cannot be used.
Provide alternatives for time-based media. This involves audio or video synchronized with another format for presenting information and/or with time-based interactive components. For example, an audio instruction to “click now” might need to be augmented with synchronized captions.
Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout ) without losing information or structure. This includes the way the parts of a Web page are organized in relation to each other; and the way a collection of Web pages is organized. It also means that rendering the content in a form that can be perceived by all users is possible.
Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background. This includes the choice of fonts, color, highlighting, audio controls, and contrast.
Except for captions and images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality. This includes using relative measures (such as ems) for both text size and container size.
Make all functionality available from a keyboard. This doesn’t exclude the use of a mouse, just the that functionality must be available without a mouse.
Provide users enough time to read and use content. There must be a way to turn things off or adjust the timing.
Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures. There are techniques explaining what is called the “three flashes or below threshold” for flashing content.
Provide ways to help users navigate, find content and determine where they are. This includes ways to bypass blocks of content with skip links and/or heading elements, page titles, visible focus, and clear textual cues to link purpose.
Make text content readable and understandable. This involves language choices, abbreviations, reading level and pronunciation.
Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways. Things must operate in expected ways, be consistent, and the use identification of elements with symbols such as arrows must be consistent and clear.
Help users avoid and correct mistakes. Errors must be described and explained, instructions and help must be provided when needed.
Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies. That means use valid markup and follow the standards.
There are various levels of conformance for the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The use of some techniques may be consider sufficient, even though there may be techniques that go beyond the level of “sufficiency.”
W3C Links:
Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents
Understanding WCAG 2.0
How to Meet WCAG 2.0