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Category: News-Politics
Jim Thatcher’s expert declaration about target.com
Don’t be scared off by the legal looking stuff in the top screen or two of Jim Thatcher’s expert declaration. This is fascinating reading, even though it is a legal document. Once you get into the actual declaration it’s easy reading, too.
Thatcher tells about his background and why he’s qualified as an expert in this case. Then he explains point by point why the target.com site fails to be accessible to a blind user. The site fails on many points that are easily fixed.
Any instructor teaching a class that explained best practices for accesssibility would explain to students how to avoid these failures as core knowledge for the course. To me, it ties in with my question from a couple of days ago: What’s the problem? Why didn’t Target find web builders who regarded accessibility features such as alt text and form labels as intrinsic to any design? A company shouldn’t have to be taken to court to be forced to provide such commonly acknowledged accessibility features. What’s the problem when a major retailer puts up a huge profit-making site intended for millions of shoppers and doesn’t develop the site using basic accessiblity standards? What bit of information is missing from the corporate decision maker’s site-launch-equation that would prevent such blatant mistakes from being made in the first place?
Technorati Tags: web design, accessibility, usability, education, web design education, web standards
Eolas and browser changes
This excellent article on Wikipedia,Eolas – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, explains the patent, the litigation, the browser changes and provides links to Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, SWFObject, and ActiveX scripts and workarounds to try to deal with the issue.
Tagging goes mainstream
Well, yeah, us geeky types use tags at technorati and geeky places like that. But look at what I saw today when I was checking out the new Alejandro Escovedo album at amazon.com:
The concept of tagging content for meaning takes a whole new leap when Amazon starts doing it. My, my, change is blowing in the wind.
Save the Internet : Fighting for Internet Freedom
A few days ago, I asked you to take action at Save the Internet : Fighting for Internet Freedom to preserve net neutrality. Over 800,000 signed petitions were presented to Congress from Save the Internet, yet the House just passed a bill approving the Cope Act, which allows companies like AT&T and Comcast to decide which web sites you can see or broadcast freely on the Internet. The House completely ignored the stated wishes of the people and gave the big money lobbyists exactly what they wanted. The passage of the Cope Act is a blatant example of the new style of American government: government of the greedy, by the greedy, for the greedy. If you didn’t act the first time, please go to the Save the Internet website and sign a petition before the vote comes up in the Senate. Thanks!
Salary disparity in the usability field
Since Paul Sherman at usability blog did this whole salary analysis just for me, I thought it only fair that I link to it. UsabilityBlog: More on Salary By Gender: “So where does that leave us? The data suggest that yes, Virginia, there is a gender differential in our field. The silver lining (if it can be called that) is that the disparity seems to be less than the average (as measured in the US by the Census Bureau and the BLS), and less than the disparity in other professional occupations.”
Technorati Tags: usability
Act Now
At Save the Internet you can act to notify your specific representatives and senators that you are in favor of network neutrality. The guarantees of freedom of speech that we have in the Bill of Rights should not be up for grabs and are not meant to be applied unequally to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, BellSouth and others. The First Amendment is meant to apply to all Americans equally.