Web Standards, Accessibility & More » web accessibility

CSUN12 Favorites

Dennis — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:36:11 +0000

A few weeks ago, I attended the CSUN 2012 conference in San Diego, California. Another great time learning about accessibility and networking. I met several folks for the first time in-person including Jimmy Chandler, Laura Legendary, Sarah Lewthwaite, Makayla Lewis, and previous Web Axe guest Joe Dolson. And it was very nice to hear Easy Chirp mentioned in sessions a few times. Here are some fun highlights.

Biggest Hit

The CSUN Tweetup was a smashing success. Video games and certainly an open bar this year helped acquire more attendees! Check out these hilarious photos. Special thanks for Jared Smith and Mike Paciello for organizing.

Amusing Slide

This presentation slide cracked me up. It’s from the end of @PaulJAdam’s presentation “HTML5 & WAI-ARIA Forms-jQuery Validation”.

Amusing slide from Paul Adam.

Reality Check

This slide from ARIA Widgets presentation by @Todd Kloots pretty much says it all. In the web development world, we are in between HTML4 and HTML5 right now (we developers can start coding HTML5, but much support is currently missing from browsers and assistive technology).

Great simple slide from Todd Kloots.

Session With Most Style

The session Accessibility is the New Black by Wendy Chisolm and Elle Waters is definitely most stylish. Photo from tweet by @GoodWitch.

Accessibility Is The New Black!

Practical

The slide “Benefits of web standards” by Howard Kramer from A Web Standards & UD Approach to Access gives some great info on why coding properly is important.

Makes it easier for people & search engines to find your content (including AT users)
Separating structure and behavior makes your site easier and less expensive to develop & test. (And much easier to update.)
Makes your site lighter (smaller file size).
Semantic markup makes your site more accessible to different kinds of browsers and devices, incl. mobile devices and AT.
Designing with standards in ensures that your site is forward compatible.

Want more?! Check out my Flickr CSUN12 photo album the Web Axe Women of CSUN12 podcast! And I’m already looking forward to next year…

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Accessibility Article, Award, Conferences

Dennis — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 16:44:16 +0000

This year continues to be as busy as ever!

In January, I finally published my big article 25 Ways To Make Your Website Accessible. The idea was to get it on a major online magazine, but red tape got in the way, and I hate red tape. Anyway, the article got great response from the community on Twitter.

In February, The American Foundation of the Blind announced the winners of their AFB 2011 Access Awards, and my web application Accessible Twitter was a recipient! I’ll be traveling to downtown Seattle next week to attend the ceremony at the 2011 Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute (JLTLI) conference. Weird part of this is that Disney Parks & Resorts also won the award, but at the same time,Â Disney was sued for inaccessible websites!

The week after Seattle, I’ll be traveling back to San Diego for the CSUN conference (Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference). I published a Web Axe podcast which discusses the conference, CSUN 2011 Preview. I’m not speaking at the conference as I did last year, but I will be judging a contest!

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Smashing Magazine Doesn’t Know Accessibility

Dennis — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:48:59 +0000

Smashing Magazine doesn’t know accessibility; article feedback from their (second) accessibility ‘expert’ said to use this code as an example:

Click here for more information on bat species

You should never use “click here”! This is a total accessibility fail!

I’ve been waiting on publication of a big article for 6 months now, and this is part of the hold up? Ugh, so frustrating!

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Big Month on Web Axe (Nov 2010)

Dennis — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 01:01:03 +0000

I sure had a busy November 2010 with Web Axe, my podcast and blog on web accessibility and web standards. Here a summary of the posts:

Podcast #86: EDUCAUSE Review, AHG Preview, HTML5 Audio with Terrill Thompson (Nov 2)
Dennis speaks with Terrill Thompson about a variety of topics including a summary of the EDUCAUSE conference; a preview of the Accessing Higher Ground (AHG) conference; community efforts to fix the web; HTML5 audio, video, and controls; and captioning.

AccessU West Keynote by Web Axe Host (Nov 5)
About a conference in January in San Jose, California, for which I present my first keynote address!

Feedback on A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Web Accessibility (Nov 6)
Some corrections and clarification on a popular article.

HTML5 Sanity Check (Nov 21)
A warning about the readiness of HTML5 pertaining to web accessibility, and some great articles and resources too!

Response to Twitter Keyboard Shortcuts (Nov 23)
Comments on the irony of keyboard shortcuts on Twitter.com when the site isn’t keyboard accessible.

November Link Roundup (Nov 30)
Every month this year I’ve been publishing a list of links going around Twitter which pertain to web accessibility.

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New Theme – Accessible 1.0

Dennis — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:10:08 +0000

Last week I installed a new theme on this WordPress blog. It’s calledÂ Accessible 1.0, and it’s a child theme for WordPress’ (somewhat new) default theme, “Twenty Ten”. The child theme was developed by Sylvia Egger (@Sprungmarkers)Â of Cologne, Germany. I’ll be tweaking some of the code, but overall, the web accessibility is a great improvement over the WordPress’ default theme. Accessibility enhancements include the following (taken from its web site):

Accessible colors and contrast according toÂ WCAG AAA.
Accessible and visible link focus for keyboard use.
Optimized link hover and active states.
Skip link to content visible on keyboard focus.
Added skip links back to top after content and after footer area.
Added additional hidden headlines for sidebars (left and bottom).

PS: My previous theme was accessible (after tweaking) but I wanted a fresh look and wanted to support Sylvia’s Accessible 1.0 theme!

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Presentation at INDATA Conference in Indy

Dennis — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:14:52 +0000

Last week (July 29 2010), I presented the session “Twitter and Web Accessibility” at the Assistive Technology Conference hosted by the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana.

It was my first time in Indy, strange since I grew up only a 5-hour drive away in the Detroit suburbs. Except the humid weather and lousy flight delays on the way home, it was a great experience! It was great meeting the organizer of the event, Sara Croft, and running into the keynote speaker, John Bramblitt, at the airport. In addition to the excellent keynote speech by John, a highlight of the conference was an accessible gaming arcade provided by the AbleGamers Foundation. My presentation went well, and had a great conversation with a few visually-impaired users afterwards. Oh, and I took some photos of downtown Indianapolis.

Here’s my presentation below, a SlideShare link and embedded SlideShare Flash version. Or, go to the (text-only) HTML version.

“Twitter and Web Accessibility” INDATA Conference 2010

View more presentations from Web Axe.

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Disappointed in Google WAVE

Dennis — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:12:56 +0000

Google WAVE logo

What can I say besides I’m just plain disappointed in Google WAVE. There was so much hype, so much excitement about it, and now it’s evaporated.

No HTML5

I understood that WAVE was to be done in HTML5, but it has a doc type of HTML 4.01. And actually, I found that it has a very serious case of “Divitis” (too many DIV tags). Can’t find any type of HTML5 tag at all, not even a section tag, header tag, nuthin’. Just a ton of DIVs and SPANs.

If you’re curious, here’s a look at the top of the source:

And the generated source:

Not Accessible

Google WAVE is not web accessible. Period. Simplistically, this means that people with disabilities cannot use it, or it’s very difficult. For more on this, check out my Web Axe entry Podcast #75: Jeremy Keith Interview, Google Wave and Google Wave Preview Accessibility Review by WebAIM’s Jared Smith.

To further frustrate us web accessibility professionals, Google has stolen the name of WebAIM’s free tool WAVE (web accessibility evaluation tool).

No Usage

No one’s using Google WAVE. Most people I know now who want a WAVE invite (and that’s a lot of folks), has received one by now. And I haven’t seen much activity at all. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen any new messages for a month now.

If you’re on WAVE, please send me a message; that may help me feel better! (smiley) My address is dlembree [AT] googlewave [DOT] NOSPAM com

Addendum

How ironic. I just noticed that I received some WAVE invites, so if you don’t have an account and still want one after reading this (smiley), please feel free to leave a comment.

I overheard something that made me think of this funny line:

Today’s Google WAVE invites are becoming yesterday’s AOL invite CD ROM disks.

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