WaSP : Press : Releases : Archive The Web Standards Project (WaSP) announced the formation of an accessibility task force today. The Accessibility Task Force will work with accessibility organizations, technology vendors and others to help promote Web accessibility. The Accessibility Task Force will assist product developers and manufacturers in improving Web standards support within their products.
Category: accessibility
Achieve Accessibility with Dreamweaver
I presented a program to the New Mexico Macromedia Users Group this week. The presentation is available now: Achieve Accessibility with Dreamweaver. A couple of points to keep in mind regarding the presentation: some of the demo pages were done in Dreamweaver and showed how to code something. The speaker’s notes are not shown. I’m toying with the idea of adding the speaker’s notes to the presentation, but it is fairly complete as is.
At some point in the future, this presentation may be published at Wise-Women with some revisions for their format, but you can have a go at it right now. Permission is granted to print for classroom use.
Recordings of screen reader handling of alt text
Access Matters – Blog Archive – Speaking ALT Text The excellent new site Access Matters has provided recordings of how Jaws, Window Eyes, and Home Page Reader handle alt text or the lack of alt text. Very enlightening to hear it really read by a screen reader and most helpful to those of us who don’t have the software but need to teach other people how to code the alt attribute for nonessential images. I hope Access Matters will continue creating test cases for other topics and providing recordings of the results for us to hear. This is a valuable service and a breakthrough idea.
Firefox extension emulates screen readers
Standards-schmandards has the extension Fangs for Firefox that creates a textual representation of a web page similar to how the page would be read by a screen reader.
Accessibility: Super Nanny for the Web
Okay, so I have a dirty little secret. I watch Super Nanny. Here’s the scenario: there is this family with two parents, kids, a home, jobs, everything according to the American dream. Except that there is total chaos at home because the kids are out of control. What should be the fulfillment of a dream is more like a nightmare. Super Nanny arrives to save the day and issues the same basic instructions everywhere she goes:
- Be consistent
- Set rules and follow them
- Get on their level
- Reward good behavior
- Give advance warnings
- Explain everything
- Facilitate good choice-making
It strikes me that Super Nanny is like accessibility–bringing order to a dream that manifests as a nightmare for those with barriers to success.
The July 2004 Working Draft from the W3C, How People with Disabilities Use the Web, is a highly readable (especially for the W3C) description of some of the barriers to success for people using the web, and the super-nanny-like accessibility help that can let them be successful. Check it out and follow the links to more information if you aren’t already doing what is needed.
In a perfect world, every family would have good parenting and every website would have good accessibility. If you can move the world closer to perfection in either of those areas, please do.
New Accessibility Site Devoted to Best Practices
Access Matters Building on the quiz idea originated by Dan Cederholm at Simple Bits, this new site from Bob Easton uses quizzes to try to determine best practices. Easton says, “Join me in the search for accessibility best practices. Are practices and techniques developed several years ago still valid as web technology evolves? Designers and developers are continuously changing their techniques. As we move away from using tables for layout to using CSS for layout, what accessibility techniques need to be updated? This blog uses a quiz format to seek current best practices. Many, but not all, questions ask about techniques that can be used in designs using CSS for layout. I ask about specific situations and see how the best minds in the industry answer.”
Accessibility advance for people with tremors
IBM News – Adapter lets mouse trap hand tremor movement. “IBM researchers have invented a computer mouse adapter that eliminates cursor movement caused by hand tremors. Similar to the way camera image stabilizing systems work, the new adapter filters out the shaking movements of the hand. It is designed to work with any PC and operating system.”