Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
At the Web Standards Project site, this report highlights the education task force curriculum project.
The Curriculum Project will be a resource that could be used by those in education, as well as, anyone needing to update knowledge on Web related technologies.
If you’re involved in delivering curriculum relating to web technologies, you’ll find a mailing list and other ways to participate mentioned in the article.
Who is a senior? Someone over 65? Boomers are between 44 and 62. Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By defines elders as anyone over age 50. Does being of a certain age mean that you require special accomodations in the form of a “Senior PC” or an extra simple cell phone or an adapted elderbrowser?
Microsoft Corporation just announced a project in the UK that will start development of what they are called a Senior PC.
Read the full post at BlogHer.
I mentioned alt text in the report about WCAG 2. There are two new articles about alt text and the whether it should be required or not coming from the group working on HTML 5. See HTML5 Alternative Text, and Authoring Tools by Gez Lemon and HTML5 and alt: The Editors New Clothes by Steve Faulkner.
The HTML WG folks are talking about alt text, too. See alt Attributes Authoring Practices by Karl Dubost.
I like the idea of making a rule that all decorative images have to be inserted as background images using CSS. Then they won’t be in the HTML at all and the question of when to use alt text and when not to use alt text will be solved. It’s accessible, too. Maybe then Tweets like this one won’t show up in Twitter: “stefsull loves it when people think about accessibility as they build web sites. But THIS as an alt attribute? [alt=”Non Descriptive Image”] C’mon.”
The WCAG working group sent out this information this week. They want testing and feedback from people who implement the candidate recommendation on working web sites.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group is excited to
announce the publication of WCAG 2.0 as a W3C Candidate Recommendation on 30
April. WCAG 2.0 explains how to make Web sites, applications, and other
content accessible to people with disabilities, and many elderly users.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/CR-WCAG20-20080430/Candidate Recommendation (CR) is a major step in the W3C standards
development process; it signals that there is broad consensus in the Working
Group and among public reviewers on the technical content of WCAG 2.0.
The quick reference to the recommendations is now customizable. You can now pick only the sections you want to see. Otherwise, it is pure W3C, with multiple clicks needed to get to what you want.
In the past, there has been a blanket demand for alt text for all images (at least by the accessiblity validating tools) that is up for change. Here’s one of the success criteria for non-text content.
Decoration, Formatting, Invisible: If non-text content is pure decoration, is used only for visual formatting, or is not presented to users, then it is implemented in a way that it can be ignored by assistive technology.
I fervently hope that this means if an image is decorative only, alt text will no longer be required to pass the validation tests for proof of accessibility. This is a needed step.
The success criteria for navigation by keyboard or with screen readers include:
This used to be called skip navigation. Now they are calling it “bypass blocks.” The criteria also include bypassing with structural elements such as headings. :
It will be interesting to see what the future information on expandable and collapsible menus becomes, with accordion panels becoming so popular on the web.
New Initiative in Hyper-Localized Social Tagging at the Web Standards Project is an April Fool’s spoof good for a laugh. I’m sure you’ve seen all the lists of April Fool’s jokes around the web, but this one appeals in particular. And, Eric makes it his own with Full Disclosure. I rather like the one about This person contains outdated material. Most of me is outdated but I still work in quirks mode.
Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress is a good tutorial from OptiNiche about moving a WordPress blog.
Shelley says, “I promise to kiss Chris Wilson as soon as IE supports XHTML AND SVG.”
This is in response to a couple of kissing stories here on Web Teacher. First, this Useful Links post, in which I offered hugs and kisses to Microsoft in general, not Chris Wilson in particular. Skye commented that I needed to reserve my enthusiasm for a while. The second kissing story involved an actual kiss for Chris Wilson: WaSP Annual Meeting–Don’t Break the Web.
I think we should begin planning an unconference dedicated to delivering kisses to Chris Wilson when Microsoft finally gets the support for web standards in IE 8 done right. I suggest some rules. 1) The unconference should be in a really fun place, so we could all enjoy being there. 2) Chris must extend a cheek for a kiss to all comers—women, men, young, old. No fair letting Steph deliver the kiss for all of us. 3) After that, we all talk shop and drink Margaritas or MochaChocaLattes or Diet Coke for the rest of the day. 4) Kisses will be relayed back to Microsoft using Chris’ own two lips—during a widely publicized photo op.
In this way, popular support for web standards will receive the warmth and attention it deserves.
I dropped by the Bike Hugger and Beer BBQ Saturday evening. It was in a tented area across the street from the convention center. Free food, free beer, free schwag for bikers and a drawing for stuff that I didn’t hang around to check out. Lots of people rode in on their bikes, and then there were others like me who were still dragging their computer around.
I actually went because I was asked to be a member of the WaSP Education Task Force. There were supposed to be a bunch of people from WaSP ETF there and I wanted to talk to them about the job before I accepted it. I couldn’t find the people I expected to find, but I did talk with another new task force member, Aarron Walter. Aarron is bursting with so many exciting ideas for ways to get web standards into the university curriculum that I can see that working with him and the other team members promises fun. So I joined the team.
Technorati Tags: SXSWi