Archive for the ‘Standards’ Category

WebAIM Screenreader Survey Results 2009

Monday, November 2, 2009 7:20 4 Comments

As the title of this article suggests, WebAIM have released the results of their second screen reader survey. I would therefore suggest you head over there and read those results for yourself. Or you can head over an look at their summary. If you can’t be bothered to do either of those things, you might [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Social Media, Standards, Technology

Council Resigns After Blogger Criticism

Friday, October 30, 2009 1:08 183 Comments

Yup, pretty much what it says on the tin. Eleven of the fifteen members of Somerton Town Council have resigned, because they are fed up with being criticised by a blogger, leaving the Council without a quorum (and therefore new elections are required before any council decisions can be made). On his Muck&Brass blog, resident [...]

This was posted under category: Blogging, Politics, Public Sector, Standards

Accessibility Allies Against A11y

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 7:20 43 Comments

One of the things common to all web geekery is the use of the acronym. Everyone has their favourite TLA even if some people will argue about the precise semantic definition of an acronym in the first place. I don’t really have a problem with the use of acronyms, provided that they are expanded (whether [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Standards, Technology

An Analytics Problem for the UK Public Sector

Monday, October 26, 2009 7:20 35 Comments

In short: if you’re a government site, you must have a stats audit, and you’re potentially about to head into a major problem with using cookies in future… It is mandatory for Government sites to have stats audits: In the current climate of open, transparent and accountable government, it is now mandatory for government websites [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Public Sector, Standards, Technology

How should the UK public sector adopt WCAG 2.0?

Friday, October 16, 2009 7:20 48 Comments

Well, quickly would be a good start, as it’s a lot better than WCAG 1.0 — it doesn’t rely testing based on specific technologies, but instead looks at the impact on the user. But that’s not what I’m looking at here. I’m looking at what parts of WCAG 2.0 that I think are appropriate to [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Disability, Public Sector, Standards, Technology

Redbridge: i’s not all i’s cracked up to be?

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 7:45 192 Comments

I wasn’t at the digital engagement conference thingummy yesterday but I was keeping an eye on the tweets of people who were talking about it, wondering if anything would strike my eye as being particularly newsworthy, or of significant import. Having quite a bit of knowledge of accessible web design and in testing against it [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Disability, Public Sector, Standards, Technology

EU Accessibility Legislation to go for WCAG 2.0?

Monday, October 5, 2009 7:20 30 Comments

I noticed over on Out-Law that there was a suggestion that legislation for accessible websites could be introduced across the EU: Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding has for the first time talked of a ‘European Disability Act’ that could compel EU nations to adopt web accessibility rules together so that all of Europe’s [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Disability, Public Sector, Standards, Technology

Taking the sting out of IE6

Friday, October 2, 2009 7:20 11 Comments

There are two problems with Internet Explorer 6. The first is that it is a very standards non-compliant browser and so has a tendency to render stuff differently to more modern, more standards-compliant browsers such as Firefox, Opera, Safari, and even the more recent incarnations of Internet Explorer. This effectively means that any web developers [...]

This was posted under category: Standards, Technology

Understanding WCAG 2.0 Event

Thursday, October 1, 2009 7:20 19 Comments

For all of y’all out there who want to know a little bit more about WCAG 2.0, I’m running a workshop type event with PSF in Birmingham looking at precisely that on Wednesday 4th November. Full details, including booking instructions and so on, are available on the event page at PSF’s site. It looks like [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Public Sector, Standards, Technology

Accessibility Testing Log

Monday, September 28, 2009 14:08 22 Comments

For any of you wanting to carry out any form of accessibility audit, you are going to need some means to record your results, as it may prove difficult to memorise the results of forty or more checkpoints across a whole swathe of pages. To this end, I’ve knocked together a little excel spreadsheet to [...]

This was posted under category: Accessibility, Public Sector, Standards, Technology