UK struggles with same problems as U.S.

Not really surprising, but still a good read. Web inaccessibility ‘creates net underclass.’

Accessible Writing Links

All the technology in the world won’t matter if your web content is hard to read. This can be a particular problem for anyone who uses “insider” talk, like research institutes, colleges, and nonprofits. This isn’t a complete list, but I recently found two sites that might help.

Crawford Killian’s “Writing for the Web” blog — Discussion and resources from someone who stays informed.

The Poynter online-writing listserv — Low-traffic list for the web-writing community. A couple of people post writing seminar announcements.

Readability.info — Analyzes web text for reading level, like the function on Microsoft Word. The site won’t write good web content for you, but it might be a useful tool.

Speegle Speaks

speegle.co.uk is a google like search engine that reads the results to you out loud. Not all that usefull, but a pretty good demo of this company’s technology.

Research and Development of Accessible Technologies Webcast

From the NCDAE site…

Join us on Wednesday, December 1, 2004, for a live audio webcast entitled, “Research and Development of Accessible Technologies”. The webcast will include presentations from national leaders in this area and will focus on research and development processes for accessible technologies, including the motivations for developing accessible products, the costs of including accessibility features, and the marketplace for accessible technologies. Panelists will be announced soon. Participant comments and questions will be welcome via email. The one hour webcast will begin at 2PM Mountain Standard Time (1:00PM Pacific; 3:00PM Central; 4:00PM Eastern). You can tune in to the broadcast free of charge. You will be able to tune in using your computer using either Windows Media Player or Quicktime. Archives (transcript and audio) will be available shortly after the conclusion of the broadcast. The broadcast will be captioned for the Deaf and hard of hearing.

User-centric GUI Design Explained to All

Again with the slashdotting. But this is a continuation of a topic from last week, and here is some links to a few good articles. Enjoy, and I swear, no more slashdot links for at least a month.

Browsers as test platforms

There is an interesting article from accross the pond about how to use browsers to develop and debug html structure, javascript, CSS etc. Read it and discuss below.

Accessible Links

Some guidelines for accessible hyperlinks that I emailed to someone awhile ago…

1. Most important, make sure the actual link is descriptive (not just the surrounding text). Users of screen readers can tab through links and the screen reader reads only the linked content. If the link reads “Click Here” or “Download Now.”
2. If a graphic is really necessary and used for a linked item, be sure that is has an appropriate alt tags
3. Consider use of the title attribute if needed for documents with long titles or documents offered in multiple formats
4. When possible, avoid the use of pop-up windows. If necessary, be sure to inform the user that by clicking on the link they will be leaving the site
5. Add a ‘Skip Navigation’ link at the top of a page to allow users to skip to the content of the page (alternately, consider a ‘Skip Content’ link if needed to access navigation easily)
6. If necessary, add the tabindex function to hyperlinks to specify the order that they tabbed to
7. If links are on the same line, be sure to use a separator

Others?

Are Usability & Security Opposites in Computing?

Not that Slashdot needs the traffic, but they are discussing something that might be of interest to this crowd. “Instinct tells us that computer security and computer usability are inversely proportional to each other…However, there have been plenty of cases where both computer security and computer usability went hand in hand with each other and actually improved together.” They then, without irony, link to a pdf white paper.

Firefox is here!

I’ve used Firefox as my primary browser for development for the past year and it has performed great. I highly recommend it for you and your organization. From mozilla.org:

The wait is over. Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster, more safely and more efficiently than with any other browser. Join more than 8 million others and make the switch today � Firefox imports your Favorites, settings and other information, so you have nothing to lose.

For profit, or not for profit

Having attended SXSW Interactive and the IDEAS conference this year, it was interesting to compare how the profit world and the non-profit/government world push design and usability forward. The profit world seems to be motivated by profit and market share, they government world by Section 508. Both have had their successes (wired.com, Library of Congress – American Memories) with modern usable design. But which side is doing better and why? Do you have a better user experience on a commercial site, or a government site?