Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

You are currently browsing the recent entries for May, 2007

New Browser For Web Video

Published: May 26th 2007

 IBM recently announced that they were developing a new browser with the potential to enable visually impaired users to access multimedia such as streaming video. Currently named A-Browser, the tool will give visually-impaired people the same control over multimedia content that sighted people currently have using a mouse.

New Browser For Web Video: continue reading …

Web Accessibility Statements And User Support

Published: May 23rd 2007

 My attention was recently caught by a post from Rosie Sherry called Showing web accessibility statements the door. In this post, Rosie wondered if perhaps web accessibility statements were being taken too far? She felt that, in general, accessibility statements were:

  • Too long
  • Technically orientated
  • Focused on displaying of adherence to standards

Web Accessibility Statements And User Support: continue reading …

Headings As Navigational Aids

Published: May 17th 2007

During a discussion on the GAWDS mailing list, the following was raised:

Screen reader users frequently navigate using heading lists but, is their mental model of a page impaired if a header is skipped? Or are they quite happy as long as there are headers (with clearly associated content) that they can use? Is there a valid argument for deliberately omitting headers?

Headings As Navigational Aids: continue reading …

Table Captions and Internet Explorer

Published: May 8th 2007

 If table captions are block level elements, why doesn’t Internet Explorer 7 honour off-left positioning?

“The caption boxes are block-level boxes that retain their own content, padding, margin, and border areas, and are rendered as normal blocks inside the anonymous box.”
W3C CSS 2.1 Specification

Table Captions and Internet Explorer: continue reading …

Be Accessible, Don’t Meet Guidelines

Published: May 7th 2007

Some time ago, Jack Pickard published a very interesting piece in which he questioned whether too much emphasis was being placed on sites failing 1 or 2 WAI checkpoints.

Having had this article drawn to my attention only recently, I felt he had some very good points to make and that, overall, it is exactly this kind of web accessibility discussion we need. Lip service to any set of binary checkpoints is Bad and, far from undermining the accessibility arguments, playing Devil’s Advocate from time to time can only strengthen – not weaken – the case for all sites to be as accessible as possible.

Be Accessible, Don’t Meet Guidelines: continue reading …