WordPress Forum Thank You
Most of the time, I actively enjoy doing a little part-time work in the WordPress support forum. Not only is it a great resource for hunting down tips, tricks & workarounds, but getting involved in threads, or problem-solving issues, is a good way to learn and keep on top of new core developments or issues. So the mention in A Little Support was a bit of a surprise bonus.
W3C Universal Validator
The goal of the Unicorn Project is to create a universal validator that will be able to validate and check multiple quality aspects of a document through a single Web interface.
Unicorn
As well as developing Web Standards, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) also provides online tools and services to check that content published on the Web follows these specifications, as well as a number of other tools to improve the global quality of Web sites. The most popular are the Markup Validator, CSS Validator and Link Checker.
Whilst these services are useful, it is often cumbersome for developers to use them individually. The Unicorn Project aims to provide the big picture about the quality of a Web page by gathering the results of all these tools into a single page.
Unicorn does not replace each individual validator. Instead it intends to unify them and increases their usability by providing a one-step check for the many facets of Web Quality and Web Standards Conformance.
The project is now seeking feedback and Unicorn is available for testing at http://qa-dev.w3.org/unicorn. Bear in mind that this is a temporary placement and subject to change. The development team hope to move it into production in the near future.
CVS.com To Meet Web Accessibility Standards
CVS/pharmacy, the United State’s largest retail pharmacy, recently announced that it will enhance web accessibility on its site.
The announcement is the result of a collaboration between CVS/pharmacy, the American Foundation for the Blind, American Council of the Blind and California Council of the Blind.
CVS/pharmacy’ has committed to ensure that its online pharmacy, www.cvs.com, is accessible to users with a wide range of disabilities, including blind computer users who use a screen reader or magnification technology on their computers and those who rely on a keyboard instead of a mouse. CVS.com will implement these enhancements by the end of 2009.
“An accessible web site is crucial if people with vision loss are to obtain goods, services and information on an equal footing,
” said Paul Schroeder, vice president, programs and policy group of the American Foundation for the Blind. “We appreciate CVS/pharmacy’s commitment to ensure that CVS.com is usable by the broadest range of online consumers, including those who have disabilities.
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Halloween Pumpkins
A Halloween theme in orange, yellow and black with a horizontal page navigation menu. Sticky post titles are highlighted in the second horizontal navigation menu with categories, archives and links listed in the single vertical menu. All menus are widget-ready and a custom widget-ready page template is also included. Header customisation available via the WordPress Admin interface along with an option to toggle sticky post display on the front page.
Download Halloween Pumpkins from WordPress.org
Support: Quirm.net forum
KidPaint WordPress Theme
A three-column fixed-width theme with a widget-ready static home page template and index page.
Includes sticky post highlighting, custom threaded comments and a header customisation option.
Download KidPaint from WordPress.org
Support: Quirm.net forum
Staples Web Site Access
Staples, the world’s largest office products company, recently announced that it will make its web site accessible to people with disabilities. The company has also agreed to install tactile keypads at its point of sale devices so that people who have difficulty reading information on a touchscreen do not have to disclose their PIN and other confidential information.
This is the result of the 34th Agreement reached without litigation using the Structured Negotiations process. 11 of those agreements require accessible websites.