I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind... Terry Pratchett on alt.fan.pratchett

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Why Triple-A Sites Aren’t

Published: January 6th 2007

Accessites.org boasts an impressive showcase of some of the most attractive and accessible sites around. Yet, if you check any of these sites out, you’ll find very few of them sport a “Triple-A” badge. Most only claim Double-A compliance. Why? If these sites are amongst the “best of the best”, why aren’t they Triple-A? Because [...]

Best Practice Sharing

Published: December 11th 2006

Mark Gristock, marketing director of usability firm Foviance has attacked web accessibility consultants and organisations for, in his opinion, deliberately witholding their knowledge of user requirements from the rest of the web design sector. He then goes onto say: If they had any interest in raising standards, they would be sharing their findings with the [...]

Tabindex At Your Peril

Published: November 3rd 2006

Tabindexing allows a designer to specify the order in which links or controls receive focus on a page when using the TAB key to move around. For example: <ul> <li><a href=”one.html” tabindex=”1″>Item 1</a></li> <li><a href=”two.html” tabindex=”2″>Item 2</a></li> </ul> Elements on a page that do not have an associated tabindex will have a ‘natural’ ordering (ie [...]

Firefox 2.0: The Right Change In The Wrong Way

Published: October 27th 2006

Firefox 2.0 introduces some changes in its default keyboard mapping compared to previous versions. Specifically, where keyboard navigators might have previously used: ALT + A.N.Other Key to activate a site facility that had an accesskey assigned to it, they’ll now have to use: ALT + Shift + A.N.Other Key

Site Advisor? Site Misadvisor!

Published: October 13th 2006

Site Advisor is a downloadable tool from McAfee that claims to protect Internet users from all kinds of Web-based security threats and annoyances including spyware, adware, unwanted software, spam, pop-ups, online fraud and identity theft. Site Advisor’s so-called “innovative technology” appears to be, basically, just a bot that amongst other things, signs up for things [...]

Deaf To See Announcements

Published: October 5th 2006

I was particularly interested in the BBC’s recent article on LAMA (Location Aware Messaging for Accessibility). As someone whose hearing regularly goes from semi-reasonable to profoundly deaf, anything that allows me to see/hear public announcements in train stations would be a godsend. Any sound in an echoing environment is a problem and hearing aids, which [...]