Free Xenon Consulting » Accessibility http://www.freexenon.com PSD or Image to Site with Accessibility Built In Mon, 17 May 2010 15:59:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 HTML5 Now Featuring ARIA and RDFa!! http://www.freexenon.com/2009/10/21/html5-now-featuring-aria-and-rdfa/ http://www.freexenon.com/2009/10/21/html5-now-featuring-aria-and-rdfa/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:49:50 +0000 FreeXenon http://www.freexenon.com/?p=272 I have just heard that HTML5 will be getting the RDFa stuff, and that it will also be inheriting ARIA stuff too.

I am so very happy to hear this increased accessibility and meta data. I cannot wait for an updated doc type (if there will be one), specification, and validator for all of this. Throw all of this together with CSS3 and I am one happy man!

]]> http://www.freexenon.com/2009/10/21/html5-now-featuring-aria-and-rdfa/feed/ 0 Accessibility News and Links http://www.freexenon.com/2009/10/19/accessibility-news-and-links/ http://www.freexenon.com/2009/10/19/accessibility-news-and-links/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:40:47 +0000 FreeXenon http://www.freexenon.com/?p=229 found a few interesting articles that:

]]> http://www.freexenon.com/2009/10/19/accessibility-news-and-links/feed/ 0 Sauk County Updates http://www.freexenon.com/2009/09/22/sauk-county-updates/ http://www.freexenon.com/2009/09/22/sauk-county-updates/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:39:43 +0000 FreeXenon http://www.freexenon.com/?p=74 The developer that we hired redesign and Drupalify the Sauk Counth site bailed on us after 10 months of not much progress. We have however hired for considerably more money Aha! Consulting to start over with and I am really happy with their knowledge of accessibility and usability too. I am looking forward to working with them. That process will start in early October and finish in mid December. I cannot wait. =)

One of my two concerns is that they mention Section 508 of the ADA for accessibility, which is great, but within the accessibility community that is seen as not stringent enough especially when the W3C’s WCAG 2.0 is much better and comprehensive. Then again studying the WCAG is a much bigger beat to roast, so perhaps I will have to bone up on it and lend my professional opinion to the process.

They also, amazingly enough mentioned coming over from California and gathering user requirements, which is a usability thing. It was great to hear these words. I just wonder how far they will go with it. I am excited to see.

]]> http://www.freexenon.com/2009/09/22/sauk-county-updates/feed/ 0 WCAG 2.0 Released http://www.freexenon.com/2008/12/11/wcag-20-released/ http://www.freexenon.com/2008/12/11/wcag-20-released/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:41:16 +0000 FreeXenon http://www.freexenon.com/?p=63 The W3C release the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

]]> http://www.freexenon.com/2008/12/11/wcag-20-released/feed/ 0 Access Keys http://www.freexenon.com/2005/12/15/access-keys/ http://www.freexenon.com/2005/12/15/access-keys/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2005 14:50:00 +0000 FreeXenon http://www.fx.serenitystudios.com/?p=15 Access Keys have once again found its way onto the GAWDS mailing list, as it does at least once a year , and surprisingly John Foliot has not thrown his hat into the ring. John, co-founder of WATS.ca, is one of the most vocal proponents against implementing accesskeys in their current state of support in modern browsers and I do agree with him, but I do see the value in their use in a limited manner. John is also very against the W3C’s XHTML 2.0 specification’s (a work in progress) implementation of the Key attribute which, when used together with Access element, will basically implement the Accesskey again as it is now – a designer specified key combination. This is a problem that really needs to be addressed. Email the W3C (www-html@w3.org) and leave your thoughts about this and let them know that the Key attribute is not acceptable and needs to be removed from the specification. For the real specifics of the issue see his article: ACCESS + KEY still = ACCESSKEY – The XHTML Role Access Module still flawed.

The XHTML 2.0 specificationprovides for the @role attribute which will result in a better implementation allowing user control over the keys that are assigned to roles (and not the site author) allowing key combinations that are intuitive to the user (because they will be able to be user defined). One of the current problems with access keys and the Access+Key features of the XHTML 2.0 specification is that they will most likely be different on each and every site that implements them because they will be defined by the site’s designers. There will be some that will be the same, but I think that they might be the exception and not the rule. For these technologies to be really usable for web users at large they need to be standardized (as some Roles will be) and user defined. Anything other than that will generate usability and accessibility issues.

Working with Access Keys

The discussion brought up some interesting ways to allow the Accesskeys to be user defined. A few client side Javascript based solutions were offered (Accessify.com and
a Juicy Studio Experiment), but the problem, of course, is that these will not work if javacript is disabled or not available on the accessing user agent. The preferred solution,  I believe,
is a server side solution, that way its functionality is not dependent on client side technology.

Related Links

Following are a list of links related to this topic so that you can make the decision to use or not to use Access Keys yourself! These may be a little biased but take it as you will. =)

WATS.Ca Links
Other Access Key Links
World Wide Web Consortium’s Related Specifications
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