Posts Tagged ‘accessibility’

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Having accessibility issues with social media? Get in touch!

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

As a follow up to my post from way back in 2009 on Accessibility and social media, I’m now researching an article on the current state of social media accessibility, for the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ICT). I’m keen to hear from anyone who has recently encountered problems using social media sites due to accessibility issues  – in particular, barriers faced by users with disabilities or other special needs.

Simply leave a comment below or contact me via Twitter at @prettysimple. You’re welcome to remain anonymous, of course, but leaving contact details would enable me to follow up your comments and find out more about the problems you’ve had.

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The cost of not being online

Friday, November 18th, 2011

I’m going to start this post with a rather insignificant personal anecdote, but rest assured I’m building up to bigger things…

Early this morning, pursuing a personal vice nurtured since childhood, I bounded along to the local branch of a well known national video game retailer, planning to grab myself a copy of a newly released and hotly anticipated game. On arrival, I was shocked to discover that the price tag on the game was a whopping ÂŁ5 more than advertised on their own online store – a 14% mark-up. On principle, I left empty handed.

Luckily, I have the luxury of going home tonight and browsing for a better deal online. But what about those who can’t shop online? They would be stuck with paying the premium rate.

Read more about the cost of not being online

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Fix The Web featured on BBC Radio 4

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Fix The Web was last night featured on the BBC Radio 4 show, In Touch.

LĂ©onie Watson, Director of Accessibility at Nomensa, reported on the idea behind the site and outlined the process for people to report problems that they encounter with website accessibility.

Fix The Web is a marvellous collaboration between people with disabilities and web accessibility volunteers. It’s so easy to report problems with websites to Fix The Web, and the volunteers take the worry out of contacting website owners yourself.

LĂ©onie Watson

You can hear the show on the BBC iPlayer (UK only, available for a limited time)

Alternatively you can download and listen to the piece below:

Fix The Web radio feature (MP3, 5MB)

Reporting problems to Fix The Web

There are four ways to report a problem:

  1. Use the form on the Fix The Web website
  2. Email post@fixtheweb.net , putting the URL in the subject header and information about the problem in the body
  3. Tweet  ”#fixtheweb #fail”; include the url and what the issue is
  4. Use the Fix The Web toolbar and click the red love-heart / Fix the Web button to open a form and report any websites as you surf on them!

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BS 8878 Web Accessibility standard – launch event

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Just a quick update for anyone interested in the new British Standard for Web Accessibility – BS 8878. There will be an official launch event in London on 7th December, including presentations, Q&As and a chance to network with like-minded individuals.

Further details can be found on the BSI website.

Sadly I can’t make it down to London myself, but I look forward to hearing the discussions coming out of it. If you’re going, and plan to cover it (blog, live-tweet etc), do let me know.

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a11yLDN – accessibility unconference, 21st Sept 2010

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

Last week I headed down to London to attend the Web Accessibility Unconference – a11yLDN 2010. You can head over to the official site to find out more about the day, along with links to slides, comments etc.

Here, though, is a quick summary of my day.

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YouTube’s caption tools – still hit and miss

Friday, August 27th, 2010
Video with inaccurate caption text

A YouTube caption fail

I’ve been spending some time on YouTube recently, as we’re hosting a number of videos on the platform for a campaign we’re running to recruit foster carers.

Obviously we wanted to make sure we added captions to the videos, and to save a bit of time I’ve been trying out the caption tools. Firstly I noticed that YouTube automatically ‘machine transcribed’ some of the videos. On inspection, though, the accuracy of these was way off – possibly made worse by the particular accents which the speakers had, to which I doubt YouTube’s voice recognition is very well tuned.

More about YouTube’s captioning options

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2nd draft of Web Accessibility code of practice

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Yesterday I had a message from Jonathan Hassell, Head of Usability and Accessibility at the BBC, to let me know about the 2nd draft of the much publicised BS8878 British Code of Practice on Web Accessibility. Rather than paraphrase Jonathan, I’ve just copied his message below:

As you may or may not know, the British Standards Institute have now published the 2nd draft of the BS8878 British Code of Practice on Web Accessibility.

Read the rest of Jonathan’s message

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The long way round

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

This post has been written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010.

I recently bought a new phone. It’s great, but like most smartphones it’s taking a bit of time to get completely used to the complex interface.

On the second day of playing with it, I was browsing the web and came across a site which had Captcha. It was a Google product, and I had to complete the Captcha field to continue with what I wanted to do. The problem was, the image that it had come up with was terribly distorted, and I couldn’t make out the letters and numbers. I tried several possibilities, failing every time. Normally I would simply refresh the page to get a new image, but I hadn’t yet learned how to do that on my phone! I tried going back then forwards again, but it just loaded the same image. And crucially, there was no link to an accessible alternative.

It was one of those rare occasions where I had hit an absolute brick wall because of an inaccessible web design feature.

Read more about taking the long way round

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Blogging against Disablism Day 2010

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2010Saturday 1st May is Blogging Against Disablism Day:

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.

Diary of a Goldfish

For this event last year I wrote a piece entitled Defining Disablism which proved popular and sparked some good discussions.

I’m still undecided on what I will cover this year, and indeed may wait until the day before finally committing. It will certainly have a web focus. Watch this space! (update – didn’t get a chance to do this on the day but pulling something together now and will post soon!)

Visit the Diary of a Goldfish site to see a list of other bloggers taking part in the day, as well as links to posts from previous years.

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CSS Naked Day 2010

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Today (April 9th) is CSS Naked Day – a chance for web developers to show just how accessible their sites are by stripping them of their CSS and seeing how they hold up. With proper use of HTML, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure and no reliance on purely visual elements, any site should be able to lose its styling without making its content inaccessible.

Although no official mention of the day has appeared on the site which started it all, it seems a lot of people have made sure to observe the tradition again this year.

This is a fun idea, fully in line with the reasons for creating CSS in the first place. While most designers are attracted by the extra presentational capabilities, saving HTML from becoming a presentational language was probably a more important motivation for most people who participated in the beginning.

HĂĄkon Wium Lie

Just as with last year, I’ve stripped the CSS from my own site and it looks just fine (albeit a little dull!). I know of various other web developers who have done the same, and it’s an excellent visual way of checking that you’re up to scratch in terms of web standards.

Screenshot of my site with CSS switched off

Website without CSS

For anyone interested in this technique, the excellent Web Developer toolbar (FireFox add-on) has a handy option to turn off CSS styles.

Web Developer toolbar

Web Developer toolbar

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