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Podcast One – Web Standards

Thinking Accessible Podcast

[podcast]http://thinkingaccessible.com/podcasts/web_standards_podcast1.mp3[/podcast]

[Intro Music] Welcome to the first podcast of Thinking Accessible. My name is Rocío Alvarado and on today’s podcast I will talk to you about web standards.

Web Standards are a set of guidelines developed by a group of people a while back to ensure consistency within the HTML code and CSS. There are several web standards out there, but the most wide spread is the World Wide Web Consortium that you can find at w3c.org. So these guidelines, when you go to their website they can be a little overwhelming because of their writing and the way they display things, but they are pretty straightforward and are proven to be advantageous in many regards. Notably for your maintenance of your code. So because the code is consistent any HTML coder can take up where you left off. And because there is a clear separation between layout and content. Basically, your content is your HTML code and your layout would be integrated into your CSS. Then it becomes much easier to look at things and to decipher what is what. There’s also an increase of navigation for your user. Navigation means going through your page without getting lost or your code be what it’s intended to be. For example, when it’s a paragraph you should put the <p> tag, when it’s a list you should put the <li> tag, sorry the <ul> and the <li> tags because it’s what it is, it’s a list.

Basically what web standards are, are good practices for HTML and CSS. It’s just as simple as that. You are a professional and you should follow the standards. That’s as clear as it can be.

It has also been proven to be very effective in terms of search engine optimization. Have you ever heard the term SEO? This is related obviously to Google and Google likes web standards because it’s structured and they know where to find the headers and the different parts of your pages which they are keen to look for, so it’s not just about your meta-tags.

[Exit Music] To learn more please check out my blog at thinkingaccessible.com where I also have listed some useful links. Bye for now!

Audio from ccMixter entitled “Café Connection” by Morgantj under Creative Commons.Creative Commons

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Forget CSS Opacity for now

It’s been trendy for a while now to play with transparency to simulate layers, but guess what? Yeap, you know it. It’s not valid under CSS2.

Stuff like opacity: .4 -moz-opacity: .4 filter: alpha(opacity=40) for the moment out of the question. We all have to wait patiently until CSS3. Yeah you heard me CSS3. If you did’t know, CSS2 is the current cascading style sheet language recognized by most of your browsers and it’s getting a face lift. Alas, the due date is unknown at this point.

If you want more information on this check out these important websites:
www.css3.info
www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work

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Firefox Accessibility Extension

Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 let the user add plugins to the browser. There are about a million of them that you can find either on the menubar under Tools and Add-ons or at their website at addons.mozilla.org. The add-ons that any web developer must have are Firebug, to debug the code and make adjustments on the fly; Web Developer, to disable, highlight, display, outline, and validate just about anything on any web page; and a recent discovery of mine Firefox Accessibility Extension.

Although Firefox Accessibility Extension has similar features than the Web Developer add-on, it’s still pretty sweet. Not only does it give the user a toolbar, but also an extra heading on the menubar, between Tools and Help, which I personally prefer rather than having a bunch of toolbars taking up space on my browser. The greatest feature of this extension for a web developer is that you can validate your web page for accessibility. Its FAE Rule Set is based on Functional Accessibility Evaluator 1.0.1 developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

FAE on the menubar
FAE on the menubar

If you have any mistakes these are listed in a window with a description of  the error. Obviously there’s a learning curve where you have to know the terms that the report is referring to, nothing a little research won’t solve. These rules are very straightforward, but not exhaustive. This tools gives you a simple and fair reading of your page and this is already a very good starting point.

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Color Contrast Analyser by Colors on the Web

I have been using this tool for some time now. It’s simple and straight forward. It will tell you if your colour combinations are good or not.  Large and bolded text are categorized differently than smaller text. The program also tells you what priority your combination represents. Priority 3 (AAA) is the lowest level, so for all intents and purposes, this is the minimum requirements. Although the page is a little clutered for my liking, I bare it. After all it’s free!

Check it out at: http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorcontrast.asp

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Content Management Systems with accessibility

Content management systems (CMS) have become very popular in the last 3 years or so. They usually are pretty easy to install and to upgrade, but not all of them have accessibility in mind. What often happens is that the theme designer has to make it her or his business to create a site as accessible as possible.

I came across some CMS that have accessibility integrated into the system in an article written by the National Center on Disability and Access to Education named NCDAE Tips and Tools: Content Management Systems & Accessibility.

They explain the major challenges that people with disabilities face while using a regular CMS and give us advice on how to choose a responsible system. Most of the systems they recommend have an accessibility page stating there attempt to respect accessibility guidelines. This is valuable information that can help anyone accessing the site. Read this article before considering any CMS.

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Laws in Canada

I just read Accessibility Laws In Canada by Tara Cleveland, A little dated, but really worth reading. The author writes about the legal incentive for web accessibility in Canada. According to Canadian codes, Websites should be accessible, unless, of course, the site doesn’t provide any goods or services online, post job opportunities, or have any employees that need to use the site to do their jobs. Which frankly is a big chunk of websites. So push your boss and youself to make all websites accessible.

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So what is web accessibility?

Web accessibility is part of web standards. It focuses on making any online content accessible to people with disabilities. These people use a variety of assistive technologies to navigate through the Internet. For example, people with visual impairments often use a screen reader to read outloud the text on the page. People with reduced motor skills use adapted keyboards or mouses that help them click on links amongst other things. All these technologies are pretty pointless if the code is not correctly implemented.

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Yet another post on Web Standards

What are web standards?

Simply put, they are a set of guidelines for web development and web designing. It represents the good practices of the profession. When I started creating websites I had no idea their were rules, but now that I know they exist and I know why I need to use them I cannot code without them. There are several sets of guidelines around the world, but the most widely known is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) web standards. Found at www.w3.org. This site is a little overwhelming for someone just starting to look into web standards, so I will attempt to provide some basic guidance and to list the most important elements.

Web standards are important because without them web accessibility is impossible. Web Standards make it easier for usability and even for code maintenance, reduce bandwidth use and increase cross-browser compatibility. Another great advantage of web standards is SEO (search engine optimization). Sure you can get all these even if you don’t follow the standards, but it will cost you.

The only disadvantage that I can think of, even if it’s not a valid reason to avoid web standards, is time. Time to learn it, time to implement the guidelines and time to test it.

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