Categories
administrative

Excellent web site re-launch from Web Axe listener!

Therese Nielsen, a veteran Web Axe podcast listener, has been a major contributor to the relaunch of the University of Michigan’s Services for Students With Disabilities web site earlier this year. The following is a portion of a message she sent:

I just wanted to let you know that listening to Web Axe helped me out a great deal as I created the site!…It has received a lot of really positive feedback, and a visually disabled student who is reviewing UM sites for accessibility recently raved about how much she likes using the site, calling it ‘wonderful’.

Thank you for the kind words Therese and congrats on the fine work!

Categories
abbreviation acronym language podcast

Podcast #64: Language, Abbreviations, and Quotes

This podcast covers the markup for Language, Abbreviations, and Quotes; CSS is a whole other issue which may be covered in a future podcast.

Download Web Axe Episode 64 (Language, Abbreviations, and Quotes)

News

Announcements

  • Web accessibility consulting now offered by Dennis & Ross; contact them at webaxe [AT] gmail NOSPAM dot com
  • The next Refresh Detroit meetup is Wednesday, July 30.

Main Segment

General Guidelines
Language in HTML tag


Code Examples: Blockquote

Dennis and Ross are highly recommended for web design!

Jane Doe



Dennis and Ross are highly recommended for web design!

Code Examples: Inline quotes
A customer for web accessibility consulting said Dennis and Ross are
highly recommended for web design!, and that was pleasing to my ears.


Dennis and Ross are highly recommended for web design!

As Jane Doe said, Dennis and Ross are
highly recommended for web design!
Code Examples: Abbreviations & Acronym
CA
Cali

Also, the abbr attribute can be used in table headers:

colors selected currently

CSS + Aural Style Sheets
acronym {speak : normal;}
abbr.initialism {speak : spell-out;}
abbr.truncation {speak : normal;}

Language Codes

List of language codes; the Representation of the Names of Languages. From ISO 639, revised 1989.

Other Links

Categories
articles guidelines

Post-Guideline Age for Web Accessibility?

Are we entering a Post-Guideline Age for web accessibility? It’s an interesting new argument being made in the article Web Accessibility. Life In the Post-Guideline Age from the E-Access blog.

I believe there is a good case for this:

  • Too many different guidelines and laws.
  • Too many different technologies are being developed.
  • Just because a site passes web accessibility, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s usable (this is what the article focuses on).

Here’s a good excerpt from the article:

I think of this as a pyramid. Web accessibility is the foundation. Usability by disabled people is the next layer. And both of these underpin the ultimate goal: excellent user experiences by disabled people (and everyone).

Categories
"assistive technology" conference law

Web Accessibility Conference (Nov 11-14, Boulder, CO)

The University of Colorado-Boulder is hosting the 11th Annual Accessing Higher Ground Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference, November 11- 14, 2008.

The main topics include:

  • implementation and benefits of Assistive Technology in the university and college setting
  • legal and policy issues, including ADA and 508 compliance
  • campus media and information resources, including Web pages, accessible

The web site describes the event as:

Disability Services at the University of Colorado at Boulder presents Accessing Higher Ground: Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference for Education, for Businesses, for Web and Media Designers

Categories
acrobat adobe

Acrobat 9 and Accessibility

As you may know, Acrobat 9 has recently been released. Fortunately for all, making PDFs accessible is even easier than ever.

There’s some good information on the Acrobat 9 accessibility FAQ page, and many accessibility features are explained. Here are the highlights:

  • Acrobat has an OCR text recognition feature that allows you to apply OCR to the scanned pages.
  • The form tools in Acrobat 9 Pro and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended allow you to automatically recognize form fields in PDF files and Microsoft Word documents.
  • Several tools can create tagged PDF files automatically, including: Microsoft Office applications when Acrobat is installed; the most recent versions of Adobe FrameMaker®, InDesign®, LiveCycle Designer ES, and PageMaker®; the Web Capture feature in Acrobat.

Podcast on creating accessible PDFs

[update June 6] Refresh Detroit’s next meetup will feature a presentation on this topic. Acrobat: Features, accessibility, and version 9 – June 18, 2008