Buzz Archives for November 2002
Not So Fast
Apparently the toothpick didn't quite come out clean, so they've stuck Mozilla 1.2 back into the oven and will pull it out again when it's 1.2.1.
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in Browsers
- The Latest from the Lizard’s Lair
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The hard-working developers at Mozilla.org released Mozilla 1.2 yesterday. This is the first stable release to include Type Ahead Find. For some time Internet Explorer's Macintosh users have been able to focus on text links by keying in their first few characters, an important accessibility feature that allows links to ...
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in Browsers
- Upgrades to W3C Validator Are Now Live
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The W3C Validation Service today released several improvements to their software. More information on the upgrade can be found at the validator's What's New page.
By Ben Henick | Filed in Validation
- Scalable Vector Graphics Moving Right Along
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The W3C has promoted both SVG 1.1 and the SVG Mobile Profiles Tiny & Basic to Proposed Recommendation status, and has also published the first Working Draft of SVG 1.2. In addition, a great set of tables has been published showing how 15 different SVG implementations fared when run ...
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Opera Rocks
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The good people at Opera Software have been re-engineering the Opera web browser to play faster, look more fashionable, and to groove with DOM standards more effectively. They've been refining their licks for a while now, and this week are getting on stage to provide us with a sneak preview ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers
- Another invalid relaunch fixed
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The AltaVista search engine relaunched today with a new design, but the spare interface doesn’t use valid markup. No DOCTYPE, even. Sad. As Eric Meyer did with KPMG and Dylan Foley did with MSN, Trip Kirkpatrick has taken it upon himself to fix AltaVista’s markup, showing how easy it would ...
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Get ready to Contribute
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Today, Macromedia announced Macromedia Contribute, a new application that promises to make life easier for both standards-aware designers/developers and the clients who love them. Based on the Dreamweaver MX code engine, Contribute creates beautifully standards-compliant pages for people who both know nothing about markup and have no desire to learn ...
By Dori Smith | Filed in Authoring Tools
- Valid XHTML + Flash
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This site uses Flash. This site validates as XHTML.
By Jeffrey Zeldman | Filed in HTML/XHTML, Web Standards (general)
- Valid Approaches To Content Management
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IN A WORLD...where legacy content and gargantuan management systems routinely churn out inaccessible, invalid HTML...the liveSTORYBOARD CMS is a taking a giant step in the right direction. Like many tools, liveSTORYBOARD offers WYSIWYG editing from the browser, but saves the input in an XML format, using an XSLT engine to ...
By Scott Andrew LePera | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- AIFIA XHTML/CSS Site Launch
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The folks at the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture understand the benefits of structured markup and logical separation of content from style - they've launched the AIFIA site with an attractive XHTML/CSS layout that degrades nicely in older and text-only browsers, and even throws Netscape 4 a little love. ...
By Scott Andrew LePera | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Fun with CSS
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In his new article, Box of Tricks, Joe Gillespie shows how to create multiple link styles, fashion buttons using borders, and create CSS rollovers. A great article, especially because it demonstrates to visual designers the emerging power of CSS over table-based, graphic-heavy designs.
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in CSS, Design
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
Recent Buzz
WCAG 2.0 is a W3C Recommendation
By Matt May | December 11th, 2008
After 9.5 years of work, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 have reached W3C Recommendation status. On behalf of the WaSP Accessibility Task Force, I’d like to welcome WCAG 2 officially into the pantheon of Web standards.
I think this tweet by caledoniaman sums up the level of anticipation:
WCAG 2.0 and a new Guns ‘n’ Roses album in the same year. What’s the world coming to.
Interesting comparison. They’ve each had about as many pre-releases. In any case, I can say, having spent over 8 years with it, that WCAG 2 is not as entertaining as Chinese Democracy. But I do think that it’s better equipped to stand the test of time.
If I had to pick one thing I’m most happy about, I’d say it’s that the HTML- and text-centrism in WCAG 1 is largely gone. In its place is a much more flexible (dare I say robust?) concept of accessibility-supported technology. So when newer technologies can show themselves to be directly accessible, they too can be used in WCAG 2-conformant content.
Over the years, many people have conflated “WCAG-conformant” with “accessible,” and that’s led to people making statements like: “Don’t use JavaScript–it’s inaccessible.” That’s bad for everyone, from users with disabilities who actually can work with JavaScript (which is to say, the vast majority), to Web designers and developers, to policymakers, to those developing new technologies.
With WCAG 2, “Don’t use x” is no longer valid. (Was it ever?) It is now up to you, the developer, to work on the direct accessibility of your content, no matter what technology you choose. I believe we’re about to experience a new wave of accessible design techniques, as a result.
But first, we need to flush “Don’t use x” out of our system. Some are accustomed to saying it about anything they’re not comfortable with. That’s only holding accessible design back. It’s time to learn what’s out there, today, and use it in everyday Web design. It’s time to make everyone’s Web more accessible. Have a look at the WCAG 2.0 Recommendation, and its supporting material. Then, start thinking about what a more accessible Web could be. We still have a lot of work to do.
Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general) | Comments (8)