Buzz Archives for May 2004
Bookmarks for Standards Testing
In the linkdump to end all linkdumps, Joe Clark has posted a massive list of bookmarks for standards and accessibility testing. With links covering everything from color deficiency to progressive enhancement, Joe's bookmarks are worth poring over for an hour or eight — an excellent, exhaustive resource.
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Tables, easier?
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Patrick Griffiths points out a few flaws with those thinking that tables are easier for layout than Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), in his entry, Tables My Ass.One myth is that CSS is 'hard'. It isn't hard. Well, not any more difficult than any other approach. The problem is that experienced ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in CSS
- No Peeing in the Pool
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Last week, Google reignited the syndication wars by relaunching Blogger with support for the Atom syndication format and API in the free service, but RSS support only in the paid Blogger Pro. A few days later, the W3C fanned the flames by offering Atom a home. Some, including Microsoft über-blogger ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Standards: A Long Term Investment
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In Non-Standard Code Hurts The Bottom Line, D. Keith Robinson highlights some of the long-term perils of failing to adhere to established standards for web development. It can be tempting to view web standards only in terms of the initial development process - and it's this perspective that can lead to ...
By Drew McLellan | Filed in HTML/XHTML
- Webby Award Validation Woes
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If content is king then valid pages must be the poor suckers down in the dungeon. The Webby winners were announced today, and while certainly some of the most content-rich, culturally valuable, and technically helpful sites are on the roster of winners, there is only one valid home page among ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in HTML/XHTML, Validation, Web Standards (general)
- I18n
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I18n — you may have seen this abbreviation before, and you might even know that it stands for 'Internationalization', but do you know how to do it? With 3 new Working Drafts published over the past few days, the W3C has begun addressing content authors directly via their Internationalization GEO program. ...
By Dave Shea | Filed in HTML/XHTML
- The New Blogger
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Blogger, Google's popular weblogging service, has just been thoroughly redesigned — and after looking under the hood, it becomes quickly apparent that they've drunk deeply from the web standards kool-aid. In their own announcement of the redesign, Blogger notes that their new blog templates are all CSS based, standards compliant, ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS, Web Standards (general)
- Mozilla DOM Inspector
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Old news to some no doubt, Richard Rutter reveals that the DOM Inspector built in to Mozilla can be used for, among other things, sniffing out CSS bindings. Ever been stuck looking at an element and scratching your head wondering which, exactly, of the 20 possible cascading style rules is affecting ...
- Just One Reason Why We Put An End To The Browser Upgrade Campaign
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Those who have followed the WaSP for several years will remember the Browser Upgrade Campaign, a spirited attempt to get rid of old, weak, and infirm browsers that lacked support for Web standards through encouraging people to upgrade to new, strong, and healthy browsers with strong bones and a shiny ...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Browsers
- Markup Validator Upgrade
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Announced today, the W3C has released a big upgrade to their popular markup validation service: (The new release) features new documentation and navigation, and offers helpful explanations and recovery mechanisms instead of fatal errors. To the unpaid volunteers who maintain our trusty steed, a big round of thanks and praise for making ...
By Dave Shea | Filed in Validation
- Message To The Messengers
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In a nostalgic nod to the past, John Allsopp of WestCiv praises they that went before us as he pays respects to a small group who worked with CSS before CSS was workable. Message To The Messengers sheds some light on the work done in the late 90's by a crew ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS
- WYSIWYG + W3C? Y!
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This one's for anyone in search of a standards-compliant, in-browser XHTML editor for their CMS (or weblog tool, or webmail client, or... you get the idea) XStandard was built with standards and accessibility in mind: XStandard manages rich content in any language, has strong accessibility features, and supports popular editing options including ...
By Dave Shea | Filed in HTML/XHTML
- Bold? Italic? It’s all semantic to me.
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While we all know a big goal of the W3C's work is to separate our presentation from our document's structure, Matthew Thomas points out that sometimes the proper elements to do the job don't exist. When semantic markup goes bad showcases logical flaws in, for example, replacing all instances of <b> ...
By Dave Shea | Filed in HTML/XHTML
- Stylin’ Atom, Talkin’ Turkey, Easin’ into Accessibility
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Mark Pilgrim's been diving into using CSS to style his Atom feed. He's got an interesting discussion about what he's done plus examples on his weblog. But you have to use a real browser to see it work - I'm sure you're all as shocked and surprised as I ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Accessibility, CSS, Web Standards (general)
- Ohio State University: Kudos
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Looking for a web standards job? This morning while reading an unrelated article about finding a job that suits work standards, I thought why not use Google to find openings for web standards jobs? My Google search terms, *job openings web design standards guidelines accessibility* returned results that included The Web ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Accessibility, Authoring Tools, Training, Web Standards (general)
- It’s Okay to SMIL Again
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The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) - pronounced smile - is an XML-based W3C specification that offers numerous creative and practical uses for web-based multimedia applications. But, SMIL has been frowning along for years now with no significant activity or momentum. If you've been wondering whether SMIL was headed off to ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in W3C/Standards Documentation
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)