Buzz Archives for September 2006
Microformats for cheats
Get the skinny on Microformats with this handy little cheat sheet.
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in General, Web Standards (general)
- Advocacy in Education
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Hailing from Sweden, Lars Gunther, (relatively unknown to the Web guru world), takes on a sizable challenge and project to educate and advocate Web standards and curriculum change in his country’s educational system.
By Rob Dickerson | Filed in Education, Education TF, General, Web Standards (general)
- Event Handling versus Event Delegation
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It is not new, but it still is rather clever: In order to avoid having to add event handlers to each and every element you want to monitor, you can use one single handler on a parent element and let browser event bubbling do the rest of the work for ...
By Christian Heilmann | Filed in Action, DOM, DOM Scripting TF, General, Training
- IE7 JavaScript Improvements
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The IEBlog recently reported some improvements in IE7’s JavaScript engine.
By Dean Edwards | Filed in Browsers, DOM Scripting TF, Microsoft, Microsoft TF
- Target sighted - a hit but not quite a bullseye
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The accessibility case against Target.com moves on to a new stage just when Target had really hoped it would actually be dropped. Bad news for the company, perhaps, but is it all good news for web accessibility advocates as some have read it to be?
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility, General, Legal
- Detecting when good fonts change size
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Designing for the web is challenging enough, but when you need to take into account scaling font-sizes, it can quickly become a nightmare. The common wisdom is to design your pages to accomodate fonts two sizes up and two sizes down from the default, but with this new script from two clever Yahoo! blokes, your can get way more clever.
By Aaron Gustafson | Filed in DOM, DOM Scripting TF, Design, Usability
- Accessibility Webcast on Plone
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Many developers in the education field are moving to open source content management software solutions for a variety of reasons, including: better standards/accessibility support, and a growing community and network of resources and help. The National Center on Disability & Access to Education recently hosted a webcast case study of one such solution, Plone.
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Accessibility, CMS, Education, Education TF, General
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)