Working together for standards The Web Standards Project


Buzz Archives for 2008

Support the W3C Validators

The W3C has launched a donation and sponsorship program to support the free validators provided by the organization. Give today!

By Kimberly Blessing | Filed in Authoring Tools, General, Outreach, Validation, Web Standards (general)

WCAG 2.0 is a W3C Recommendation

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 ...

By Matt May | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general)

“Just ask: Integrating accessibility throughout design” available in English, Japanese and Spanish

Fancy giving your site a hardcore usability test? Then why not involve people with disabilities in your testing. Not sure where to start? Then check out Just Ask: integrating accessibility throughout design. This free online book, written by Shawn Lawton Henry from W3C in her spare time, looks at all you ...

By Henny Swan | Filed in Accessibility, HTML/XHTML, International Liaison Group, Usability

BSI British Standards invites comments on new draft standard on accessible web content

BSI British Standards is inviting all interested parties, and in particular marketing professionals and disabled web users, to review and comment on the draft of a new standard on accessible web content. DPC BS 8878 Web accessibility – Building accessible experiences for disabled people – Code of Practice is ...

By Patrick Lauke | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, Action, General, Legal

Want to set up a Web Standards Café?

As a hat tip to Blue Beanie Day 2008 and in the spirit of helping spread the word of web standards, the International Liaison Group thought we'd celebrate by putting together a Web Standard Café Kit. Web Standards Cafés have been held all over the world bringing together people passionate about ...

By Henny Swan | Filed in Action, International Liaison Group, Outreach, WSCafe

WCAG 2.0 resources

Here's a starter list of some resources to help transition to WCAG 2 from the world of WCAG 1, now the new standard goes to proposed recommendation status. This is just a starter list; please add other resources that you recommend in the comments. It would be great to have ...

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Accessibility, W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general)

WCAG 2 and mobileOK Basic Tests specs are proposed recommendations

WCAG 2 and the mobileOK Basic Tests specifications have been moved to "proposed recommendation status" by the W3C, which means that the technical material is complete and it has been implemented in real sites. WCAG 2 Shawn Henry writes of WCAG 2, Over the last few months, the Web Content ...

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Accessibility, Browsers, General, Mobile, Validation, W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general)

Acid3 receptions and misconceptions and do we have a winner?

Acid3 progress and what it really means.

By Lars Gunther | Filed in Acid3, Browsers, Bugs

UK government draft browser guidance is daft browser guidance

Last friday, the UK government's Central Office of Information (COI) published a public consultation on browser standards for public sector websites: This guidance has been developed to assist those delivering public sector websites to determine which web browsers to use for testing. Public sector websites have a responsibility to be inclusive ...

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Accessibility, Action, Browsers, General, Web Standards (general)

Call-to-action: Save the UT Accessibility Institute

The University of Texas is closing its Accessibility Institute today. Non-profit Knowbility has started a petition to save it. Though you may not have heard of the Accessibility Institute, you have been influenced by its work. Its late founder, Dr. John Slatin, was the former co-chair of the Web Content Accessibility ...

By James Craig | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, Education, Outreach, Training, Usability

What the Target settlement should mean to you

It's a question many of us in accessibility have been waiting for years to be answered. Does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to the web? Sadly, accessibility's ultimate cliffhanger once again reaches an awkward denouement, leaving us deflated, and looking at yet another boring sequel. The National Federation of the Blind ...

By Matt May | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, Legal, Opinion

Announcing the WaSP Curriculum Framework

Since March 2008, the WaSP Education Task Force has begun working on the WaSP Curriculum Framework, a collection of tools aiming to identify skill sets and competencies that aspiring Web professionals need to acquire to prepare them for their chosen careers, as well as resources that will help both educators and students.

By Steph Troeth | Filed in Curriculum, Education, Education TF, General, Outreach, Web Standards (general)

2008 survey of people who make websites

In case you haven't seen it, please invest ten minutes of your time to complete the 2008 A List Apart survey so that we can build a snapshot of our industry.

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Curriculum Survey Results

The Web Standards Project Education Task Force release the results of the 2007 Curriculum Survey.

By Rob Dickerson | Filed in Action, Curriculum, Education, Education TF, Outreach, Web Standards (general)

Acid 2 Test Back to Normal

The Acid 2 test hosted here on the WaSP site was broken but is now fixed.

By Derek Featherstone | Filed in Acid2, Browsers, Bugs

British Standard for accessibility

The British Standards Institution (BSI) has invited two members of the WaSP, Bruce Lawson and Patrick Lauke, to join the drafting committee for the first British Standard for Web Accessiblity. Two years ago, the BSI was sponsored by the Disability Rights Commission to write a Publicly Available Specification ...

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF

Opera Web Standards Curriculum

Chris Mills of Opera Software ASA announced today the release of the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. The initial 23 of 50 proposed articles are published and available.

By Rob Dickerson | Filed in CSS, Curriculum, Education, HTML/XHTML, Outreach, Web Standards (general)

hAccessibility redux?

Thanks to Sebastian Snopek from the International Liaison Group (WaSP ILG), this post is also available in Polish: Wtórny hAccessibility?. Fanning the fires of the ABBR pattern debate, the developers at BBC Radio Labs announced today that they'll be removing the hCalendar microformat from their programmes listing pages, pending further ...

By Patrick Lauke | Filed in Accessibility

RNIB Surf Right Toolbar available for IE

Those clever folks at the Royal National Institute of Blind People have teamed up with the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium and The Paciello Group to produce a toolbar for Internet Explorer that exposes some of its usually buried accessibility options. It's not for developers so much as end-users; the RNIB say The ...

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Accessibility

Easy-to-use Flickr and YouTube

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that accessibility is only about the blind people with physical disabilities, and forget about those with cognitive difficulties, or those who are new to the Web. Many pages are very busy and confusing and hence off-putting. Flame-haired DOMscripting lovegod Christian Heillman, ...

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Accessibility

Opera 9.5 released

Just a short buzz: the final version of Opera 9.5 was released today, with a boatload of exciting features. Of particular interest: excellent support for current standards — (X)HTML, XML, XSLT, CSS 2.1, SVG 1.1 partial implementations of new emerging standards — CSS 3, HTML 5, and ARIA More details about the browser's ...

By Patrick Lauke | Filed in Browsers, Outreach

Spry turns two

Adobe’s JavaScript frameworks is maturing, but there’s still room for improvement.

By Aaron Gustafson | Filed in Adobe TF

Mozilla Download Day

Mozilla is on a mission to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours!

By Kimberly Blessing | Filed in Browsers, Outreach

EduTF Report Highlights Curriculum Project

The WaSP Education Task Force (EduTF) report updates our activity, announces new members, and offers a report on a Web standards based Curriculum Project.

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Curriculum, Education, Education TF, WaSP Announcement

Google’s Encyclopædia Webtannica

… or, as Google folks call it internally, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Web.

By Porter Glendinning | Filed in BUZZ Links

W3C Offers Online Training Course: Mobile Best Practices

The W3C Mobile Web Initiative is offering the online training course: An Introduction to W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices from May 26 - June 20, 2008. The course is free, registration is open, but limited.

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Education, Mobile, Training, Web Standards (general)

WCAG 2 now “candidate recommendation”

The W3C announced today that WCAG2 is now a candidate recommendation and is likely to be "live" by the end of the year. The W3C says Candidate Recommendation means that we think the technical content is stable and we want developers and designers to start using WCAG 2.0, to test it out ...

By Bruce Lawson | Filed in Accessibility, Outreach, W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general)

This is your mobile device on Acid

The W3C's Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group have just announced a new suite of tests for mobile devices. In the spirit of the Acid tests, the test results are returned in an easily grokable visual manner—the green squares are desirable, the red squares mean a feature isn't yet supported. The ...

By Jeremy Keith | Filed in General, Mobile, Outreach, Web Standards (general)

The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

Recent Buzz

Support the W3C Validators

By Kimberly Blessing | December 20th, 2008

The W3C has launched a donation and sponsorship program to support the free validators provided by the organization. Give today!

It’s not often that Web folk are asked to give money to support Web Standards, so when the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) asks, we ought to listen up.

The W3C has launched the W3C Validator Donation Program to give Web people and organizations the opportunity to support what must be one of the most commonly used tools by those in our profession.

Think about it — how many times a week do you ping one of the validators to check your HTML, CSS, or feeds? Don’t you occasionally run the link checker on your site to find broken links? If you’re like me or any of the designers or developers I know, you probably rely on these services a fair bit.

As explained by Olivier Théreaux in his recent blog post, the donation program isn’t about paying for bandwidth or servers, it’s about continuing to improve the validators to support new languages, to fix bugs, and to add new features.

So what are you waiting for? Get in the holiday spirit and give to the W3C Validator Donation Program!

I heart Validator

Filed in Authoring Tools, General, Outreach, Validation, Web Standards (general) | Comments (5)

More Buzz articles

Title Author
WCAG 2.0 is a W3C Recommendation Matt May
Introduction to WAI ARIA - available in Spanish and French Henny Swan
“Just ask: Integrating accessibility throughout design” available in English, Japanese and Spanish Henny Swan
BSI British Standards invites comments on new draft standard on accessible web content Patrick Lauke

All of the entries posted in WaSP Buzz express the opinions of their individual authors. They do not necessarily reflect the plans or positions of the Web Standards Project as a group.

This site is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS | Get Buzz via RSS or Atom | Colophon | Legal