Posts

Winter Olympics Web Site Not Accessible

Sunday, February 28, 2010

On February 12, Jebswebs and I twittered that the Vancouver Winter Olympics web site is not accessible. Jebswebs reported 58 errors on the home page alone using the WAVE tool. (View the re-tweet from Jennison.) I listed examples such as several navigation issues and Flash and JavaScript issues.

Ten days later, Joe Clark published an excellent article Vancouver Olympics Web sites are inaccessible to disabled people. He first points out that John Furlong (CEO of VANOC) broke a promise to make the web site accessible. (Even after a a blind man in Australia won a human-rights case against the Sydney Olympic organizing committee and IBM for an inaccessible web site.) Joe provides a report on the inaccessible content and also publishes responses from the VANOC and his replies.

home page of Vancouver Winter Olympics web site

It doesn't take an expert to find areas where the Winter Olympics site needs improvement. Even for alternative text, one of the most basic and important guidelines for web accessibility, the site is lacking. This includes inadequate alternative text for Flash content and the fact that many images do not have alternate text.

In addition, the following points are for navigation only!
My suggestion for those who need more accessibility? Try Yahoo's Vancouver Winter Olympics coverage.
This post is sponsored by: Dedicated Web Server

Labels: ,

9 comments

Contribute to Twitter Presentation at CSUN10

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Twitter And Assistive Tech

Dennis Lembree (@dennisl) and Joseph O'Connor (@csunwebmaster) are presenting "Accessibility of Twitter for Mobile, Desktop and Web" at the 25th Annual International Technology and Persons With Disabilities Conference in San Diego, California. The conference dates are from March 22 to 27. The presentation is scheduled at 8 a.m., Thursday, March 25.

You Can Help!

We are asking you to tweet about using Twitter with assistive tech on two topics:

Optional: audio record the written Tweets at http://twaud.io/ or whatever you want to use. If you do record, please be sure to record what you have written in each Tweet you write. Write a Tweet, record that Tweet. You don't have to record your Tweets to participate.

Accessible Twitter

This might be a good time to try Dennis Lembree's Accessible Twitter site and to Tweet about the experience.

How We'll Use Your Tweets

We will use the Tweets/audio in our #csun10 presentation. We'll present the Tweets on screen and hear the words - something for everyone. We'll be looking for patterns such as the use of desktop applications with ZoomText, or mobile text with Talks, or mobile app with VoiceOver. These patterns will be touch-points for our presentation.

Hashtag

The hashtag for these Tweets will be #csun10s with the "s" representing story.

When Do I Start?

The days/dates we'll be collecting Tweets and audio are Friday, February 26 - Saturday, February 27 in the northern hemisphere; Saturday, February 27 - Sunday, February 28 in the southern hemisphere.

Be Creative!

Feel free to be creative, to have fun, to be serious, to be furious, to be whoever you are. You know you want to do it!

NOTE:
This article on Joseph O'Connor's web site Black Telephone

Labels: , ,

2 comments

Podcast #78: Web Accessibility News

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Hosts Dennis and Ross discuss a variety of topics.

Download Web Axe Episode 78 (Web Accessibility News)

[transcript of podcast 78] (Much thanks to Joseph Montanez for helping with transcription.)

Announcements

News

Articles

Labels: ,

6 comments

EASI Webinar: Twitter And Web Accessibility

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

On the first of February, Web Axe host Dennis Lembree gave a live webinar presentation "Twitter, Its Uses and Its Accessibility Issues" as part of the EASI Social Media Series. In addition to Twitter, the 4-part series covers Second Life, Facebook and YouTube. Here are the slides and an nice HTML version.

Here is the slide presentation embedded from Slideshare:

View more presentations from Web Axe.
This post is sponsored by: Web Site Hosting

Labels: ,

2 comments

Web Axe in BBC Podcast

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

The author and main host of Web Axe, Dennis Lembree, is interviewed in a podcast on the BBC! It's in the show entitled Haiti, BIL and accessibility on the BBC Pods & Blogs section. The BBC podcast can be found here, but is only available for seven days as it is then replaced by the following week's program. (The interview starts at about 14 minutes 30 seconds into the podcast.)

The show notes state:

New and social media should not be left out of the equation of course. Dennis Lembree makes the Web Axe podcast about accessibility and has also created a Twitter reader that he says is 100% accessible.

Much of the phone interviewed was edited down, but it's still another win for awareness of web accessibility. In addition to Web Axe, Dennis mentions AccessibleTwitter.com and the Detroit Podcasters Network.

Addendum

Just before Dennis, accessibility expert and evangelist for Yahoo, Artur Ortega is interviewed.

You can download the BBC podcast here! (It's no longer available on the BBC page.)

Labels: ,

1 comments

iPad Is Assisitive Technology But No Killer

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

One may plainly say that Apple's new iPad is an assistive technology device. Like the iPhone, it includes many accessibility features such as:
But as pointed out in the article Accessibility and the iPad: First Impressions, it additionally has the following helpful features:
Although I feel that the iPad is certainly better than Amazons' Kindle, I believe that the iPad will not "kill" the Kindle, mostly because of the price difference. The iPad is much more expensive ranging from $499 to $699 while the Kindle is $259. For more on this, check out Apple Tablet Could Be A Kindle Killer.

More Related Articles

This post is sponsored by: Hosted Exchange

Labels: , ,

1 comments