Posts

Hosting Problems

Monday, March 28, 2011

If you haven't noticed yet, the web hosting account which stores all of Web Axe's CSS, images, and podcasts (EchoEchoPlus) has been down all day today and is still down. The CSS and most images have been restored by me a few minutes ago by moving them to another host. The podcasts are still unavailable. Big apologies for the inconvenience. And believe me, I'm more bummed (and pissed off) than you. -Dennis

Update:

Two days later, services restored. Fully functional now.

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Post-CSUN Resources

Thursday, March 24, 2011

My last podcast previewed CSUN (The 26th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference), which happened last week. It was a great success. Fortunately a few folks have written great summaries of the event, listed below. Also, I've posted some CSUN11 photos on Flickr.

CSUN logo

Here are two excellent resources for session presentations and more:

Some notable blog posts:

Suggested presentations relating to web accessibility are:

Any more to add? Please comment!

Additions

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Speech from AFB Awards

Monday, March 14, 2011

Last month, Web Axe announced that Accessible Twitter was presented with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) 2011 Access Award. I attended the AFB Awards Ceremony last Friday at the JLTLI conference in downtown Seattle, Washington (Web Axe is sister site of Accessible Twitter). Afterwards, I had the honor of dining with the President and CEO of the AFB, Carl R. Augusto. I met several other AFB folks who were all wonderful people.

Here is the acceptance speech I prepared (and closely presented) at the award ceremony.
Thank you so much. I'm deeply honored and very thankful to be here.

A little over 2 years ago, which is like 20 years in web technology time, Gez Lemon, on his blog Juicy Studio, wrote about a clever script he developed to correct Twitter.com's lack of keyboard focus.

I wrote a tweet about it and about another accessibility issue on the Twitter website, and a friend and former co-worker Doug Diego suggested I use the Twitter API and create an accessible version. My wife and kids were away visiting family at the time, so it was a great opportunity. And that's what I did. Just a few weeks later, "Accessible Twitter" was born.

I emailed a few peers about the site, and before I even officially announced it, people were offering suggestions, blogging about it, and even better, offering to test it for me.

This anecdote illustrates the power and the cohesiveness of Twitter, and even more so, the accessibility community. And it's a worldwide community. It's the people themselves who make it work, and strive to make it work better. Some of those people are:
  • Matthew Smith (a.k.a. Smiffy) from Australia, who had suggestions for the user interface and helped with coding issues.
  • Steve Faulkner, outside of London, for special code called ARIA which help screen readers interpret certain kinds of content.
  • Kerstin Probiesch and Per Busch, both of Germany, who helped with early testing.
  • Jennison Asuncion, of Toronto, Canada, who continues to be one of the most active users of Accessible Twitter; he provides feedback and helps promote the application.
  • Everett Zufelt, who's also from Canada, with recently suggesting a new method for hiding special content for screen reader users.
So the takeaway here is that the Accessible Twitter project, like many others on the web and elsewhere, is a collaborative effort. My name and my company's name, Web Overhauls, are listed as the authors of the application, but in reality, it's the community that makes it all happen. Thank you.

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Accessible YouTube & HTML5 Video

Monday, March 07, 2011

YouTube is obviously a great site for video, but not for everyone as it contains various accessibility challenges, particularly keyboard access. The use of Flash itself to play the video can be problematic, not be mention requiring support of the Flash plugin. HTML5 is a pending solution (HTML5 video is available on YouTube as a "trial"), but in its infancy, HTML5 video has accessibility issues that still need to be resolved, as does HTML5 itself.

In the meantime, here are a few alternatives to the YouTube website which provide more accessible controls and a much cleaner interface.
If you still don't have what you need or want, why not build your own interface?! The following are tools and resources for building more accessible YouTube videos including captioning:
Further reading:
If you developed an accessible YouTube solution, or know of another not listed, please leave a comment.

YouTube logo

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