Accessibility, CMS, Joomla and Mambo
Clear and concise hypertext links are key to creating accessible website navigation.
But perhaps the most important issue for Joomla site administrators is ensuring that link text makes sense out of context.
Screen readers can create a list of all available links on a page to aid navigation, taken out of context a link such as “read more” makes little sense. To see this in action select “page info” from the Tools menu in firefox and then the links tab.
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A simple solution is to follow the advice Barrie North gives in his blog:”I have always advised Joomla webmasters to to use a great mambot from Run Digital. It makes the read more link include the title of the article, great for SEO.”
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Full article: http://www.alledia.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States
Indexed in June 2008
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Accessibility, Text and Font
As webdesigners, there is one question that we get more than any other from people thinking about their first website: “Can I use my favorite ultra-rate XYZ font?”
The answer, more often that not, is “unfortunately not”. In this post, I’m going to give a quick overview of what you need to know about web-fonts for your website.
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A website has to work in lots of environments
Websites need to work on PCs that run about 5 different kinds of Windows Operating Systems (Vista, Windows 98 etc.), plus an assortment of Macintoshes and Linux computers, plus handheld devices. Oh, and did I mention that there are at least three important versions of Internet Explorer, plus other web browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Opera and others?
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Full article: http://www.alledia.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States
Indexed in May 2008
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Accessibility
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Disclaimer: This is a quick reference, which means that it only highlights the main ideas and is not a comprehensive list of accessibility principles or techniques. Even so, I believe this to be a useful resource.
Validity/Modern Coding Practices/Structure
- Validate the code (e.g. XHTML 1.0 strict).
- Specify the character encoding (e.g. UTF-8).
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No mouse
- Navigate the site using only the keyboard (using the tab key, arrow keys, enter key, page up, page down, etc.)
- Provide a functional “skip navigation” link (see www.webaim.org/techniques/skipnav/).
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Full article: http://paulbohman.com/accessibility/quickreference
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Indexed in May 2008
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Accessibility, Maintenance Web, Web Design
Many people think accessibility is an extra effort for little reward. Not true! Increasing discovery, access and usability of your Web site for all visitors are some of the major benefits that accrue from applying many of the WCAG 1.0. checkpoints. Back in Novemeber 1999 William E. Kennard, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said:
We cannot afford to let the issue of disabilities be simply an afterthought. Accessibility of services and products for all (people) has got to be a design feature, not an add-on.
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Increase Market Share and Audience Reach
Improve usability for non-disabled and disabled visitors:
The usability of Web sites is becoming a very important topic as organizations struggle to reach, and especially to retain, a wider audience.
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Full article: http://gr0w.com/articles/design/accessibility_design_benefits/
License: Creative Commons License
Indexed in May 2008
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Accessibility, Web Design, Web based Application
You rarely get the chance to develop a GUI from scratch, but it’s a very rewarding experience to deliver a useful and usable application that your customers actually enjoy working with.
I think every developer cares about usability, but there is a difference between caring about and actually creating a usable application. Since my time at Sun working with some great HCI engineers there, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation of the design and development process.
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Best analysis and design practices for a UI include:
- use multiple techniques for gathering requirements, especially:
- issuing standard document templates to elicit common information and to raise a few thought-provoking questions
- reading documents prepared by the customer or from the business domain
- structured interviews and both single- and multi-role brainstorming sessions with different types of user or customer
- visiting and observing the customer at their workplace or (better) workstation (see Gemba for some specific practices)
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Full article: http://colmsmyth.blogspot.com
License: Creative Commons
Indexed in May 2008
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Accessibility, Ajax
AJAX is a great tool for creating rich internet applications, however, when improperly implemented it can cause huge accessibility issues. The good news is that most of these issues can be fixed so your websites are viewable by a much wider audience. Great resources on accessibility have been around for years, however, many web 2.0 and AJAX websites ignore all of the research that went into turning website accessibility into a movement followed by most professional web developers. Below you’ll find a list of 40 best AJAX accessibility tutorials and articles that I have found on the web in the last year.
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3 Myths of Ajax and Accessibility
I’ve seen quite a few ideas and bits of policy writing about accessiblity that could probably do with some updating. These are the 3 most common.
Accessibility of AJAX Applications
AJAX will not work in all web browsers. As its name suggests, AJAX requires JavaScript. This alone means that AJAX applications will not work in web browsers and devices that do not support JavaScript. For this reason it is not accessible to many typical Web users..
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Full article: http://www.maxkiesler.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
Indexed in May 2008
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Accessibility, Sound and speech, Text and Font, Web based Application
The ability to convert speech-to-text and text-to-speech is an amazing technology development with multiple applications. The software solutions I’ve heard the most about when it comes to speech to text functionality is Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM ViaVoice..
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When it comes to converting text to speech, Talkr is the main website I’m familiar with (and have integrated here on my blog) which creates (for free) an audio podcast of text entries on any blog.
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Full article: http://www.speedofcreativity.org
License: Creative Commons Attribution (US)
Indexed in April 2008
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Accessibility, Web Articles for Dummies
What is Web Accessibility?
Let’s take a look at an excerpt of the Wikipedia definition of “Web accessibility“:
Web accessibility refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities.
When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality.
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What is web usability?
Web usability is about making your website in such a way that your site users can find what they’re looking for quickly and efficiently..
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Full article: http://nptech-popokatea.wikispaces.com
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License
Indexed in April 2008
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Accessibility, Promoting Website, SEO
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In fact, I could say that accessibility is about allowing users to access content under all circumstances and SEO is about allowing search engines to access the content. SEO involves accessibility for search engines. Search engines today are at par with the Web users in terms of technology they can use..
The three things we need to ensure in accessibility and SEO are:
- Provide alternate text for non-textual content
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Full article: http://ifacethoughts.net/2007/01/05/seo-is-about-accessibility/
License: Creative Commons
Indexed in April 2008
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Accessibility, Free for Web, Tools
Accessibility testing tools are great for quality assurance (QA), even when the website doesn’t have to be accessible. For example, color contrast is a very subjective thing..
In contrast, color contrast analyzers use algorithms from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to obtain verifiable, objective results for luminosity, brightness and contrast..
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Downloads and links
There are various tools to test color contrast:
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Full article: http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/color-contrast-tools/
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Indexed in April 2008
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