http://www.russellcomputerconsulting.com/russell_consulting_feed.xml This feed is provided share information about development subjects that interest me. en-us 17 May 2007 17 May 2007 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Charles E. Russell Jr. crussell@russellcomputerconsulting.com Charles Russell crussell@russellcomputerconsulting.com This is the birth of a new feed. The focus of this feed is on education. I will post information and links to various articles and podcasts about software/web development that catch my interest. I do tend to go toward the technical side but I hope that the information provided will provide some guidance in your decisions about your project. 17 May 2007 http://alistapart.com/articles/flashembedcagematch Bobby van der Sluis This article does a side by side comparison of various methods of embedding Flash content. If you are trying to embed flash in a page and want that page to validate this article is extremely useful. What I found in reading this is that there is no perfect solution yet but at least with this you can see what trade-offs you are making. 06 Feb 2007 http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria Charles Russell I have been telling people to be wary of using Flash and Ajax and other like technologies. This warning was made because there are problems with accessibility and meeting web standards. I am not alone in this. The W3C currently recommends against the use of JavaScript. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't use new technology. It just means that these new technologies should be approached with caution. WAI-ARIA provides a suite of documents that are intended guide developers using these technologies. There an intention to develop a recommendation but this has not been completed. IBM, Adobe and others are tackling the issue from their end as well. 20 May 2007 http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ W3C In getting the address of the ARIA suite I found out that the new working draft of the WCAG 2.0 was released. This may the final working draft and become the candidate recommendation. I base this upon some of the articles that I have been reading and the fact that the completion of this standard was to be this year. I do not think that we will see a recommendation this year but I think that early next year may be a real possibility. 17 May 2007 http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=182 Mike Cherim This piece expresses some of my own reservations about accessibility. These concerns are why I claim only AA compliance for my own site. AA addresses those things that must be done and those that should be done. AAA is those things that a developer may do, in other words optional. As with all thing moderation is the key. I do believe that due diligence, as concerns accessibly, should be used when constructing web sites but that is not the only consideration. In some applications AAA is very appropriate in fact may be mandatory but not all. Audience should also be taken into account; there are not many blind pilots or developmentally disabled doctors. June 1 2007 http://softwareas.com/current-concerns-with-ajax Michael Mahemoff I came across this interesting piece concerning AJAX and accessibility. In all Web 2.0 technologies like Flash and AJAX you have to go into it with your eyes wide open to the trade-offs you are making and have addressed the concerns. This article echoes my own thinking. To say you will never use a technology is silly. Some of the concerns on that side are addressed in a previous entry on Avoiding Extreme Accessibility. That said, this little blurb, while short, does layout things that should enter the thoughts of anyone contemplating AJAX. What I have seen on the rest of Michael' site leads me to believe he really knows the subject well. He has an 27 podcasts on his site on things as varied as Agile development and AJAX optimization. The Podcast on AJAX myths I found particularly interesting. June 6 2007 http://wcagsamurai.org/errata/intro.html WCAG Samurai Group About a year ago Joe Clark wrote an article in A List Apart criticizing the WCAG 2.0 and proposed WCAG Samurai. This is the results of the work. This is considered by the authors correction (errata) or enhancement of the WCAG 1.0 guidelines from the W3C. It does remove the ambiguity that exists in almost all W3C documents making this easier to understand. It not related in any way to WCAG 2.0 they see themselves as an alternative. Here is what they say about their relation to WCAG 2.0: “These errata do not cover WCAG 2.0 in any respect. The WCAG Samurai Errata are published as an alternative to WCAG 2. You may comply with WCAG 2, or with these errata, or with neither, but not with both at once.” OK so which should you use? That question is up to the website owner. The W3C WCAG is the gold standard but this is easier to understand. Using this is better than not doing anything at all because you are frustrated with understanding W3C. June 14 2007 Joe Clark http://www.alistapart.com/articles/pdf_accessibility I came across this awhile ago and meant to get this information up. The article is by the same Joe Clark who got the WCAG Samurai project started. Whatever your feelings about that, this article is a great how to when it comes to accessibility and the use of PDF. Government agencies are particularly fond of this format. The problem is that many of the documents are just scanned and posted. Little attention has been paid to the accessibility of the documents. These documents are just as much a part of the site as your HTML or CSS page and just as much attention should be paid to them, including whether you should use them at all July 26 2007 Niqui Merret http://niquimerret.com/?p=94 I came accross this in a Boagworld Podcast. While I don't advocate the elimination of flash, I do think it should be used with caution. This article clearly outlinse the problems. There are some workarounds but even then we have issues so the use of Flash should be justified and the reasons for its use well documented. One thing referred to in this article is MSAA, this stands for Microsoft Active Accessiblity. MSAA is how the sreenreaders can see Flash content, works great in Internet Explorer but does not work in other browsers. This makes Flash inaccessible in those browsers. Flash can be a great tool used corectly and the accessibility issues can be overcome with good planning. That said you still need to be aware of the issues. 06 August 2007 Drew McLellan http://www.webstandards.org/2007/08/06/accessible-flash/ This is a discussion on the Web Standards group in response to Niqi Merret's Article. They talk about some of the workarounds and some of the outstanding issues in the use of Flash. While technical it does give one an Idea of the depth of the Flash debate. 06 August 2007 Melanie Kellar http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/msr/external_release_talks_12_05_2005/14346/lecture.htm How people use the browser should have a great deal of effect on how we design our sites. She breaks down the type of tasks people use there browser for and what features seem to be the most helpfull to them. Lots of good stuff in here but very academic, not for everbody. I am unsure of when this talk was given so I will use todays date. 16 August 2007 Ian Lloyd http://www.boagworld.com/screenreader.mov I have been meaning to get this up for some time but for various reasons have not posted it till now. This is a quicktime movie demonstrating some of the barriers (and dangers) the blind deal with when using the web. It should be a wake-up call for many of you that use table based layout. It also demonstrates Ajax-based problems that the screen reader users deal with as well. Warning!! this downloads the file and can take awhile. 10 July 2007