Transcript of the podcast:
[Intro music] Welcome to podcast three of Thinking Accessible. On today’s podcast, I will talk to you about my four golden rules for web accessibility.
Rule number 1:
Provide alternative text for non-textual content. What do it mean by this? Images are non-textual content. Audio and video are non-textual content. So for each of [...]
I recently read an article in the Website Magazine on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and I was happy to see that a couple of the elements listed where directly related to web standards. Title, headers, using HTML only for content, and being clear and concise were all part of focusing on the most important thing [...]
Ok so Canada does not have the national equivalent to the United States section 508. But if you want to know what they recommend you can read their Common Look and Feel standards for the Internet documentation. Obviously the information is for government and public sector websites, but it could be useful to get another [...]
So I saw this story on the news by Chris Brown and was happy to learn that assistive technologies are being researched actively in Canadian Universities. The University of Victoria has a unit named CanAssist, they develop technologies and provide services for people with disabilities. Naturally this is relevant in terms of web accessibility because [...]
The W3C have a super neat online demonstration of visually representing web accessibility. The inaccessible pages have several “barriers”, key elements that make the page inhospitable. For example, the before home page demonstrates a lack of alternative text for each image, an inconsistency in the content order, a negligence with headings and lists, an inaccuracy [...]
Transcript of the podcast:
[Intro music] Welcome to podcast two of Thinking Accessible. On today’s podcast I will briefly talk to you about web accessibility.
The first thing I want to say about web accessibility is don’t assume that people with disabilities don’t use the Internet. (or that they won’t want to access your site.) Because they [...]
Sure accessibility guidelines are designed to help people with disabilities access the web, but it extends to more than just them. I am talking about the elderly, people with low literacy or little fluency in the language the site is made, people that have dial-up or a low bandwidth connection, and even new or infrequent [...]
Accessibility guidelines are primarily developed for people with either visual, hearing or physical impairments and disabilities. Here are basic descriptions of some ways people with disabilities use the internet:
People with visual impairments might use a screen reader. This is a software that will read out loud the text of the web page. They might [...]
As far as I know, web accessibility in Canada is up to each province to legislate. There are several attempt to make websites accessible in government and educational institutions. Most if not all government websites in Canada are now accessible. But unfortunately, there are no laws to ensure that accessibility guidelines are respected.
A special notice [...]
Thinking Accessible Podcast
[Intro Music] Welcome to the first podcast of Thinking Accessible. My name is Rocío Alvarado and on today’s podcast I will talk to you about web standards.
Web Standards are a set of guidelines developed by a group of people a while back to ensure consistency within the HTML code and CSS. There are [...]
It’s been trendy for a while now to play with transparency to simulate layers, but guess what? Yeap, you know it. It’s not valid under CSS2.
Stuff like opacity: .4 -moz-opacity: .4 filter: alpha(opacity=40) for the moment out of the question. We all have to wait patiently until CSS3. Yeah you heard me CSS3. If you [...]
Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 let the user add plugins to the browser. There are about a million of them that you can find either on the menubar under Tools and Add-ons or at their website at addons.mozilla.org. The add-ons that any web developer must have are Firebug, to debug the code and make adjustments [...]
