I remember the first time I closed my eyes, put on a pair of headphones and browsed the web using a screen reader. It was extremely challenging. Images without ALT attributes, Flash objects, and poorly coded websites left me feeling extremely frustrated and gave me even more empathy for web users with visual impairments. I think all website designers/coders should experience what it’s like to browse the web using a screen reader. This video shows Aaron Cannon, blind since birth, browsing a website using a screen reader.

iStudentAffairs.com: A social networking site for Student Affairs administrators. 661 people have already signed up. The site runs off of Ning. I’m not sure if I have the life space for another website, but the discussions on iStudentAffairs.com have been interesting.

Technology panel: I’ll be on a panel for Academic Advising + Web 2.0 at the regional NACADA conference in Vancouver in March. I guess I’ll be chiming in on anything to do with accessibility, blogging, wikis, web statistics, podcasting, rss, etc. I’m walking out if someone calls Facebook an “emerging technology.”

Academic Advising Wiki: I have convinced my colleagues that an internal knowledge base a.k.a. a wiki, would be highly beneficial for our office. I demoed an installation of MediaWiki (similar to the Oregon State University wiki) and hope to get it up and running next month. For more information on higher education and wikis, check out these videos on “21 days of Wiki Adoption“:

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The University of Michigan’s Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor is apparently in violation of the American’s with Disabilities Act. A letter sent to the University of Michigan by the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) (6MB PDF) informed the university that three complaints had been filed alleging that the stadium is “not accessible to or usable by individuals with mobility impairments.” The OCR determined that the University of Michigan was in violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

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via the Official Google Blog:

• Web Search: Result pages include headers to delineate logical sections.
  
• Accessible Search: Promotes results that are accessible.
  
• Book Search: Full-text access to public-domain works.
  
• Gmail: A simple yet functional HTML mode that works well with screenreaders.
  
• Gmail Mobile: A lightweight user interface that is also speech-friendly.
  
• Google Maps: Easy-to-use textual directions.
  
• Calendar: A functional, yet speech-friendly user interface.
  
• Audio Captchas: All services that use Google Accounts provide an audio alternative for the visual challenge-response tests that are used to distinguish humans from machines.
  
• Mobile Transcoder: A mobile lens for viewing the web that produces accessible views.
  
• Google Video: Allows uploaded videos to contain captions/subtitles in multiple languages for viewers who are hearing-impaired or unfamiliar with the original language.
  
• Google Talk: IM clients inside a web browser can pose accessibility challenges, but the use of the open Jabber API means that Google users can choose from a variety of Jabber clients, many of which work well with adaptive technologies.
  
• Web APIs: Many Google services offer high-level web APIs that aid in authoring mashups; this provides a means for creating highly customized accessible views.
• 1-800-GOOG-411: Here’s an exception to the rule that we deliver most things through a web browser. Our experimental Voice Local Search service lets anyone who can speak into a phone search for a local business by name or category; get connected to the business free of charge; get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone. (Just say “text message”.)

Blackboard had an amazing booth at the NASPA/ACPA Joint Meeting in Orlando. It was the size of small house and it looked like one too! Inside their mini-mansion, the folks from Blackboard were demoing their portal solution, the Blackboard Community System.

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Here is the audio recording from bell hooks‘ talk at Lewis & Clark College from February 1, 2006 [88 MB MP3].

The University of Tennessee recently re-designed their primary web pages. The new page design is very accessible, user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing and it’s optimized for search engines. Pages were coded using standards-based design techniques. Their use of cascading style sheets to “style” the homepage is gorgeous and accessible for users with visual impairments. Kudos to the University of Tennessee and the Office of Creative Services! They have truly created a “web 2.0″ university website.

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…now, touch your computer screen.

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From the Official Google Blog:

World Usability Day, November 14, 2006, is for everyone who’s ever asked these questions. This Earth Day style event, focused on raising awareness and visibility of usability engineering and user centered design, is currently being organized by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world. Whether a usability professional or just an enthusiastic (or frustrated) user, each participant is making a contribution to “making life easy”.

Check out the worldwide usability events map as well as the usability webcasts schedule.

Giving presentations on web usability and web accessibility at conferences and workshops: 9

Talking about web standards and web accessibility at meetings: 1,476

Adding ALT attributes to images and testing Flash to see if it really can be compatible with screenreaders: 2,322+

Working on websites to ensure that they are accessible for all users: 11

Hearing my colleagues mention web accessibility, Section 508, and web standards before I do: Priceless.