An accessible web

Target settles lawsuit with advocates for blind

Target Corp. will revamp its Web site to make it more accessible for the blind and pay $6 million in damages to plaintiffs who joined a class action lawsuit against the retailer, under a settlement announced yesterday with the National Federation of the Blind.

Virginia Tech Tries ‘Compliance Sheriff’ To Improve Web Site Accessibility

Virginia Tech has selected HiSoftware’s Compliance Sheriff to address management of its Web site accessibility. Compliance Sheriff is a browser-based service that crawls a Web site and compares pages against a user-defined set of criteria. The tool will compare the school’s site against world-wide accessibility guidelines such as the federally-defined Section 508, which addresses how technology should be designed to enable its use by people with physical impairments, and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0/2.0, from the World Wide Web Consortium, which address Web content and mobile Web applications.

Multimedia/Flash Screenreader Tango

Screenreaders don’t like flash, and I’ve invested huge amounts of time to try and satisfy the requirements of a flash (SlideshowPro) feature spot being “cool” and compliant at the same time. It ain’t easy folks. And there are quite a few universities deploying homepage flash content that isn’t accessible. And you know who you are.

WebAnywhere

WebAnywhere provides access to the web from any machine with a modern web browser and some way to play audio. It is useful for web developers who would like to check their pages for accessibility and for blind web users using a computer where no other screen reader is available.

WordCamp Portland Registration

WordCamp Portland Oregon - WordPress Conference

Registration is now open for WordCamp Portland. More than 50 people have already registered! I wonder if Matt Mullenweg will make a guest appearance?

WordCamp Portland will be held at CubeSpace on September 27th. You can head over to the Agenda page to check out the details, but we’ll kick things off with a couple large-group speakers including Lorelle Van Fossen as our keynote speaker. The middle of the day will feature several small-group breakout sessions with a variety of topics. Attendees can pose WordPress questions to our “Ask the Experts” panel before dinner. After dinner, we’ll have a bunch of rooms available for unconference-style sessions to be determined by the attendees on the day of the event.

We’re now accepting registrations for WordCamp Portland. The advance registration fee is $10 which includes lunch, dinner, a WordCamp Portland T-shirt, and entry into drawings for door prizes.

Follow WordCamp PDX updates on Twitter.

Flickr – institutional photo database

Flickr

Flickr is the best online photo management and sharing application. It is simple to use and relatively inexpensive. A Flickr-Pro account is only $24.95 per year. The benefits are incredible:

  • Unlimited photo uploads (20MB per photo)
  • Unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max)
  • Unlimited storage
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited photosets
  • Archiving of high-resolution original images
  • Tagging, searching, browsing and sharing
  • View count and referrer statistics
  • Compartmentalized access

Brad J. Ward has a most-excellent post up on the potential for institutions of higher education to use Flickr as an institutional photo database.

Post inspired in part by Tales from Redesignland:

Use Flickr as a web based institutional photograph database

Listen up, the RIAA sucks

Pandora

Pandora, my ultra-favorite web radio station, may be forced to shut down due to a RIAA sponsored policy by a federal panel that has skyrocketed their operating costs.

Muxtape - make a mixtape online using MP3s

In other web-music news, Muxtape, another favorite locale for web music, is currently down. The homepage sadly displays the following message:
“Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

The RIAA sucks. Seriously. Web-based radio stations “pay more for playing a song than traditional or satellite radio.”

eduStyle Award Winners

2008 eduStyle Award Winners - higher education campus web design

The Winners of the first eduStyle Awards were announced at the eduWEB Conference July 21-23 in Atlantic City, NJ. I was selected as one of this year’s judges. The eduStyle Awards categories that I was responsible for voting on were:

  • Best Home Page
  • Best Redesign
  • Best Use of Photography
  • Best Prospective/Future Students or Admissions
  • Best Online Tour or Maps

I’m not going to post my confidential judge’s comments…However, I’m glad that the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, Biola University, University of Notre Dame, Boston University and the frequently borrowed Brown University were among the award winners. Congratulations!

A video of the award ceremony is after the cut.

Continue reading eduStyle Award Winners

Strands

Strands Beta
Strands is a web-based social media aggregator with a twist. Strands is currently in beta (I have 2 invites, if you want one let me know) and it currently pulls in my personal feeds from Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, this blog, and a few other sites.

“Strands helps people discover new things from people they care about. Strands gives users the ability to record their activities and keep track of their friends across multiple social networks and services. Based on your aggregated activities, Strands enables discovery of new things based on your own behaviors as well as those of your friends and influencers.”

Strands (the company) also happens to be located in Corvallis, Oregon! They sent me that spiffy t-shirt after I sent them an email…the site is still in beta so there are definitely still some issues, but overall, it looks promising.

Student Affairs Technology

The following videos were not created specifically for student affairs practitioners. However, due to their extreme awesomeness, I feel that they are must-watch for anyone who is interested in technology and student affairs.

What is a podcast?

What is social media?

What is Twitter?

Continue reading Student Affairs Technology

Brown University’s design stolen again

Brown University Homepage Design
It would seem that Brown University’s homepage design has more than its fair share of fans. Brown’s website design has already been ripped off by UAH. The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at The Ohio State University has decided to fully implement Brown University’s code and call it their own.

Unbelievable.
Ohio State University rips off Brown University homepage design and code

Found within the CSS of the OSU site:
“Why did Pentagram design this at such a small width?”

Pentagram Inc., in collaboration with Brown University’s Public Affairs and University Relation’s staff, created the BU homepage design. Why is a comment about Pentagram Inc. in the CSS file for the OSU website? Because the OSU site “borrowed” the BU code. Verbatim!

Tip via eduStyle.

Pilfered design + code

This came first: Brown University
Brown University Homepage Web Design

Then this showed up: The University of Alabama in Huntsville
The University of Alabama in Huntsville Borrowed Web Design

“The copyright for this material rests with Pentagram Inc and Brown University. You may not alter this information, repost or sell it without prior permission.”

Umm. I don’t think that the University of Alabama in Huntsville got the message. Jump to UWebD and eduStyle for additional commentary. This is definitely more than just a case of borrowed design ideas, colors, grid, etc. Brown’s stylesheet is named “master.css”. UAH’s is named “master2.css.” The HTML looks like a badly synthesized genetic clone.

I’m a huge fan of Brown University’s home page design. It’s too bad that UAH took their fandom a bit too far.

PS: Brown’s site is so hip that it is even prepped and ready for iPhones! I found this little gem in their source code: sets width for iphones.

Screen Reader + Website Accessibility

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.