Blacktelephone: Accessibility Calling!

Rite Aid Cuts Deal For Visually-Impaired Web, POS Support — Storefrontbacktalk

by David Mascarina on May 2nd, 2008 under Current Events

Rite Aid on Thursday announced an extensive set of E-Commerce and POS changes to accommodate visually-impaired consumers, admittedly under an implied litigation threat from advocacy groups.

Read the rest of the story at Storefrontbacktalk

Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Barack Obama - The Closed Captioning Page

by David Mascarina on April 22nd, 2008 under Best Practices, Blacktelephone Sites, Current Events

Screen grab of the Captioned page

Since the blog article was published, we got some feedback and reactions from the web community as well as the Barack Obama camp. They fixed the video caption page. Well… issues of accessibility remain:

  • Why ghettoize” or create a “digital divide” on the video page, and why can’t the videos be captioned (or have an option to turn on captioning) already? This is synonymous to a “text-only” page.
  • Why Lightbox? It is NOT accessible!
  • Also, when the script is turned off, so is the capability to access the videos.
  • And, when the style is disabled, the links to the video player disappear.

David A. Paterson, New York Governor, Accessibilista?

by Joseph Karr O'Connor on April 21st, 2008 under Best Practices, Blacktelephone Sites, Current Events, Web Standards

According to the following NY Times Article:

“A Blind Governor Adjusts, and So Does Albany”

“Although Mr. Paterson often says he does not want people to go out of their way for him, he says society should recognize that he and other blind people cannot do everything on their own.

As one of his first acts as governor, he added instructions to his official state Web site on how to enlarge the type on the screen:

“It’s just being more sensitive to people who feel that government and institutions ignore them,” he said.”

Well… I didn’t waste any time, I went to his Web site! Continue reading David A. Paterson, New York Governor, Accessibilista?

TinyURL Made my Site [Valid]

by Joseph Karr O'Connor on April 20th, 2008 under Best Practices, We Recommend, Web Standards

So there I was, one more time validating our main page at work, expecting it to pass W3C HTML validation. I ran Validate HTML under Tools in Chris Pederick’s Web Developer’s Toolbar and the page failed. We run validation frequently on that page, and it was passing almost all the time. So what was up?

All I did was add a link. Continue reading TinyURL Made my Site [Valid]

This May be News to Many, but Bobby’s Gone

by David Mascarina on April 18th, 2008 under Current Events, Red Stapler Corner

Just reiterating, for “Bobby” lovers out there… The Bobby Tool is DEAD!

Here’s the notice from Watchfire in regards to Bobby and WebXact.

Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Barack Obama

by David Mascarina on April 18th, 2008 under Best Practices, Blacktelephone Sites, Current Events

Sen. Barack Obama\'s homepage

Part Two: is another possible candidate for the Democratic Party, Senator Barack Obama. Barack Obama’s website structure is no different than his counterpart Senator Hillary Clinton. This blog took out all the politics, all their policies, the tears and hair, the compelling stories. Just condense your judgment into the topic of Web Accessibility. I ran an automated scan using AccVerify/Repair® scan of the Barack Obama website (www.barackobama.com). And here are my findings. Continue reading Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Barack Obama

Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Hillary Clinton

by David Mascarina on April 15th, 2008 under Best Practices, Blacktelephone Sites, Current Events

Capture of the Hillary Clinton WebsiteThis is the Part I of the three-part series of “Based on Web Accessibility: Who Would You Vote For?.” Taking out all the politics, all their policies, the tears and hair, the compelling stories. Just condense your judgment into the topic of Web Accessibility. So, to start, I ran an automated scan using AccVerify/Repair® scan of the Hillary Clinton website (www.hillaryclinton.com). And here are my findings. Continue reading Accessibility of Campaign Web site: Hillary Clinton

Based on Accessibility, Who Would You Vote For?

by David Mascarina on April 10th, 2008 under Blacktelephone Sites, Current Events

Presidential candidates in a laptop

Continue reading Based on Accessibility, Who Would You Vote For?

Learning From Users

by Joseph Karr O'Connor on March 28th, 2008 under Best Practices, Web Standards

My daughter, Siobhan, uses the Picture Exchange Communication System.

See: http://www.pecs.com/WhatsPECS.htm

Siobhan’<p>s Picture Exchange Communications Book

For some time, Siobhan was making icon placement errors. The icons and a sentence strip are held in a hard plastic notebook on Velcro strips. The way she uses PECS (she’s at Phase V with a very little bit of Phase VI emerging) she picks up an “I want” icon and puts it on the sentence strip. Then she goes shopping through the book for “taco” or “car” or whatever she wants. She wants taco and car a lot lately. She then puts the “taco” icon on the sentence strip to the right of the “I want” icon, rips the sentence strip off the velcro strip binding it to the book, and hands the sentence strip to her communicative partner. That’d be me. “I want taco” I say to her when I get the strip. After I say it she sometimes points to the icon of the thing she wants, just to make her point stick. I am, after all, by her definition, slow on the uptake, being her Dad.
Continue reading Learning From Users

That Plugin Made my Site [Invalid]

by David Mascarina on March 25th, 2008 under Best Practices, Red Stapler Corner, Web Standards

So, as I am developing this blog, I spent most of my time making sure that the website passes all validation that I know. I ran the CSS, XHTML and 508 Validation using Chris Pederick’s Firefox toolbar, even used the Web Accessibility toolbar’s WAVE tool, to make sure that when we launch this site that it passes all standards known. Then I came across Feedburner’s e-mail signup plugin. Continue reading That Plugin Made my Site [Invalid]