Katherine's blog

Tabindex can be a very helpful attribute when coding a complexly-structured web form or page for accessibility.  It basically tells a page the order in which elements should be highlighted when the tab key is used.  Remember, lots of assistive technologies use the tab input. 

While coding, I stumbled across this little nugget that I thought I'd share here, thanks to Edward Bilodeau (same guy, new blog).

How to get Firefox/Mac to recognize tab index

I just spent the better part of an hour trying to 
get tabindex to work under Firefox/Mac OS X.  
The solution lies not in Firefox, but in the Mac 
OS X preferences.

Apple Menu > System Preferences > 
Keyboard and Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts and 
under "Full Keyboard Access" choose "All controls".

Sweet lord....

Link to original

Without this enabled, every page in your browser becomes a keyboard trap.  Very frustrating.  Thanks, Edward!

I attended and spoke at the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA Chicago) conference last month.  The conference was focused on educating attendees about assistive technologies and their uses in the world today.  Another particular focus of the conference was creating information that remains usable and accessible by users with assistive technologies.  I attended several sessions and spent a good deal of time discussing on the exhibition floor.  Here are some of the highlights.

Game-Day pierogi pizza from Food2.com...looks awesomely incredible.  Extra points if you make your own pierogi though...hehe...

In Wordpress, it's always been easy to throw a search box into your blog's theme that searches across your blog:

<form id="searchform" method="get" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>">
<input type="text" name="s" id="s" size="15" />
<input type="submit" value="<?php _e('Search'); ?>" />
</form> 

It used to be the case that the search function would harvest all of the information--tags, categories, content--of posts, but only of posts.  In other words, pages were excludable from the search.  However, as more users take on Wordpress for more projects, pages have begun to get used in more ways, an so the fine people at Wordpress went ahead and included pages in the site search functionality.  So in Wordpress 2.8, if you conduct a search, you get page entries too.

There are some good plugins out there to limit searching, but a generally easy and foolproof way to manipulate search in Wordpress 2.8 is to do this.

Create a search results template in your theme by creating a file called search.php.

In search.php, you'd generally have something like this:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

<h2>Search Results</h2>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php /* your post formatting code in here */ ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<h2>No posts found. Try a different search?</h2>
<?php endif; ?>

What’s the deal with Flash on the iPhone?  There have been many reports that a lack of Flash support for the iPhone will continue.  This is despite the fact that more mobile devices including Blackberry, Palm, and even Google Android (custom installs with wide support coming next year), are building up support for the web technology.  Whether you love Flash sites or hate them, Flash is a prevalent technology, meaning that users require some sort of support on popular user agents, and if no support, then a good explanation for its absence.

According to Adobe, the developers of Flash have been attempting for over a year to work with Apple to get Flash loadable on iPhones, but are not getting the support from Apple that they need.  And why not?  According to an article from PC World Magazine, speculation includes two main reasons now.  One, a lack of support for Flash on iPhones based on their one-app-at-a-time functionality, which could make users unable to access other features in Safari or other web browsers on the iPhone.  And two, far more likely also, is Apple’s heavy involvement with the development of HTML 5, which promises to make plugin applications a thing of the past, ultimately.  They’re already testing HTML 5 in browsers.  It is important to note that Apple has not come out and said there will be no Flash support on the iPhone, but chances are, it’s going to take a long time if it comes at all.

So Adobe has come up with a solution.  In an effort to keep Flash relevant, usable, and adaptable on the Internet, according to an article in yesterday’s Computer World, an announcement was made at the Adobe Max conference that Adobe Systems has developed a workaround for Flash developers who want to work with the iPhone.  It will not be able to run in the Safari browser due to Apple’s license terms, and will not be able to compile runtime code.  It will, however, allow Flash developers to compile things written for other mobile devices, and reinterpret them as standalone applications for the iPhone.

The newly-registered #drupal-accessibility channel is open and ready for accessibility-related development discussion and conversation.  I'm setting up logging so we can possibly use it to document things like conf calls and other Drupal chats related soon.
Check it out:

• Drupal IRC channels listing
• #drupal-accessibility
• How to use IRC

Just got Snow Leopard installed on my iMac and so far, it's been quite nice.  The little visual touches (black background with white text for hovers) and heightened performance have been impressive so far.

One interesting roadblock I hit right away though was with my install of Cisco VPN.  I have version 4.9 installed, which is set to run with anything greater than OSX 10.4.  When trying to connect, it gave up and delivered the cryptic "Error 501" message.  I tried a few configurations but eventually found the solution, which was both quick and easy, and I figured I would post this, as several of my Mac-user buddies have been asking about this over the last day or so.

I was recently in Chicago for the eduWEB Conference 2009.  I was able to see several very interesting presentations about content marketing and development in higher education, particularly through the use of social media tools and the ubiquitous term, "SEO."

Also while at the conference, I presented on web accessibility standards for higher education websites.  There are new challenges facing higher ed web and content developers going into the future.  The temptation and, ultimately, the need to use tools and technologies like social media tools, mobile apps (and of course devices), and development extensions like JQuery, AJAX, and (yup) Flash to make higher ed sites and courseware more relatable for students may make them accessible on an emotional level for some, but drastically reduces accessibility for all when programmed without accessibility in mind.  My presentation focused on this, as did Svetlana Kouznetsova's round table talk on accessibility for video and audio content on the web.  While Youtube does offer captioning support now, the vast majority of basic user-uploaded content does not contain captions, rendering it drastically altered for users with any form of hearing loss.  Here's Youtube's awesome take (courtesy of Svetlana) on why captions are good. Hint: watch it once without captions, then once with them. :)

My own presentation's focus was on web accessibility for content, from the perspectives of content writers, designers, and developers.  These roles all work together to make the web more accessible, however people in each role have very different tasks from one another that they should maintain for the web.

Just got back from the eduWEB conference in Chicago where I presented about content accessibility standards for higher-ed websites.  More on this (and a possible screencast) later, but a couple of issues consistently arose from this and some emails and communication from others on the Drupal 7 Accessibility Task Force that I'm just putting out there.

1. Headings - how many and when? 

Basically, h1 - h6 tags can be used by many assistive technologies to help disabled users scan a page.  Some screen readers can be commanded to "read only headings."  From a semantic standpoint, they also help web content maintain context that would otherwise only be conveyed visually.  Now generally, the rule of thumb is this: one h1 heading, which must be unique OR the name of the site (if this is the homepage or it's otherwise appropriate), with subheadings filled in by h2 headings.  On rare occasions that there are sub-subheadings of content, h3 tags should be used but generally on one page, it's more common to see one big heading, a few smaller headings, and maybe one really small heading.  Anyway, the question has come up recently, is this appropriate?  In certain situations, a page will need the name of the site and a unique title for the page visible on the page.  Do we smush everything into one line then?  Or do we have two h1 headings?  That's essentially like a book with two titles.  Visually it can distract the user and from an accessibility standpoint, would certainly confuse screen readers etc.

According to news released on the official Google Blog this morning, Google Apps is finally, truly out of beta.  This includes Google Calendar, Docs, GTalk, and of course GMail.  The "beta" is being removed from all logos today and the party hats are going on.

The Google folks aren't resting on their laurels for long though.  According to an addition Google Enterprise Blog entry, Google's efforts to be adopted by small to middling business companies will be strengthened in the coming weeks, with additional enterprise features for Premier accounts, such as email delegation (send or filter emails on behalf of another person) and email retention (so that IT admins can determine when a corporate email should be purged) currently in serious beta, to be rolled out soon.