Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Accessibility Training Materials
For the past month, almost all of my free time has gone to writing presentation material for the advanced training session of AIR-Austin. I was hoping to be finished today, but I’m still not done. However, Jim Allan and I presented the first training session today (4 hours worth), so I’ll post it for you, too: the Accessibility Internet Rally 2003 Advanced Training Material.
One idea behind the presentation was inspired by a problem I’ve noticed repeatedly. Many people, like Zeldman or Nick Finck for example, will post their presentation slides online after speaking at a conference such as SXSW or Siggraph. The problem with these slides is that the information available online does not contain the speaker’s notes — at least not completely. Without the guidance of the speaker, a person viewing the slides online may be confused or may not fully grasp the material.
Since a discussion of CSS was part of the training material, I thought, “What better way to demonstrate the power of style sheets than a presentation that includes all of its own notes?” The material can be viewed as a presentation and display the main bullet points, or viewed as the entire material (including notes) with a simple switch of a style sheet. If users decide to print the material, they automatically receive the full information in a printer-friendly form thanks to a print style sheet.
View the Introduction as a web page (with notes) or the Introduction in presentation view.
As a whole, the material strives to “practice what it preaches.” It’s accessible and uses semantic markup with almost complete separation of content from style. However, as I said, I’m not finished. All the slides (presentation view) are finished though many are missing complete notes. Consider it a work in progress to be continually updated. I hope you can enjoy and learn from the material that is currently available.
As always, feedback is welcome and encouraged (if it’s relevant to the subject).
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
In syndication, finally...
I'm a hypocrite.
I've been writing this weblog for almost two and a half years now, right? Anyway, I used to be pretty good about checking other people’s weblogs, too.
For the past year or so, I’ve been cheating. I use an RSS reader; it checks the weblogs for me... That’s not really cheating, but it get’s worse. For about the past six months, I’ve been ignoring the sites that don’t have RSS feeds. *gasps* I still check them occasionally, but it's low on my radar, know what I'm sayin’?
Here I was, expecting you to read my site without an RSS feed, when I wasn't reading many without. Like I said... Hypocrite.
Did I build it up too much? Too dramatic? Anyway, without further ado, I present to you the Cookiecrook RSS 0.91 feed. Yay!
I kept putting it off because I meant to redesign my web site and use Movable Type. MT would handle the RSS for me so why bother myself. Just recently I decided the redesign is far enough off that my RSS 1.0 as RDF would have to wait. It’ll be cool when it happens, but it’s not happening yet. Maybe early next year? For now I'm hand-coding the RSS feed, so it may be a few minutes behind my posts, but give me a break, eh?
So now you can use the RSS feed and ignore my site completely until I post something. That’s what I do to yours. ;)
Oh yeah, if you don't have an RSS reader, get one. I've significantly increased my information absorption, while reducing the time and bandwidth it takes to receive that information. I use Feed Demon on Windows and Net News Wire Lite (scroll down for the free version) on Macintosh.
Monday, September 22, 2003
Today: The future of the World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and W3C founder, presented a lecture today entitled “The future of the World Wide Web.” The lecture was broadcast live and will be archived for future viewing on demand. For more information, see the W3C site or the Royal Society site.
Blog-slackin’...
I haven’t posted anything recently because I’ve been dedicating all of my spare time to finishing the Advanced Developer Training course material for the Austin Accessibility Internet Rally 2003. The content isn’t finished, but the layout, style, and interaction design is complete. So far I'm pretty happy with it. I’ll pass it on around this time next week.
In the meantime, check out all the updates over at the WaSP and an article by Jeffrey Veen on the business value of web standards.
P.S. I’ve got an RSS feed coming for you soon, too. I've been testing the hand-rolled version for a couple weeks now, and I think it’s ready to go live.
Monday, September 15, 2003
Phonemes and context...
I got the following in an email forward from my sister today.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porlebm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlhoe.
Amzanig huh?
Pretty cool, isn’t it? However the statement is not entirely true; there seem to be a few small requirements for the jumbled letters to not be a “porlebm.” I took a fascinating Linguistics of Humor class when I attended UT; I’ll regurgitate some of it now. I must warn you, though. The professor always said, The fastest way to make a joke un-funny is to dissect and explain it.
While the preceding paragraph is not really a joke, the same principle applies. Easily-bored readers: feel free to tune out at this time.
You’ll need to understand the difference between letters and sounds, or the letter combinations that make those sounds. According to the free encylopedia, Wikipedia, In spoken language, a phoneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word.
For example, the sound most commonly used by the letter “x” is made up of two phonemes: /k/ and /s/. Also, some letter combinations make phonemes that are unrelated to, or at least different from, their individual letter’s respective phonemes. /th/ is a different sound than /t/ and /h/ combined. The same is true with /ng/.
The sound of a long “i”, as in ice, is produced by two phonemes: /a/ as in “ah” and /i/ as in “ee”. Don’t believe me? Try saying /ai/ without moving your tongue.
Anyway, the paragraph above partially relies on the phoneme letter combinations being intact or at least being in close proximity. The phoneme /ng/ occurs three times in the selection: aoccdrnig, tihng, and amzanig. In each occurance, the “n” is within one letter of the “g”, giving your mind enough context to formulate the /ng/ phoneme. The same is true of the /j/ in “Cmabrigde” and the /th/ in “wouthit.” Actually, there are two phonemes that use the “th” letter combination. I forget how to represent each, but the sounds are different in the words “the” and “thought.”
Now I’m not implying that mixing up the letters more would make it impossible to read, just that it would make it harder. You can still guess the intended word by it’s context. Like the selection’s word-as-a-whole premise, the human mind also reads phrases and sentences as a whole. You can assume words in a sentence for the same reason you can decipher mixed letters in context. Consider the phrases, “end of ___ line” and “United States __ America.” These are simple examples but your brain does the same thing with letters inside words, words inside phrases, phrases inside sentences, and even sentences inside paragraphs. Ever heard of speed-reading? The technique is not perfect — it’s easy to miss details — but most of the time skimming works.
Obligatory accessibility note...
Screen readers rely on accurate spelling, so the quoted paragraph would be completely inaccessible to blind or low-vision users. People with dyslexia or other cognitive disabilities may also have trouble accessing the information.
Vowel sounds and language accents...
Incidentally, did you know that the majority of language accents are caused by differences in vowel sounds? Most consonants can be pronounced only one way. The consonant sound /t/ is a sharp burst of breath produced when you pull your tongue off the roof of your mouth and it’s the only way to make that sound. Vowel sounds like /a/ and /i/ are produced by a sustained exhale across your tongue, teeth, and lips (and through the nose in some especially annoying accents). Depending on the shape of your mouth, these sounds can vary greatly. Try saying a constant vowel sound while widening your mouth, sticking out your tongue, and contorting your face in various other ways. Tip: Make sure no one is around when you do this.
There are a few exceptions to the vowel rule, mainly dropped consonants and replaced consonants. A thick Boston accent drops /r/ sounds (Sound “pahk the cah.”) and a British Cockney accent drops /h/ sounds. Think of Audrey Hepburn’s character, Eliza Doolittle, in My Fair Lady. Replaced sounds occur when a similar consonant phoneme is used in place of another. A typical US English accent replaces /t/ with /d/ in some words: “little” becomes “liddle.”
That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.
Saturday, September 13, 2003
cookiecrizzle, fo’ shizzle
In keeping with last month’s shizzle theme, a mindless script over at AskSnoop has kindly translated cookiecrook via the shizzolization method. Don't check it if you’re sensitive to certain words, know what I’m sayin’? Link from Eric Meyer.
I especially love the translation of the previous post. “Something good” becomes “Something gravy,” and “Amazon” becomes “Tha Big Ass River.” Werd, Snoop...
Friday, September 12, 2003
Faye Faye! Something good?! Something good for Ed?!
The Cowboy Bebop Complete Sessions Collection is now available at Amazon and you forgot the three month anniversary of my birthday. Some friend you are.
See you space cowboy...
Monday, September 08, 2003
Goats: the (accessible?) comic strip
On Friday, some co-workers and I were laughing about nightmare clients and the September 3rd issue of Goats, an online comic strip. Working for government clients can be hell sometimes.
Anyway, I noticed the extended information link available for the strip, and found that it contained, among other things, a detailed table outlining information for each of the strip's panels. Characters and their dialogue were listed with each of the scene's background and prop information. Another section outlined more character information including past appearances in other episodes.
Upon detailed inspection, I found that the table was not actually accessible — for one, it failed to use th cells for headers — but it is an admirable start. At least the information is available as document text. With a little bit of semantic HTML massaging, Goats could be the very first accessible online comic strip.
Thursday, September 04, 2003
Devil's Dictionary 2.0
Greg Knauss' Devil's Dictionary 2.0 defines several web terms that some of you may not be clear on:
MIT OpenCourseWare...
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology just launched the MIT OpenCourseWare project (link from Holly Marie), a Web-based electronic publishing initiative.
It's goals are to:
- Provide free, searchable, coherent access to MIT's course materials for educators in the non-profit sector, students, and individual learners around the world.
- Create an efficient, standards-based model that other universities may emulate to publish their own course materials.
The courses provide syllabi, course reading assignments, and video lectures of all courses. Several hundred courses are already available and all are free to the public. Fantastic.
I think I'll probably go through Media, Education, and the Marketplace first.
Accessible menu updates...
Today I posted a substantial update to my accessible DHTML menu test that creates a more usable experience for people accessing the menu without a mouse, including those using screen readers. View the September Fourth update if you want to read the specifics.
None of the menu links work because they are referring to pages on the TexasOnline website, but you should be able to get the idea. Eventually, these test menus will replace the current ones on TexasOnline.
There are still some outstanding issues that I'd like to work out — I don't know that I'll ever get them perfect — but for the most part, I'm fairly happy with them. If you have time to test them, I'd love to hear your feedback.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Number one in the hood on Google, G...
Awwwww yeah, baby... Sometime over the past weekend I jumped to the number one search result for "James Craig" on Google. I've had "cookiecrook" and "cookie crook" for some time now, but my name is apparently more popular. It was fairly easy to rank higher than the pro skateboarder and the hair stylist, but I had always been second to some old boat... Until now. Booyah! I don't plan to give up my ranking anytime soon... Sorry, boat!
I was also able to snag jamescraig.net recently (nothing there yet), and I might try for the "dot com" domain unless the owner watches it closely... In the mind of a domain-jacker: "Damn, I'm broke, my feet hurt, and that hairstylist is slippin'." I'll see you in 2010, Mr. Craig! Bwah hahaha ahaha.
