October 24, 2007
Youtube for Accessibility
[My apologies for the long hiatus - it has been a really busy term.]
Now here's a new concept, at least for me. Let's say you have been working to make your site as accessible as possible, for the obvious reasons -- #1) the more folks that can use the site, the more folks *will* use the site; #2) need to meet legal, government and enterprise specifications; and #3) being "good folk". You've done all kinds of CSS and behind the scenes coding to make sure that people with special needs can choose to use their own setting instead of yours.
Then you get a complaint from someone and it turns out the complaint is not because they can't use their settings, but because they DON'T KNOW HOW. Oh. So whose problem is it, whose responsibility is it, etcetera, etcetera.
If you make your site accessible for reason #2 you probably really don't care as long as you've met the job requirements, but if you do accessibility for either reasons #1 or #3, then you really do want people to be able to get at what they want from your site, and you are willing to help them a bit to make sure that happens.
Someone over at Accessify (a truly wonderful blog about tech and web accessibility) came up with a clever idea -- don't just make the site accessible, but include training for the core skills, such as how to make font size (text) bigger or smaller.
Accessify: Teach a Man to Fish, or, How to Resize Text: http://accessify.com/news/2007/09/teach-a-man-to-fish-or-how-to-resize-text/
One of the truly innovative parts of this post is the suggestion that you can not only include training, not only create a how-to screen capture video (and put it in YouTube for maximum access), but you can embed this in your accessibility statement for the site. Now, there's a thought to consider. What is your most common access question for your site?
Posted by pfa at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2007
RSS Feeds
RSS Feeds are great for productivity, although some argue they aren't strictly Web 2.0.
Just in case you're curious about using these, let me show you and example and walk you through how to use them in your web pages.
RSS feeds to your web pages let you display results from one site on another, and the list will automatically update as the content chanes on the original site. For example, you can list new articles from a blog, results from a PubMed search, new articles published in your favorite journal, or results from a Google News search, for just a few examples.
Let's start with a Google News search on Web 2.0.
STEP 1: Pick the source of your RSS feed.
Google Search: "Web 2.0"
Here's a screenshot:
STEP 2: Find the link for your RSS feed.
For this Google search, you will notice in the bottom left hand corner there is a link that says RSS. (If you need to make the picture bigger, you can click on it.)
STEP 3: Click on the RSS link.
When you click on the RSS link, you might see a somewhat funky display like this:
Notice it isn't very pretty and is a little confusing. That's OK, because you are going to ignore everything except the location bar. You know -- that place where the web address or URL displays? Find the part that begins ... http://news.google.com/news? etcetera. Select or highlight the entire URL, and copy it.
STEP 4: Go to Feed2JS (or one of the mirror sites).
Please note - you can thank Alan Levine for this wonderful tool!
STEP 5: Click on BUILD.
STEP 5: Click on BUILD.
Follow the instructions, and fill in the form.
You might want to play around with this a few times. Use the preview button a LOT to make sure it looks the way you want it.
STEP 6: Generate JavaScript.
When you like what you see enough to go ahead for now, click on the button that says "Generate Javascript." It should look something like this:
Now, highlight and copy the code!
STEP 7: Paste the code.
You can paste the resulting code in your web page code, web code editor, a blog entry like this, or more. Without any extra formatting, you can quickly and easily get this.
Posted by pfa at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)