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Sandra Earl

untitled - 0 views

  • The upsurge in VoiceOver could be explained in part by iPhone now providing VoiceOver support; all of a sudden there is a very real reason to switch to Mac if you can use a screen reader you are familiar with on both your desktop and mobile.
  • The upsurge in VoiceOver could be explained in part by iPhone now providing VoiceOver support; all of a sudden there is a very real reason to switch to Mac if you can use a screen reader you are familiar with on both your desktop and mobile.
  • It’s good to also see the free, open source NVDA on the up. They’ve worked hard to include WAI-ARIA support and are becoming a key tool for web developers when testing.
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  • We’re still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that’s the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into. On desktop we have IAccessible2, MSAA and UI Automation (amongst others) but on mobile users are tied into one platform often only supporting one browser (such as iPhone, Blackberry RIM and others) so while desktop has opened up we find ourselves in a 1990’s type impasse with users left with little room to choose on mobile. Opera works well with VoiceOver but we have no way of telling if it works on the iPhone as it’s not supported. My hope is that with more users there’ll be more momentum behind breaking this stand off and opening up the market and ultimately giving users not only choice but portability between platforms.
  • It’s good to also see the free, open source NVDA on the up. They’ve worked hard to include WAI-ARIA support and are becoming a key tool for web developers when testing.
  • « Yay factor! Going global with standards and BBC Click on web accessibility Make video accessible, localised, mobile and searchable by captioning » Screen reader software usage shifts on desktop and mobile Nov 4th, 2009 by iheni WebAim released their 2009 Screen Reader Survey last week, a follow up from last years Screen Reader survey. Very good reading it makes too but of particular interest are results around screen reader choice on the desktop and increased screen reader access on mobile. For years it’s felt like screen reader users have mainly used IE on the desktop in combination with the major screen readers Jaws by Freedom Scientific and WindowEyes by GW Micro. It’s not that other platforms don’t support screen readers (we have Orca on Linux, VoiceOver on Mac) it’s just that IE seems to have dominated. As such what types of content and web technologies users can and can’t access has very much been driven by what the three software vendors Microsoft, Freedom Scientific and GW Micro have supported. This has made access to the open web a bit lopsided cutting down on choice for the end user, competition and by extension innovation. SVG is an example of a web technology that has possibly suffered by not being supported by IE and in turn by Jaws and WindowEyes. What’s interesting to see in this year’s survey is that Jaws and WindowEyes – while still the most used – have some stiff competition at snapping at their heels from open source, free screen readers (NVDA and  SAToGo ) and VoiceOver which is available with Mac: JAWS 75.2% Window Eyes 23.5% VoiceOver 14.6% System Access or System Access To Go 22.3% NVDA 25.6% While this year’s stats show little shift for Jaws and WindowEyes usage overall there is a significant leap forward for NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) and VoiceOver: Of the 1121 respondents, 74% use JAWS, 23% use Window-Eyes, 8% use NVDA, and 6% use VoiceOver. While several other screen readers were reported, these were the most prominently reported. The upsurge in VoiceOver could be explained in part by iPhone now providing VoiceOver support; all of a sudden there is a very real reason to switch to Mac if you can use a screen reader you are familiar with on both your desktop and mobile. This could also explain the increase of screen reader users on mobile reported this year with 53% of survey respondents with disabilities confirming they use a screen reader on a mobile device. This is up from 12% last year (although last year’s survey doesn’t distinguish disabled from non-disabled users). I wonder how much this is to do with the ‘iPhone Factor’ but also can’t help thinking that social networking has done for the mobile web what Kylie Minogue did for Agent Provocateur – everybody wants some. And for me at least 2009 feels like the year that we all sat up and paid attention to the potential of mobile for people with disabilities. We’re still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that’s the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into. On desktop we have IAccessible2, MSAA and UI Automation (amongst others) but on mobile users are tied into one platform often only supporting one browser (such as iPhone, Blackberry RIM and others) so while desktop has opened up we find ourselves in a 1990’s type impasse with users left with little room to choose on mobile. Opera works well with VoiceOver but we have no way of telling if it works on the iPhone as it’s not supported. My hope is that with more users there’ll be more momentum behind breaking this stand off and opening up the market and ultimately giving users not only choice but portability between platforms.
  • We’re still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that’s the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into.
  •  
    "We're still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that's the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into."
Sandra Earl

Tim Anderson's ITWriting - Tech writing blog » Adobe AIR: 10 reasons to love ... - 0 views

  • 3. Easy conversion of existing Flex or HTML applications. It’s the same basic runtime. In the case of HTML, AIR apps rely on WebKit, the core component in Apple’s Safari web browser.
  • 7. Rich design and multimedia. This is Flash, so ideal for highly customized UIs, animation, sound and video. Adobe is proving the point by creating a media player built with AIR. Existing Flash developers can easily use their skills to build AIR applications.
  • 4. Proprietary technology. AIR applications depend on Adobe’s runtime.
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  • 6. No model for commercial components. It is not clear to me how a component vendor could sell an AIR component while protecting it from unlicensed deployment. This may limit the availability of 3rd party components, with a corresponding impact on productivity.
  • 7. Schizophrenic development model. AIR supports either Flex development, or HTML applications which run in WebKit. The ugly side of this flexibility is that there are two SDKs, even two JavaScript virtual machines with different capabilities and characteristics. While it is nice to have a way to render HTML, I am not convinced that the web application model is worth it, given the complications it causes. After all, web applications run perfectly well in the browser.
  • Lack of UI standards may lead to annoying inconsistencies between AIR applications. We are used to this on the Web; now it is coming to the desktop as well.
Sandra Earl

Introducing WysiHat: An eventually better open source WYSIWYG editor - (37signals) - 0 views

  • WysiHat is a WYSIWYG JavaScript framework that provides an extensible foundation to design your own rich text editor. WysiHat stays out of your way and leaves the UI design to you. Although WysiHat lets you get up and running with a few lines of code, the focus is on letting you customize it. We are giving developers early access to the project while we continue to work out the remaining issues. Note: It’s extremely early. Contributors are welcome so please check out the project on GitHub and send us your feedback.
Vernon Fowler

Breadcrumbs: 11 Design Guidelines for Desktop and Mobile - 0 views

  • the breadcrumb corresponding to the current page should not be a link. You should never have a link that does nothing. The last breadcrumb (denoting the current page) should not be a link.
    • Vernon Fowler
       
      The breadcrumb denoting the current page SHOULD be a link and differentiated from others via mechanisms such as aria-current="page" See https://scottaohara.github.io/a11y_breadcrumbs/ for this pattern.
    • Vernon Fowler
       
      The breadcrumb denoting the current page SHOULD be a link and differentiated from others via mechanisms such as aria-current="page" See https://scottaohara.github.io/a11y_breadcrumbs/ for this pattern.
  • Include the current page as the last item in the breadcrumb trail.
  • Breadcrumb trails should start with a link to the homepage.
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  • Breadcrumbs aren’t necessary (or useful) for sites with flat hierarchies that are only 1 or 2 levels deep, or sites that are linear in structure.
  • Unfortunately, on mobile, the cost of using breadcrumbs can quickly overwhelm the benefits. Don’t use breadcrumbs that wrap to multiple lines.
  • Don’t use breadcrumbs that are too small or too crowded together.
  • Consider shortening the breadcrumb trail to include only the last level(s).
  • The Oregon state government website includes a breadcrumb trail, but omits a link to the homepage. However, in this case this is acceptable, as the site also includes a Home link in the global navigation
  • duplicating the Home link in both the global navigation and the breadcrumb trail is not recommended — one or the other is fine
  • This site’s structure is nonhierarchical, and so there is no need (or value) in including a breadcrumb trail.
  • MIT’s main website has a flat hierarchy, with only 1 page in each section. While it features a breadcrumb at the top of the page, this breadcrumb isn’t necessary. In the main navigation, the location of the page is highlighted.
  • Breadcrumbs should include only site pages, not logical categories in your IA.
  • The link to the parent page is a dropdown menu, with the current page’s siblings (bottom image). A better design would  have a separate UI for the local navigation, to enable users to travel to lateral pages in the current section of the site.
  • Breadcrumbs should not replace the global navigation bar or the local navigation within a section.
  • Breadcrumbs augment but do not replace those main forms of navigation.
  • when they skip some of these levels (for example, because they arrived to the site by clicking on an external link such as a search-engine result), breadcrumbs orient them and help them find their way to other, possibly more relevant, pages.
  • In this example, the home page and current page are omitted from the breadcrumb trail, which is not recommended.
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