LSW

A List Apart (ALA) has a series of articles starting on the art of working from home, the first one is a good read and I figured we could use a thread on the subject, I will update as I find things or people suggest articles or ways. ------------------------------------------- Walking the Line When You Work from Home (ALA) Offices and The Creativity Zone (Hivelogic.com)

this is another case where the different replies were good enough for a common question to be a sticky, so here is the original thread. Need help with conditional comments for IE!!!

This is not a right or wrong thread, just two way of doing things and the reason for that. So hacks are bad - most of us agree. A hack is a code style that takes advantage of bugs and mistakes in browsers. If the browser is fixed, the hack does not work and the site is likely broken. Discussing this in another forum a comment was made that rings true and should be mentioned here. So a few points to consider: Hack Con - Requires a mistake or bug in a browser to work, it that is fixed the hack fails. Con - Makes the CSS not valid Pro - A hack is placed alone in the CSS, when the CSS is external this means you need but remove it from the style sheet to be rid of it. Condition Comments Con - They have to be placed in your markup, every single page... Con - They muck up pure structured code & invalidate your code Con - You are playing to the whims of the most popular browser yes, but you are writing incorrect code due to one single user agent out of the dozens that you may have visit your site, logical to cater to one single broken user agent? Pro - You are creating styles for IE in a form that only IE will read leaving your CSS pure for standards based browsers. Conclusion The choice is yours, would you rather have pure structure or pure CSS? Would you rather write a hack in a single document or would you rather write a comment/s in every page of your site? Course with the smart use of Templates or includes you can limit this. So this is not a do or do not, simply consider this and what comments will follow and make an informed decision whether to use Hacks or Comments. IE7 has improved but there are still some problems with IE7 and Opera 9 and a whole new series of Hacks will be needed. IE7 has blocked the * html hack which was often used to correct Layout problems in IE, however those layout problems have not been corrected, they still exist bit the hack does not.

Between Newbies posting here lately and spammers claiming to work for big companies but with absolutely shoddy code, it came to me the most common problems with people using CSS. Right off let me say that for newbies this should not be embarrassing, I suffered this problem as well when I started. Beginners basically beginners are hesitant to use CSS, so they commonly try to work with it bit by bit. Wrong approach - just do it. This is usually seen when someone uses CSS just to effect fonts. Another form is tables with CSS. Yes you can do so but it defeats the purpose. Take this to heart, don?t go half way, just jump in. Thinking it is HTML: Forget what you learned about HTML, this in not HTML it is CSS, another language. All to often you see beginners writing CSS like it is HTML. Just replacing the Font tag with a class name on every paragraph or such. The idea is to use external style sheets. Every page is linked to this sheet, make a change to this sheet and every page reflects the change. By using styles inside of the tags, you add wasted code and have to make changes on every element on every page. If you merely define the paragraph tag than every paragraph will have that style, no need to ever ad class or ID's Do not mix, it just makes things confusing for everyone. I see many spamers with HTML attributes, inline styles in tags next to these with Block styles in the header and even a link to an external style sheet. These are god awful monsters to control. I am Webmaster of a site that is like that, the simplest changes will almost always break the site. Beware and avoid such sites and those who build them. If you have any CSS, put it all in external style sheets and most any HTML attributes can and should be done in the CSS as well. Remember this is not HTML you are dealing with, do not just replace HTML attributes with styles in the code. If you are going to use CSS it will only bring and advantage if you learn to write CSS as CSS and not as a HTML attribute replacement. Classes: Beginners always write classes, then you will see a dozen paragraphs with identical class names. Again this is due to this HTML style of writing we learned first and how we had to write fonts into everything. CSS is not that way. With CSS you can and should use ID's. Why? Well ID's for CSS can also be used as reference points for scripts and internal links, you need not name extra elements. Also for instance you name the upper element with an ID This way you can use a default style for paragraphs, but say that paragraphs in you content are shown differently than paragraphs in a footer. By using classes, you are creating far more work for yourself. Simply create a default and then redefine any elements by adding it to a ID description. In this way define links found in one ID element to look different from links in another ID element. Now this may seem a bit hard to follow, but keep it in mind. CSS is about minimize code. Ask yourself if you can not make things easier and smaller. A class can be used as often as you wish. An ID can be used only once per page. So use ID's as often as possible, then when you go to use a class, ask yourself if it is really something you need. Ask yourself if you need to use it multiple times or if it is not easier just to say, anything in a element with this name should look this way. Why repeat 5 classes in 5 paragraphs when you can say that a paragraph in a element called ?content? should look this way, whether 5 or 25 paragraphs. So in short as a review: Do not a use CSS inline styles as a replacement for Font tags. Use external style sheets, do not mix HTML attributes, inline styles, block styles (styles in the head tags) and external style sheets. Just use external style sheets for all CSS and HTML attributes. Do not use Classes for everything. Use ID's whenever possible. It is possible to create web sites with few if any classes at all. Define elements with a ID preamble to it so that those styles only go active when the defined element is in a specifically named ID. Feel free to view my styles and source code. Once you take these tips to heart, you will discover that CSS is much easier to understand then you believed. Darkshadow-designs & DSD CSS

This has come up often lately and I tire of re-writing it every time so for those who may wish to ask about this in the future, here is why they are useless. You can make the image a background, makes it a little harder to get, even add a same sized clear gif over it that would get grabbed by newbies... but for Pros, it will not stop them. All images on a site are downloaded to the temp folder on the HD by default. Just have to pull the images from there. I can make a screen capture of your page and trim the image out I can download the page to my HD and grap the image I can download the whole site to my HD and grab the image I can use IE6 which offeres a image toolbar that bypasses such scripts I can use Firefox with an extention that gives me a toolbar that bypasses such scripts I can turn off JavaScript so that your script does not work I can look at your source code to see the path and image name and place that tin the address bar to access the image directly without loading your script. I can use one of the programs out there to download your site and images for offline browsing and get the images that way. Disabling right clicks can make the browser unusable for sme people with disabilities. Some people like me have very usefull tools tied into our right click and you have no right to mess with it. Those with Dial-up may wish to / need to use right click to show a image itself due to slow loading times. (thanks Billy) Users can block right-click scripts from within Firefox (see below, thanks Tim) Using such scripts only calls me a thief. You interfere with the workings of my browser and my workflow. You have no right to mess with my browser so I will never go toyour site again and I will tell people not to gothere as you have no respect for others. Generally speaking you will just piss people off with such scripts. There is no way to protect images on the internet, either live with it or do not put them online. Even using a password only blocks some people form grabbing the images, those with access can still steal them.

This was a question in the old Killerstes forum, rather than trying to copy and paste I am linking to it so you can follow it yourselves. Unexpected characters in Expression Web Design

Bruce Lawson and the others at Opera have developed a Web Standards Training Curriculum . I think it is something for everyone to have a look at, but especially the beginners and students.

Here is one of the best references I know. Safari Books Online is an online bookstore offering everything possible for electronic books on technical issues. Right off the top, it is not cheap. I have the advantage of a Corporate License through my work. But if/when i should leave, I plan on buying a subscription. For instance, these searches: UML (Unified Modeling Language) - 963 Books .NET - 1744 Books CSS - 1278 Books Apache - 1500 Books Flash - 1000 Books These are top line books from the likes of O'Reilly, SitePoint, New Riders, Sams, Macromedia Press, Que, Adobe Press... As these are the top books, just electronically you can open any chapter of any book to find what you want, you can read them online and you receive tokens monthly that allow you to download the book in PDF format to keep. Each book can be added to a favorite list as well. Have a problem with something your programming? Just go there, look up a book you think will help you and solve the problem. If the book is helpful, make it a favorite.

We get all sorts of variations to this question and I am sort of tired of repeating myself so it's Sticky time. To begin are links from myself and falkencreative. Feel free to post here or IM any other links you think should be added. This way we do not have to repeat the answers all the time. KillerSites Network How-to-build-websites.com SecretSites.com CSSTutorial.net KillerPHP.com Idea22.com (Video Tutorials) KillerSites University Combined technology training W3Schools Tizag.com NetTuts.com Flex 3 in a week - excellent 47 video training course for Adobe Flex. Safari Books online - is an online bookstore offering everything possible for electronic books on technical issues. HTML W3Schools HTML SelfHTML (German) CSS W3Schools CSS CSS-Tricks.com PHP PHPVideoTutorials.com PHP.net Real Classes ($$) ITT-Tech I was signed on to get an Associates Degree in Web Development with ITT, I was impressed by the course and it teaches real world design based on what employers today want and not "Ivory Tower - we think this is what you need" classes. Alas I had to decided between school and a paying job... so off to Alaska where there is no ITT no no degree. Webucator Not cheap, I have taken some of these online courses for my job and they are very good. They are worth considering.

Doug Geoffray of GW Micro (Windows-Eyes) came by to teach Yahoo! front end engineers about the history and current state of screen-reader support in software, including the nature of the current challenges we face developing screen-reader-accessible dynamic web pages. It is rather technical, especially in the beginning, but may be of interest to you. Doug Geoffray: "From the Mouth of a Screen reader" See more Yahoo! Videos tagged as accessibility related .

I will let them speak for themselves... but this seems to be a new program that ties in with the United States Daepartment of Agriculture... or at least advertised at their web site. Aside from accessibility reviews they will be offering what appears to be online accessibility training, the first being tomorrow so you have to sign up to today, Tuesday 21 Jan. 2008. Worth having a look at.

In July 2008 I was diagnosed as depressive by the VA (Veterans Administration). If you watch TV, you have seen the commercials for some medication describing the physical results of depression. Depression is however a form of Cognitive Disorder and effects how you use the internet as well as how you see the world. So this is meant as a first person look at my experience surfing the internet. I will also mention is passing how it effects me as a web developer. Concentration - One thing I have noticed over the last year or so is an increasing inability to concentrate. This goes for both coding web sites as well as using them. When I am supposed to code something that is a bit more complicated or when I come across complicated /abstract ideas in web sites it is as if I hit a wall and deflect to something "easier." I must forcibly attempt to concentrate and any outside activities easily break my concentration and offer me an escape from what I am trying to understand. I find myself repeatedly reading content and vocally speaking it in an attempt to focus and understand it. Comprehension - This ties in with concentration. Again it is an inability to understand what I am reading. With other accessibility issues, there are ways of doing things, tools, assistive technologies etc. to help us. But there are no tools or tricks to assist those of us with difficulties understanding what is being said, that makes Cognitive disorders a real gray area for developers. Even when I manage to concentrate for any length of time, it does not mean I understand what I read. As a team member developing an application, I sit in on meetings and I watch their lips move, I hear the words and my even understand in that moment... but it is lost by the time the meeting is over. Programming is in a large extent dealing with sometimes very abstract ideas and ways of thinking. As a user it means I may not understand content. I have other personal issues currently and visited a section of the state of Alaska's web site for help in dealing with these issues. I read for an hour, followed links and in the end I was nowhere. The sheer number of links and the "Official" sounding names of programs and then the dry techno speak and mass of information I was frustrated, irritable and simply exited the site without the info I need to help my family. These sites and programs exist for people who need help, yet when I and who knows how many others go to the site to get that help, we are already under stress, we are already troubled and maybe in a hurry... and therefore we need the info to be easily understandable and easily found and not further frustrate us with techno speak and information avalanches. Memory - Another symptom is memory loss. This is another area that spans coder and user. I was directed to do something easy, something really anyone with web development experience could do and in the time it took to turn to my PC I lost what I was to do and had to have it explained 3 times before I finally got it. I have found myself unable to recall code when asked for help on subjects of CSS, HTML and Accessibility. As a user it makes it hard to recall what is written. A telephone number, a name, the meaning of an abbreviation explained early on in the web site. I have printed more web pages of late then ever before so I have it in hard copy on file somewhere so I don't have to try to find them again. Problem solving - Another area of difficulty is the ability to solve problems. The easy example is in the web forums I visit where I am one of those regulars who help often. I have begun to avoid any threads asking help with solving code problems. This is a partial mix of the above, concentration, comprehension and memory. As a user, any time we visit a web site is is an issue of problem solving. This is the info I need/want, how to I get it and how do I use it? Problem solving is more an issue for me as a programmer... but when a user is faced with many links that may be considered somewhat vague, they may not see clearly what path they may need to take to get where they wish to be. Open an advanced book on mathematics, imagine someone stopping you on the street and showing you a formula and asking you to explain it, that is sort of how I feel now when I surf, I hit some complicated content and get a brain freeze as if it was a formula from Einstein. Restlessness & agitation - This results in an inability to sit still and search in depth for the information one needs. If the information is not easily and quickly found an increased restlessness makes it increasingly difficult to sit through a myriad of deeply buried links or to thoroughly read the content. So that is a quick look at the issues I now face when dealing with the internet. How will you the developer now handle them? Will you need to? Well I did a quick statistics search and this is what I found: Depression-Guide.com Approximately 18.8 million American adults, or about 9.5 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year, have a depressive disorder. Nearly twice as many women (12.0 percent) as men (6.6 percent) are affected by a depressive disorder each year. These figures translate to 12.4 million women and 6.4 million men in the U.S. Major depressive disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and established market economies worldwide. Major depressive disorder affects approximately 9.9 million American adults, or about 5.0 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. Nearly twice as many women (6.5 percent) as men (3.3 percent) suffer from major depressive disorder each year. These figures translate to 6.7 million women and 3.2 million men. While major depressive disorder can develop at any age, the average age at onset is the mid-twenties. UpliftProgram.com Depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults or about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. This includes major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, and bipolar disorder. Everyone, will at some time in their life be affected by depression -- their own or someone else's, according to Australian Government statistics. (Depression statistics in Australia are comparable to those of the US and UK.) The rate of increase of depression among children is an astounding 23% p.a. 15% of the population of most developed countries suffers severe depression. 30% of women are depressed. Men's figures were previously thought to be half that of women, but new estimates are higher. So as you see almost 19 Million potential users of your or your customers web site have depression like me. They may have the same problems using a site as I have. This also does not include other cognitive disorders, these are only depression, so these numbers may only be a fraction of those with other cognitive disorders that affect the user the same way. Some 5.7 Million in the US are Bipolar and worldwide 222 Million. As many as 5.2 million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer?s and an estimated 10 Billion baby boomers will have it in their life time. Then there are immigrants who may not speak/read your language fluently and therefore will have issues understanding terminology heavy web sites. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) states: So it is up to you the developer/owner to decide if you will recognize the issue and add it to the list of things to consider when creating an accessible web site. You will never make a web site that is right for everyone... but you can make it easier for us. Balance the need for "professionalism" with the need of the user. We all want to look professional, but the language you use may not be the best for someone with an comprehension or concentration problem. Be sure to make the web page printable if it is complicated or carries info that is complicated or abstract that a person may need to remember. Repeat important abbreviation/acronym/term definitions throughout the site so the user who may have memory issues need not jump back and forth. Make navigation simplistic and shallow. Make it logical of course, but try not to bury things to deeply and use link names that are easily to understand and remember. Offer alternatives. If you need content that is very terminology heavy, have a link with much more basic content that will give us a brief idea and then we can try the more complicated content if needed. Some people may understand a table of data, another may do better with the information displayed in a paragraph or three. Some may understand the written word better and others may prefer a video or audio explanation of the info. I will not suggest you dumb web sites down to a 3rd grade intelligence like commercials do. But read your content and ask yourself, is it really clear? Do I really need to use these words? Is it to abstract? Could I not write it a little simpler or show more examples and more graphics to support the written word? Is my navigation to deep? Do I need hundreds of links on the index page? What can I do to make it easier to understand and use? We don't have any easy tools to help us with this and I have no assistive technology to help me understand. All I have is the effort you put into it... for those like me, simple is better.

This is a standard question for most of us, we design for your customer, that is the person paying us... but it it really so? Or is it just about the old stand in "Target Audience"? No, not really. We need to design for "The Customer", the person who is going to your customers site. They are the target, they are the ones who will make the site a success or a flop. You have to design the site to meet their needs and that is where accessibility comes in. But "Our Customers" do not always see that. Then you have to be good at selling it to them, that is my weakness. This was proven once more this last week. here is what happened: I worked a year ago as a help desk type person for my district. One day in a meeting the representatives discovered I was a web designer and jumped at the chance for some free work for their services. My boss agreed, the help desk work was free to for them. Germany had just passed a accessibility law sort of like the DDA or Section 508. Requiring all Government offices to have accessible web sites. That was my Job, build a accessible web site, it took a year but it worked and it rates well with Google. Now a decision has been made to build a Content Management system into it, so I spent two months working on that, looking for a good CMS. I found one I am happy with, easy to build into my site and easy to use. Only real problem I thought was that it costs money and it is only in English. As it turned out the only real problem was the editor it uses, XStandard. It is in fact a excellent editor for CMSs. It is made for web site using CSS layouts and formatting. So what is the problem you may ask? It does not offer underlining. That is what it comes down to really. You see all formatting is handled in the CSS, all text sizes and colours, it was a finished site. But now with the CMS the employees of the organisation can and are expected to add, update and edit, or remove text on the ages for their section. That is what CMS is for. With XStandard they simply type in their text and add simple formatting and save, my CSS makes sure the pages text looks alike on all pages. But these employees use MS Word. They have their habits and one of those habits is underlining text to make it stick out as emphasis. XStandard does not support this. So I simply explained that you do not underline text on the internet, that suggests a link and not emphasis. It will irritate the user when they click on it and nothing happens. Underline is also a visual indicator, a blind user has no knowledge of it and so the fact that that text is important slips by them. One should never use mere visual emphasis, that is why we have things like and that have a syntax meaning a screenreader understands and passes along. This was a argument that was accepted, then simply dropped as unimportant as we do not have many blind users and no reason to make the site only for the blind and not the visual users. Well that was not my point, my point was simply that by using and you make the important text look important to visual users and sound important to those listening to the site. Besides those with say poor eyesight, or cognitive or reading weaknesses can find it very hard to read multiple lines of underlined text. the answer of course was that we do not have many disabled users...... so, I pointed out we do not know how many and I was hired to make the site accessible to all users! But the argument went on with the fact that the employees are used to underlining text in their paper based work and e-mails etc., we cannot simply forbid them to not use a tool they are used to. XStandard does not support underlining text, or colour changes, or text size changes. All that is meant to be done in the CSS, all XStandard does is allow for syntax, making text headers or quotes etc.. It does not allow users to choose formatting as that is done by the designer, that is what he is payed for. The employee simply needs to supply the content and make it logical using syntax. Now I am told we cannot expect the employees to change the way they do things. Well why not? I built the web site to be used by "The Customer", a design that causes no problems for "The Customer". Now it is to be changed to suite the needs of a few employees who will rarely do anything with it anyways. The very person who hired me to make the site accessible is now having me make it so any employee can change any of the text in any way they like. They can justify text or maybe align it center (causing problems for dyslexics and other cognitive problems for instance) or align it right because they like it when every other of the 170 + pages is set left normally. They will be able to set text sizes at will in the HTML overriding my CSS and disallowing the disabled from changing the content to meet their needs by replacing the stylesheet. I will continue to argue this until the job is done in hopes I can change their minds but see little hope. Those I am dealing with see the usefulness of the site for the employees to be more important than the usefulness of the site to "The Customer". Should we expect our customer actually have to learn the rules that pertain to web sites? Should they have to change their habits to work in this medium? Is that to much to ask? No, I think not because the web site reflects the owner, how well the web site can be used by the user reflects on how much the owner cares about the user. If a web site is hard to use but looks pretty, that tells me that the owner cares little about the user and is on a ego trip. If you are a designer/developer, remember you have to make your customer happy, but you are the expert and in the end it is your job to make "The Customer" happy so they keep using your customers web site. If you read this as a web site owner, remember you are offering a service or info or product to your customer and have to meet their needs, so if you really care about the user, then you should learn to use the tools you have to serve them better, not just make your life easier and to keep your habits. We developers Build our web sites for the "The Customer", the end user. If we do not make them happy or they cannot use a site due to barriers, then we have failed.

This is a term I use often and will use often here. It is about using the tags given us in HTML in the way they were meant to be used. I discussed this in my Right tools for the Job! thread. Molly Holtzschlag as written a great article about what semantics mean and why they are important. From the accessibility side it simply creates a logical structure of information for those who may not be able to see or understand your graphical highlights. So semantically correct use of tags make the meaning of the information far more clear to those who may have difficulties otherwise. They may be confused why a tag is a H3 when there is not preceding H1 or H2. It is a good read: The meaning of Semantics by Molly Holtzschlag

This falls into the category of using the right tools for the job. How often do you use Lists and for what? Chances are good that you do not use it as often as you should because ?they are ugly?. Good argument until CSS was released, now it is just old fashioned. So when should you use them? Well a list of items of course: widget 1 widget 2 widget 3 But we have far more lists in our sites when you think about what you do: Home | About Us | Sitemap | Contact What is that really, a list of links isn?t it? So to be semantically correct you should write: Home About Us Sitemap Contact That makes sense to blind users, it makes sense to Search Engines, which is always good & it is common sense. But ugly, at least till you add CSS to them. You can replace the bullet, you can remove the bullet and you can even lay it out Horizontally. #navlist li {list-style: none; display: inline;} That is standard today with CSS based designs. Remove the CSS and the site degrades into a logical design with link lists. It also allows you far more freedom when formatting your link to look like buttons, as you can format the & as well as the tags. Now this is fine and common as it is. But let?s take another look shall we. What can you say about how we set up our navigation? Look at the order, Home - our main page, then about the company, then a sitemap to help navigation and make search engines happy, last Contact info. That would be a order right? Home being considered most important, followed by about, sitemap and contact. So is it really logical to use a unordered list? How about this from a logical semantic view? : Home About Us Sitemap Contact Now you can still ditch the numbers and make it horizontal just as the other list. Only now you are telling those with no CSS and search engines that the links are in order of importance. This is what I do and more designers are switching to ordered lists, but it is not as wide spread. So you are happy now and thinking that that was easy enough and you need to start doing it. Well there is just one more list that is often overseen. That is a Definition List. ?Say what??. Yea that was my reaction too, I had seen them mentioned but never knew what to do with them. So let?s have a look at what they are used for and where you can use them. But first what is it and what does it even look like? Definition Term 1 Definition Description 1 Definition Term 2 Definition Description 2 That is it, just the tags are a bit different and you need two tags per item. for the Term and Description. The term is usually flush left, the description is generally one line down and indented so it looks something like this [The DD should be indented bit I cannot figure how to show that in BBCode. Just try the code in your browser]: CSS Cascading Style Sheets, used for formatting web sites while keeping the look sperate from the structure. XHTML This is a form of XML formatted to look like HTML, but should be served as XML. That is the classic use of it. In another forum I recently helped a designer with a problem, in this case it was about a customers product line. I suggested that a Definition list may be the best way, using the product name as the term and the description as the definition description, something like this: Widget 1 Green widgets used for blue cars in Japan Widget 2 Red Widgets used for Russian Airplanes One last word on definition lists and when you could use them. Consider your site map, a tool search engines use often as well as many disabled visitors like blind users. This would be a excellent way to offer a page name and an explanation on what the page does: Portfolio Examples of my work Contact A contact form you can use to send me mail as well as telephone and address. With a little CSS you can change it to look more like a traditional list if you like, but the semantic meaning remains the same. So you see there is more to lists as you may have thought and using them in the right way will improve your site, improve use of your site by search engines and improve use of your site by disabled users. It is a win/win situation.

Ok you all know about " " or ' '. You may use them often. But are you using them right? First let us look at the different forms of using Quotes: Quoting a person's comments - "LSW is the greatest web designer of all time". You agenerally write this with an accreditation. Stef said "LSW is the greatest web designer of all time". Now we know how Stef feels *grin*. Sarcasm or highlighting - Now let us move the quotes, LSW is the "greatest" web designer of all time. Now one can say that you are saying I am the greatest, but highlighting the Greatest to suggest that you do not feel this way or using sarcasm. Stef said "LSW is the 'greatest' web designer of all time", now you can easily see Sref?s look of contempt as he says it. Or it can in other sentences mean that the word is special. Stef said "LSW is the greatest 'accessible' web designer of all time", in this case it is not sarcasm, here you can say Stef thinks I am not the best designer of all time, but I am the best accessibility designer of all time. Also highlighting in a form of separating text from the surroundings. But that is the easy part. now let us look at the web specifically. Miss use One of the most misused tags on the net is . Time and time again I see it used by people instead of paragraphs because they like the default style of blockquotes. But Blockquote has a meaning and you are confusing people possibly when you misuse it for formatting, that is what CSS is for. So when do you use them? - is a inline element really meant for being used inside paragraphs and sentences. - is a block level element, a stand alone block of text and must include block-level elements such as headings, lists, paragraphs or divas. - now this is tricky as few agree. Some think it should not be used. Some claim it is replacing and better than while still others say it is for use when you are for instance not quoting something spoken, but more like if you were to cite a section of a book or something of that nature. When you use these tags people expect a text from a third person or source and reference to who said/printed it. By simply using it to format text visually you can confuse non visual users when the software interacts with that text in a different way. Credit You can give credit in different forms like "Stef said...", "in a article at Killersites.com....". However HTML gives us another form. It is the cite attribute.

[This is being built up as I find things so please keep checking] This is meant to be a collection of different information points on legal subjects such as Sec.508 and DDA. I will also try to break them into areas where needed. However web design is international, so even tho you may be a US American, does not mean you will never have a British client so you should be aware of British law, so the DDA. Should anyone find good references other than mine please let me know so I can add them here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Accessibility and the Law UK DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) Disability Discrimination Act 1995 - Disability.gov.uk Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (c. 50) - HMSO.gov.uk US Section 508 Section508.gov Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards - Access-Board.gov United States: State Policies Relating to Web Accessibility - W3C.org Germany/Deutschland BGG/BITV Barrierefreie Informationstechnik-Verordnung - BITV BGG/BITV Begr?ndung Gleichstellungsgesetze auf L?nderebene - BIK-Online Court Cases Access Now Inc. Vs. Southwest Airlines Co. Ramada.com and Priceline.com & Travel sites settle New York accessibility investigation Web accessibility litigation: it?s not what we want Target sued over web accessibility Disabled access law does not cover web sites, says federal court

The folks at "A List Apart" have published a test they did to see how JavaScript really interacts with assistive technology. A few points: Vanilla - by this they mean the plain browser without any add on assistive Technology JAWS is the most widely spread screen reader, followed I think by Connect Outloud Note how many No you will find in the first test. This is why I say JS is to much a risk for a web site when other languages can do things better. I was surprised by how much support is there for forms, Yes falling not to far from No support. However many of those No's are very important indeed. Keep in mind these are Browser-based screen readers. It is a software package that sits on a standard browser piggyback. This way much of what the browser does understand from the JS, it feeds the screen reader the finished product. Some screen readers, especially some older models are text based and do not support JS at all. Worth noting is that Firefox is included with three screen readers. 1 year ago screen readers only worked with IE, so Firefox is putting the pressure on IE in this market as well. Results for JavaScript - Part 1: Navigating links Results for JavaScript - Part 2: Navigating forms

Roberto Scano has an excellent article looking back at web development and accessibility. A Journey Through Accessibility by Roberto Scano

Accessibility is not always about people with disabilities, just as often it is simply about "People accessing the web" regardless if it is a disability or a software, hardware or user agent. Now many Web Developers in the US and Canada feel we need only deal with normal browsers. But all web sites are international and can be visited by any one any where. Cell phones can not be ignored, for instance in Germany 97% of Germans have cell phones and 72% of those do use them to enter the net. Same goes with PSP (Play Station Portable), it may not be really common here yet but it is in Asia and the richer areas/people of the Middle East and getting really popular in Germany. I am finding more references to Yuppies using them to surf as well as play games. Just before leaving Germany I saw a German test that placed PSP against a PDA, Cell Phone and a organizer. As far as surfing PSP beat them all, the PDA only managed to be better in writing emails. So for your info I offer you a few articles on designing for PSP and will add portable agents in general. PSP, cell phones, PDAs and internet capable game consoles are not going away, but they will get better and more wide spread. Sony PSP Web design for the Sony PSP - by Brothercake (he does discuss using hacks, remember a hack counts on a bug in a user agent, a bug that may be fixed at a later date and the hack can then break your design, use with care.) Designing Websites and CSS for Sony's PSP - Neuromantics General Info NetFront 3.1 for Pocket PC Yep, that's a NetFront browser you're using CSS Mobile Profile 1.0 maximum backward compatibility to mobile phone (WAP) users? Which XHTML DTD? Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly in Two Minutes Mobile design articles from WaSP The End-All Guide to Small-Screen Web-Dev HandheldStylesheets Make your Site PDA-Friendly

Here are a series of articles discussing Ajax and Accessibility. AJAX articles now come a dime a dozen, but few have gotten into how accessible it will be. This will be double posted to the Ajax board as well, question if you wish to know about accessibility and use AJAX or just want to use AJAX but should know about accessibility issues. AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work? - James Edwards aka Brothercake AJAX, Accessibility & Screen Readers - Ian Lloyd Accessibility of AJAX Applications - WebAIM Build Half a Product: Is Ajax accessible? At all? - By Joe Clark Usability tests of Basecamp with screen readers and other adaptive technology - by Joe Clark refference to the above article. Making Ajax Work with Screen Readers - Gez Lemon DOMScripting: Hijax - DOMScripting AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work? - James Edwards for SitePoint

{NOTE: This is an older post, older than the date shown & I believe ported over from the old forum of years ago. With the growing use of HTML5, this is becoming a purely academic argument/posting. Once HTML5 becomes the new standard in 2014 or so, it will just be of historical interest.} ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the most important cornerstones to Accessibility is using W3C Standards. That means you need to understand them as well. No small feet. Clearly the first stop is the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) itself. So what language to use? Short answer, whichever you prefer, but here is what you should consider. Below you will find some good links on these subjects. HTML Html is still a Standard and the newest version of HTML available. Some still believe that XHTML replaced HTML (something I believed 1 1/2 years ago as well) and HTML is retired. Wrong. HTML 4.1 and XHTML 1.0 were both released in 1999 and are equal standards, niether better or worse than the other. HTML is fine to use and no reason not to. What I would strongly suggest is that you however serve it with the Strict DOCTYPE. That is how it is meant to be served, that is pure HTML as it is meant to be written. But more on Strict and Transitional another time. Also I strongly suggest you write HTML as close to XHTML as you can to get into the habit. This means always write in lower case, never should any element, attribute or name ever start with a capital letter, that should be avoided. Also be sure to wrap all attributes in "", so rather than Border=1, write border="1". [Edit: 2011 - HTML 5 is a hot topic and is now being used and suggested by many developers. This is possible, but you must understand that HTML IS NOT a standard. The standard at this time is still HTML 4.1. HTML is currently (Sept 2011) in "last call" and open for use and comment by developers. It is not expected to become a W3C "Recommendation" until 2014, so acceptance as a new standard is unlikely until 2015.] XHTML XHTML is falsely understood by many to be a later version of HTML that looks a little like XML (Extensible Markup Language). Wrong! XHTML is a XML Language that is formatted to look like HTML. But being XML it requires lower case names and all tags must be closed including empty tags like <img ....="">. Now it gets complicated. XHTML 1.0 - A very morphed version. It was created to "Help" us get used to XHTML ad XML. But it is very backwards compatible. It even carried forward that bad W3C habit of Frame, Transitional and Strict DOCTYPES. It is a very lax language you can even serve as HTML. XHTML 1.1 - A step to real XHTML, very modulerized. No longer has Transitional, Frame and Srict DOCTYPE, it is simpy strict. It must be served as application/xhtml+xml. XHTML 2.0 - Not released yet, this is not compatible with HTML at all. Must be served as application/xhtml+xml. [Edit: 2011 - The XHTML 2.0 development group's charter ran out in 2010. Currently it is no longer being developed although it can be re-started in the future.] Also such JavaScript such as document.write() will not work in XHTML served as XML, you will have to learn to create JavaScript with the DOM (Document Object Model). You will also no longer be able to hide CSS in your pages as the SGML style comments no longer work (), nor can you use inline styles anymore. So all CSS must be in either external sheets or in the head using , this is more trouble then likey worth it so best to simply use external style sheets. So that brings me to TagSoup. Tag Soup is serving XHTML as HTML. You see when a page is requested it goes to a server with a "Header" that explains what language it accepts. HTML is served as text/html. Now when I write a simple XHTML page, it is still being served as text/html. It is written as XHTML but served as poorly written HTML. This works with XHTML 1.0 but not the others. The problem comes with serving XHTML correctly as XML. IE does not understand that and tries to download the page! So to work in IE you have to use "Content negotiation". For instance a PHP script that says if it accepts application/xhtml+xml, if not it serves it to IE as text/html. Also when served as XML, you can no longer use such things as for comments as that is HTML and not XML. I you use XML comments and serve it as HTML, those comments will show. So at this point XHTML is not truelly supported. You can write XHTML but by servig it as HTML you loose all advantages like working with MathML or SVG. So when it is all accounted for, the trouble of working with correctly served XHTML with todays browsers.... it is not really worth it. If you are just doing a simple site with no need for SVG or MathML and such things, then it is fine and easier to use HTML, just do it Strict as it was meant to be used and keep coding as close to XHTML as you can with lower case and "" wraped attributes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more on this subject, or as proof that this is not something I dreamed up when bored [] here are some handy links on the subject: XHTML Web Design for Beginners - Accessify.com Specifying a MIME Type - Gez Lemon / Juicey Studio MIME Type Tests - Gez Lemon / Juicey Studio, test examples XHTML? 1.1 - Module-based XHTML - W3C Serving XHTML with the Right MIME Type - WebStandards.org XHTML 2.0 - W3C No Extremes - Tommy Olsson / Autistic Cuckoo Doctype Declarations and Content-Type Headers - Tommy Olsson / Autistic Cuckoo Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful - Hixie The Following have been added with the update: The perils of using XHTML properly - 456BereaStreet XHTML is not for Beginners The Road to XHTML 2.0: MIME Types

This is an area I am just now getting into, so I am not an expert but will post the links I get here. Some things to keep in mind: The standard Language in the US is American Sign Language (ASL), other countries use other versions that fit their language and alphabet. However it is said that to foreigners speaking their sign languages can better communicate than we with our spoken languages. Whikipedia quotes a book that claims it is the third most used language behind English and panish. Estimates suggest 500,000 to 2 Million people use ASL in the US. Canada and parts of Mexico use it as well. The UK uses BSL , British Sign Language. It is different then ASL. If your site offers Video or audio such as tutorials, you should consider a sign language version if plausible and someone is available. Naturally the Minimum is a text manuscript Many web sites claim AAA accessibility. That is really short of impossible. It requires you to supply content in a language the user would best be served with. This means they would need a choice between sign language and text manuscript. Course for instance Killersites offeres video tutorials, we have members in both USA and UK, so to claim AAA Stef would have to supply text versions and offer ASL as well as BSL. Course if we have or he can expect other foreigners then their SL would be needed as well. Makes AAA mpossible unless you have big money backing you. The second most used language in the US is Sign Language above Spanish and just behind English So if you are interesting in learning more: Interview: Sign-language takes to the web (ASL) Signing Time (ASL) - This is a video series to teach ASL to small children. Excellant series and is playing in some areas on TV. SigningTimeKids.org (ASL) Signing Time Foundation (ASL) HandSpeak (ASL Online Dictionary) About American Sign Language (ASL) ASL Alphabet Deaf 24/7 (BSL) Learn British Sign Language (BSL) American Sign Language is a Foreign Language - Not exactly on subject but interesting. It is a paper arguing that ASL is a language and should be allowed to be credited as a foreign language for college credit.

So, are you one of those people who argue that accessibility is not needed? Here are some questions for you that I hope will cause you to reconsider. Do you have statistics? How many blind users do you have? How many color blind users? How many with mobility problems? How many with cognitive problems? I get this alto, "We don't have enough disabled people to make it worth it." Well then how many do you have? Show me the numbers. But they can not. So if you can not tell me how many disabled visitor you have, how can you claim they are not enough? "No one has complained so far..." Aaaaaahhhhh, OK. That simply tells me that no one complains, not that there is no problem. How often do you really complain about things and how often do you just go somewhere else? Ever complained about something in a grocery store and were told no one else has a problem finding things? How would you feel and what would you do if the store did say that to you? Yet that is what you are telling me, why make things better for a user with problems since no one else has complained. If one person did complain would you do a redesign? Really? The problem is, people with problems find web sites every day, most every web site is problematic. Would you write twenty letters a day to tell someone their web site is a problem? After how many non-replies and a number of ?no one else has complained? letters would you simply quit and if a site caused problems just leave and find a new one to try at? Look around the parking lot next time you go to work if you are a business. Do you have handicapped parking? How often do you really have people use them? Yet you have them... so why would you have handicapped parking while offering your handicapped web user nothing? You can bet that you have more handicapped persons using your web site then you parking spots. If you wish to tell me it is law to have parking... then you mean we must make it law for web sites too? Germans have the BiTV law, the British have the DDA and Americans have section 508 of the ADA. 508 is really just for federal web sites, many states have adopted it. What we do have in most counties are laws against discrimination. Discrimination is illegal. If you make a web site for only healthy, sighted people using IE - are you not discriminating against those with disabilities or other choices in software? Is that then not illegal? Do we need a law to force you to do the right thing for your users and fellow humans? I work for a newspaper. Very rough country here, steep streets and the like. Snow removal is something that does happen on back streets... at some point. But we are told that carriers MUST deliver to people living up steep hills on slippery, icy streets. That is important, we must serve these customers their papers regardless, it is our sacred duty. If you are a customer like that you expect it to do you not? Yet delivering a web site to someone more difficult... a Firefox user, Opera user, PDA or Cell phone user... this is to much to be expected? Accessibility is not something you should have to do... it is something you should do of your own choice because it is the right thing to do and because it makes your web site more available to everyone and easier to maintain. Don't be a follower doing what you must with threats of fines... do it by choice and be a leader at the front of the movement. Show your users that you care about their needs.

What do you mean by "Accessibility"? : It is in theory rather easy to understand in English, it is making a web site accessible. I however like the German term, it makes it a little more clear, "Barrierefrei", or for us, "Barrier Free". So accessibility is creating a web site with no barriers, now all is clear right? Maybe? Ok, what do you mean by barriers? : To understand what barriers exist you need only imagine that 1/2 of your visitors are not healthy, they have disabilities, illnesses and even use other software and have habits and preferences that are not the same as you. Many are older and have arthritis and poor eyesight, others have missing or crippled extremities, some are color blind (estimated 1 in 10), some have epilepsy, dyslexia, cognitive problems, maybe they cannot read well, maybe English is their second language. Maybe they have a old weak PC, maybe they are blind? Just as steps and narrow doors are a barrier to wheelchair users and the elderly, so are many things you do in your site barriers to any of the groups mentioned above. Just a few examples to help make it clearer: "MTV In your face" style Flash animation - this is what I call extreme fast, sometimes really excessive flash design styles. Flash can, with its fast color changes and strobe effects, actually trigger a seizure in a epileptic that can land them in the Hospital. It also distracts the attention of the user who may have attention problems, cognitive problems that make text hard to understand when read, or even people who are simply nervous and antsy and trying to concentrate while this animation is screaming for you to watch it instead. Also any information within a Flash movie is rarely available for blind visitors. Red text on a black background, or important text made red - The majority of color blind people have trouble with the color red, it looks like a Dark Olive Green, now imagine that on a black background, or important text being dark olive green in the middle of black text. It can be hard to read or easily overseen. Text Formating - Dyslexics often have trouble with text being experienced as backwards or even upside down. Long blocks of unending text in massive wide paragraphs can be hard to read and understand. Centered and justified text can be hard to read as a Dyslexics eyes may drop down one line while reading causing confusion. Bouncing fast animations - Have you ever been to a site with this and maybe it bothered you a little as you tried to concentrate on hard text or heavy information? Now imagine you have reading problems or maybe you even have a attention deficit or some other concentration problem and then there are all these bouncy things calling to your eyes to watch them and not the content you came for? Visually Impaired - this can be either blindness or poor vision. many with poor vision will have trouble with large blocks of text, maybe portions of text are to light against the background to hard to read. The text may be to small and you have created the site so they can not increase the size. Blind users will most often have the content read to them over loud speakers like a audio book. Background music can make understanding hard, missing image descriptions can confuse or simply not pass on visual information not accessible to them. They will be forced to listen to your entire menu again and again on each and every page. The Blind Surf?: Yes, of course. Studies suggest the blind actually spend more time and more money on the Internet than most of us, the Internet has opened the world to them and they can surf and shop and access information faster. Ever see how fat and heavy a 1000 page brail book is? Well, there are not many blind people visiting my site. : Really? Are you sure? Positive? How do you know? You see, even if you check your stats for your site, no statistics tell you if a visitor uses a screen reader. You in fact can never know how many blind/visually impaired users use your site any more than you can know if I have a broke arm. But I guarantee you that you do have blind visitors. They are called search engines. They do not care how pretty your site looks, they only care about the availability of your content and the structure around it, so by building sites blind users can easily use, you make it easier for search engines too. Ok, blind people can surf and my site, I should build a extra site just for them? : No, not at all. The answer is really in using logic and correct HTML. Use Standards and use CSS. Standards call for you to sperate the look from structure and content. By using CSS you can "Skin" your site. Any one page should be logically written, when this is the case a person with disabilities will have little trouble. Use correct semantic code to create a logical frame for your text. It will not be pretty but it will make sense. Then you can add images and colors ad positioning to make the site "Look Good". It will still make sense, but it will be pretty. A blind user will not have to deal with the visual stuff, they will receive the pure information... all from the same page. But won't that make my site look ugly? : No, accessibility makes you think differently and some old tricks will not work anymore, true enough. But it also challenges you to find new ways to do a good looking site without blocking it from users with disabilities. The only limitation is the designers own creativity. Ok, I can understand what you mean, but it is to expensive... : No, it is does not have to be when done logically. If you set out from the beginning to make a accessible site, then building in support and avoiding barriers is no more harder than doing it with no support and with barriers. But it has to be considered from the beginning as it will effect the images and colors you use as much as the code. Now trying to retrograde you current site to be accessible, if done for real will be expensive and time consuming, same if you have to pay for a new development. But some simple things can be done to improve your current site with little trouble. If you do go the better route of launching a whole new accessible site it will be better for you, and yes cost more money to pay the designers if they are not on the payroll, but no one said you have to be quiet about it. Use it to your advantage, make a public relations show of it. Announce it in press releases and commercials, let the world know you are dedicated to supporting customers regardless of disabilities. Attract PR, attract new customers and get the word out... and force your competitors to have to catch up with you or loose their customers. Gather in the disabled visitors your competitors turn away. Re-launch your site and your image. I am not convinced and there is no law forcing me to either... : Well you are right to an extent. But why not do it because it is the right thing to do? Also no law today does not mean no law tomorrow, so why not be one of the first, so when the others follow you can say "well we have been accessible for years". But there are laws as well and more on the way. Most commonly discussed are section 508 in the US, what it generally does is require government sites to be accessible. However it also requires commercial contractors to be accessible as well, so if you ever hope to have a contract with the US Government, your site must be accessible as well. Then there is the UK's DDA (Disability Discrimination Act). Started in 1995 with a grace period till October 2004. Now this covers the requirement to see that the commercial sector does not discriminate against the disabled. Web sites are not specifically noted, however it does say if you offer a service this must be accessible, so in theory if you offer a service over your web site you could be sued under the DDA. So far no cases have happened yet. Germany also has a law (BITV) requiring German Governmental sites to be accessible including local Government agencies. [update 02/28/07] : Sweden has a law covering accessibility in Government web sites and September 1, 2006 a new law went into effect in Holland that would seem to be the best thought out and strict law requiring accessibility in Government web sites (456bereastreet.com & quirksmode.org ). So you see many countries besides these have passed laws and many of us expect the US to require commercial sites to be accessible too in the future. There are those who are now using the DDA to scare customers into hiring the for new sites. This is unacceptable, it is scare tactics. These organizations are not professional and should be ignored. There is not threat at this time of you being sued under the DDA, it has not yet been successfully used in court. But you do need to be aware that this may one day change. To date their have been court cases due to inaccessible web sites, best know were Ramada, PriceLine and the Australian Olympics site. More will come to court in the future though I suspect most will be against large corporations. Where can I learn more about accessibility? : There are some good places on the net. First of course you are always welcome to post under the accessibility board at Killersites. The Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) and Accessify.com are to great places to start. The direct source is the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0 ), there are 66 points currently in three categories of 1.0 (awaiting release of 2.0 in the near future), Priority 1 Must be met. Priority 2 should really be met to ensure the largest number of visitors. Priority 3 is not required but you should try to meet it as well, some smaller groups may still have problems if not met. Section 508 Section 504 DDA BITV WCAG 1.0 ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) British Dyslexia Association Besluit Kwaliteit Rijksoverheidswebsites - Dutch V?gledningen 24-timmarswebben - Sweden How can I find a accessible web designer? : You could try a search engine, I would then suggest the Open Directory Project , here you simply go to the Internet category, developers, and eventually you will find a listing for accessible web development. Unlike tradition search engines burying you in worthless returns, you use logic to find specifically what you are looking for. Most likely the easiest way however would be to visit GAWDS , all members are listed with reference sites. It does not declare how good they are, but if they joined GAWDS, then they are at least dedicated to accessibility and have a few sites that prove their interest. We have members from all over the world.