Long time no post. Here is an update of Fangs – the screen reader emulator, and a script to convert Python source code to XHTML. Read on for the details.
Continue reading “New version of Fangs (translation help needed) and a Python source colorizer”
Validating an entire site
Periodically you may want to make sure your entire website validates. This can be a hassle if your site is big. In this article we introduce a few python scripts which will help us do mass validation from a list of links. We will also modify the W3C validator to work the way we want.
AJAX and Accessibility
Recently, there has been a lot of interest in using AJAX (the technology, not the detergent) when building web applications. I have a feeling that javascript and the XMLHttpRequest object will be the Next Big Thing ™. Let’s have a look at how usability and accessibility of AJAX forms can be improved.
Creating accessible bar charts
Web site bar charts often consist of a fancy image exported from Microsoft Excel. If you are lucky someone wrote an alt-text explaining what the chart is about. It is time to stop doing that. In this article I show you how you can make an accessible bar chart without sacrificing visual pizzazz.
Browsing habits of screen reader users
A while ago I read the article “Observing Users Who Listen to Web Sites“. In that article the authors report that visually impaired users scan web pages with their ears instead of reading them top to bottom. This may not come as a surprise to you if you read Jakob Nielsen’s “How Users Read on the Web” back in 1997. Recently I have had the opportunity to study a number of screen reader users and my observations are similar.