SuperPreview – Nice App, Shame about the Name

SuperPreview – Nice App, Shame about the Name: "It might be the done thing for web developers in certain corners to routinely have a dig at Microsoft – certainly, they’ve given us enough ammo/cause in the past to make this easy (Songsmith, I’m particularly looking at you at the moment!) – but while many of these people will be having a moan about [...]"

Fantastic offer – 5 books for the price of 1

Fantastic offer – 5 books for the price of 1: "How would you like 5 of SitePoint’s rather fine technical publications for just $29.99 US? Sounds like an absolute bargain, doesn’t it? Well, it is a deal not to be missed and you have 3 days to make the most of it. So get to it! Visit SitePoint’s 5-for-1 sale here As a SitePoint author [...]"

Easy YouTube caption creator – a very rough first ‘build’

Easy YouTube caption creator – a very rough first ‘build’: "OK, before I start, let me just emphasise that this tool is not meant to be anything complicated and I’m not suggesting that it in any way replaces other existing ‘Swiss Army knife’ style captioning tools – this is a one-trick pony! And the trick this pony does is help to caption YouTube videos. If [...]"

Web Accessibility Training Week - February 2009

In 2009, the RNIB Web Access Team is changing the way it runs its open training courses. For the benefit of delegates who wish to attend our open courses, but are a significant distance from London, we are going to be running all of our training courses back to back during training weeks at various points throughout the year. This is in contrast to how we have run our training courses in the past, with single day events being interspersed throughout the year. Having training weeks should save travel and accommodation costs for delegates who wish to attend more than one course.

Our first training week of 2009 is running from Monday 16th to Thursday 19th February in London. We’ll be scheduling further training weeks throughout 2009 and also looking into the possibility of running some of these weeks at different venues other than London.

We also have a new open course for 2009 which we will be running for the first time this month. Our testing training course aims to guide you through web accessibility testing techniques, introducing the tools available to help you and providing tangible examples to take away.

The Schedule

Monday 16th February 2009

Demystifying Accessibility (Full Day): this course is designed to introduce website owners, commissioners, marketing or project managers and designers to the reasons for making websites accessible, including the principles and practices that make this possible.

Tuesday 17th February 2009

Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 (Half Day): a practical course to introduce the newly released guidelines for web accessibility, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). It will enable and inform web managers, designers and developers who have been working with WCAG 1.0 to start using WCAG 2.0.

Hidden Barriers to Web Accessibility (Half Day): a technical course, designed to enable website designers, developers and programmers to identify and cure some common, but less obvious accessibility problems on their websites.

Note: These two courses run on the same day. If delegates attend both courses, lunch will be provided and the total cost reduced to £310.00 (a saving of £25.00).

Wednesday 18th February 2009

Accessibility - Beyond The Basics (Full Day): this is a technical course designed to enable website designers, developers and programmers, to make informed best practice choices with some of the more advanced techniques of accessible web design by looking at forms, structure, JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Thursday 19th February 2009

Testing Training Course (Full Day): This practical workshop guides you through web accessibility testing techniques, introducing tools and providing tangible examples. It focuses on testing carried out using dedicated testing tools, simple browser tests and some widely used assistive technology software, such as screen readers. The workshop illustrates both automated and manual testing and explains the differences between them.

Spam emails from Accessifyforum?

Spam emails from Accessifyforum?: "If anyone is receiving spam emails notifying about private messages, please note that this is not something that I can help you with. Accessify.com is my site, but accessifyforum.com is owned/maintained by Nigel Peck, which he set up using that URL/name with my blessing way back in the days (it’s more of a partnership link [...]"

Requiring the alt Attribute in HTML5

I'm putting together a list of pros and cons about making the alt attribute required in HTML 5. The following is a list of reasons for and against making the alt attribute required. What is your opinion?

Reasons why the alt Attribute Should Be Required

• If the image is decorative, it should be provided with CSS. If the image has content, then the alt attribute should be used or the content will not be perceivable to some users.


• The alt attribute should be mandatory in HTML 5 with a note pointing to WCAG 2.0 for guidance, as WAI are the experts in this area.


• Not requiring the alt attribute allows broad, dangerous ideas of what should and should not have alt. Laziness will dictate.


• Authors should be required to make a decision about alt text for every image.


• Without alt text, assistive technologies rely on heuristics to determine the purpose of the image, which often results in gibberish — for example, announcing machine generated file names as the link phrase for links.


• Bad alt text is much better than no alt text.


• Requiring alt text encourages people in the right direction.


• Because people don't always get the alt text correct, it is not a reason not to require it.


• Requiring alt text creates a teachable moment.


• The alt attribute should be required with an additional attribute to indicate when it hasn't been provided.


• The alt attribute should be required for backward compatibility.


• There has not been a convincing argument for what lack of alt should mean.

Reasons why the alt Attribute Should Not Be Required

• Making the alt attribute required results in people providing nonsense values.


• It's not reasonable to expect anyone to provide alt text when uploading several thousand photos all at once.


• Making the alt attribute required does not mean it will be used correctly.


• Provide the alt text with aria-labelledby is better than requiring the alt attribute.


• Providing alt text should be considered best practice, not required.


• Requiring alt text is merely philosophical without context.


• The alt attribute should not be required, but flagged at validation as a warning.


• There are exceptions where no value is possible.


• There are illustrative images that do not require alt text.


• Images on my website are for my family, and they don't need alt text.


• The alt attribute should not required because authors get it wrong, in the same way they get other markup wrong, such as data tables without headings.


• All that is required for accessibility is that the alt attribute may be used; it should not be required.

What do you Think?

Do you have reasons other than those already stated about whether or not the alt attribute should be required in HTML 5? If so, either leave a comment here, or contribute to the Twitter discussion or respond to me directly on Twitter. If you respond on Twitter, please use the #althtml5 hashtag so that I can find your response.

Seven Things Meme

Steve Lee tagged me with the "Seven Things" meme, where you have to share seven facts about yourself and tag seven people to pick up the meme.

Rules of the Seven Things Meme

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.


2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.


3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.


4. Let them know they've been tagged.

My Seven Facts

1. I am an excellent guitarist. When I lived with my parents, our next door neighbour threw a brick through my bedroom window so he could hear better. He started to sing along, but was completely out of time and got all the words wrong.


2. I can also play the piano, but not as well as I can play the guitar. I have the capacity to learn one song all the way through, but if I learn another, the previous song I learnt gets overwritten.


3. My Dad is a drummer. I miss having a drum kit around. If I get a detached house, I will get a drum kit.


4. I gave up smoking nearly three years ago.


5. I can levitate, but not all at once.


6. I can't play golf.


7. I don't know seven people to tag with this meme.

I can only think of one person to tag with the seven things meme:

1. Henny Swan