MakeMineATriple

accessibility

  • 10 February 2009
    2 comments

    In my job, I get asked every now and then: “Can we make links to other websites open in new windows?” The reason generally given is to avoid “losing” site visitors. The answer, in short, should be “No”. There are a couple of points to raise here: The target attribute is deprecated, and not valid in modern web standards (i.e. no ‘target=”_blank”’). However, the functionality could still be done using javascript and validating against web standards. So… why shouldn’t we just use javascript to do this?

  • 30 September 2007

    I’ve been having a lot of fun with jQuery recently. One of the things particularly easy to do with it is write nice and unobtrusive javascript (a good start when looking at progressive enhancement). This is largely down to the fact that it’s very easy to find particular elements within the DOM - with any level of specificity - and attach behaviour to them. On the site I’ve been building at work, one particular example was to get jQuery to write in the “...

  • 12 March 2007

    Imagine having the words “click here” read out to you for every single linkThis one’s pretty simple actually, so there’s not much to say about good practice with link text. However, I do keep seeing it being done wrong, so here’s an outline of the key things to consider. The first thing to remember is that the link text should “identify the target of each link”. In other words, don’t use text like “click here”.

  • 13 February 2007

    Here’s part one of three in follow-up to the Oxford Geek Night, to elaborate on the points I made about image alt text. A quick recap (or introduction, if you weren’t there or haven’t seen my slides!): An image’s alt text is presented to a user if their “user agent’ (the thing they’re using to browse web pages) does not display the image. e.g.

    • A text browser is being used
    • The user is blind and a screen reader...
  • 10 February 2007
    1 comments

    Two nights ago was the first Oxford Geek Night. This was basically a chance for web developers and designers to get together in a mixed business and social context.Two nights ago was the first Oxford Geek Night. This was basically a chance for web developers and designers to get together in a mixed business and social context. I did one of the “microslots” - a five minute talk on “Avoiding accessibility pitfalls”.