Just a quick note to say that the Mobile Web Best Practices has been rubber stamped as a W3C Recommendation and now officially known as Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0, offering practical advice on creating mobile friendly content.

“Mobile Web content developers now have stable guidelines and maturing tools to help them create a better mobile Web experience,” said Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, W3C Mobile Web Activity Lead. “In support of the W3C mission of building One Web, we want to support the developer community by providing tools to enable a great mobile Web user experience.”

Well done to the working group for all their efforts in getting this approved.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about the new serach engine cuil (rubbish name btw), developed by ex-google employees and claiming to be the worlds biggest web search engine. Some people like it, most people don’t and a  lot of fuss is being made over the images that are displayed along with search results.

Personally, i can think of at least one CEO who will be happy with Cuil. Do a search for O2 and who’s logo gets displayed? None other than your’s truly. Great work cuil, chock up one for the little guy

I had a recent inquiry from a deaf internet user (a potential student), something I can relate to. During school I only had 40% hearing. My hearing problems were picked up in junior school during a routine health check. Initially the examiner thought I was playing around. Only an operation would solve the problem, but I was too young and would have to wait until I was 17.

Right up to my leaving cert I had to struggle. The front row was for swots, one I was not. So I opted for the back row. Class mates thought I was mad - it appeared as if I always ignoring teachers’ requests and roll call. I was able to keep up and with a gentle nudge from a mate (Darren Woodings), I’d know when the teacher had called my name.

When teachers turned to write on the board, that was a whole different ball game, almost a black out. I could no longer make out what they were saying, as I couldn’t see them speak and I’d loose a huge chunk of the lesson. I got into a bit of trouble from time to time, with a few close calls of flying objects to get my attention. To quote one school report “Very smart, but in a world of his own”. I got by and it wasn’t until my final PTA did my mother break her silence about me being half deaf. That was my fault, I told her if anyone found out I’d get picked on and I’d never go back. The penny dropped with the teachers and one apologised for not picking up on it.

It’s now 2008, we have the Web and all the benefits it brings to people with special needs. A lot of people think accessibility is about helping the blind, but its not, there is more to it.

Below is an extract from a recent enquiry we received

I am deaf and I am heavy internet user. I am interested to apply for online MBA programs from either IE Business School or Thunderbird Business School. The challenge I am facing nowadays is that these schools are not compliance either with ADA or DDA given the fact that at least 20% to 50% of the learning method is based on live online participation and streaming videos. They do not come with Closed Captioned or with English subtitles. And thats provide an obstacles for me to learn.

What answer should we provide?

I suggested that he contacts each school and ask if they have anything in place to support his needs. We know they do not provide closed caption or English subtitles but maybe (and this would not be to difficult to implement) the school provides a hosted chat room to convey a live text transcript of the audio and live online participation. This would benefit not only deaf students but also users whose PCs don’t support audio, or those who are not in a noisy environment.

Another option as seen on TV (News) would be to provide a translator to do sign language. Signing for such is likely to be very tiring and they couldn’t support all online participation, but they could convey the really important stuff.

The school could also provide a post video download of each session and test transcripts. Although this is not the same as live participation - it would benefit not just users with special needs but also any student who may have missed a session.

If you have had a similar experience or know of an alternative school for a course supporting users with special needs, please leave a comment or email me directly.

The 2008 EDeAN Conference will take place on 12th & 13th of June, 2008 in León, Spain. Its is being hosted this year by the Spainish National Centre on Personal Autonomy and Technical Aids (CEAPAT).

“Training in Design for All: Innovative Experiences”.

This conference is an opportunity to exchange information regarding new training experiences and advances on the concept of Design for All. Specific sessions on users` experiences, good practices, programmes and polices related with training developed in Europe have been included in the conference programme. Speakers are professionals working in the industry, universities, gubernmental and European institutions - European Commission and the Council of Europe.

Conference details are available on the EDeAN website http://url.ie/f9h

I picked this up on Twitter this morning via Bohoe.  It is so good I just had to share it, enjoy

It seems like a life time since we have been in contact with our partners. After building the Partner Web site and promoting it, we kinda dipped back under the radar, focusing on W3C standards related work and R&D. Truth be told, we didn’t stop there, we haven’t forget about you. We’ve also been really busy in the kitchen cooking a nice Web application to allow you “our Partners” to certify and label all yours and your clients’ Web sites.

The first draft of the application design was only intended to support Web accessibility (WCAG) but we decided to keep going simply from the reaction of folks we told about the application. The result is you will be able to label Web sites to make claims about compliance to WCAG, MobileOk and Section 508.

It does not stop there. The application can also create content labels for Web Sites that use a Creative Commons license and we’ll be adding more standards and codes of conduct as they come down stream.

I spent the day on the phone to our partners, touching base to say Hi and that they can expect and update shortly. If I haven’t called you yet, don’t worry, I will. Feel free to get in touch anytime.

I was delighted to hear partners still being so positive towards Accessibility. We all know the many reason and benefits of why a Web site should be accessible and comply with Web Standards. We need to push it so that brand/product owners also understand those benefits.

We will be sending out an update very soon.

We currently have more than 50 partners across at least 10 countries and looking to scale this when we raise funding. To find out more about the programme and sign up to the Accessibility Partner Programme visit here.

In a recent post I used a video to demonstrate How people access the Web. It profiled one user but my intention was to encourage people to think outside the box and not assume every person has common abilities. When designing a Web site the only thing you can take for granted (for now) is that every end user is human, period.

I’m not going to sit here, preach and list various disabilities. Instead, I’ll continue to post more videos to continue to demonstrate how people access the Web. For all you know, one of your Web sites is someone else’s favourite.

While picking my daughter up from school today the parents were told the school is setting up a Web site. Obviously this trigged an interest from me, I asked if it would be accessible.

One mother looked and me and asked what I meant, so to dumb it down and sum it up quickly I said “If a Web site is built correctly, anyone should be able to access the information upon it, including blind people”. Her jaw dropped. I didn’t want to single out blind people, but I knew she understood.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for one day.
Teach a man to fish and he will eat for life

Its not as simple as give a blind person a screen reader and they can access all information on the Web. The software is designed to work best with complaint Web sites, so for all the little pains you might feel having to use the correct mark up and structure if you stop and think about it, those little efforts are seriously improving someone else’s virtual experience, which in some case can be better than real life.