So, first up on the list of launches is a new Web site for Partners. We’d very much appreciate your help. If you sign up to help us test the site to ensure it user friendly, we’ll ensure you get on the list (if you want) for the long awaiting application that generates real Semantic data (Content Labels).

I’ll also throw in some free passes to my next Facebook conference in December.

Please email partner@segala.com or leave a message here.

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon

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Again, another nifty little tool which I thought deserved a follow up post from my first post about such tools.

The following information is taken from the FAQ section on the iOpus Web site, what it says on the tin is enough, enjoy

What is iMacrosâ„¢?

In a nutshell, it is the world’s first browser-based macro recorder. It allows you to easily record Web surfing and replay it.

The web browser is probably the most frequently used software today, but many tasks are repetitious: checking on the same sites everyday, remembering passwords, submitting to search engines or testing web sites over and over again. With iMacros, you record these tasks once and then let iMacros execute them whenever you need them.

Any combination of browsing, form filling, clicking and information gathering can be recorded into a macro and iMacros even assists you during the recording with visual feedback.

Do you need to extract price lists, stock information or any other data from websites?
iMacros can do this for you. It submits data from a file to a website and stores the result from the website in a text file. No programming skills required!
Do you need to test web sites automatically?

Have you ever spent hours browsing your website to re-test it after a change? Our advanced PRO and Scripting Editions can automate almost any kind of web regression and verification testing for you!

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Details of petition:

“In June 2006 the DTI launched their new website. Despite an approximate cost of £200,000, the website failed to meet basic accessibility standards. In short, this meant that the information on the website was inaccessible to some UK citizens – this is absolutely inexcusable. Further work (requiring further taxpayer money) was promised to bring the website up to Level AA of the Web Accessibility Initiative.

The purpose of this petition is to ensure that all future government websites meet basic accessibility requirements from launch.”

I’m sad to say, that the government’s official response is far from responsive.

The Government is committed to ensuring that all government websites are accessible and easy to use for people with disabilities.

Action 7 of the Prime Minister’s Digital Strategy is to ‘improve accessibility to technology for the digitally excluded and ease of use for the disabled’.

This strategy is to be implemented by DTI with support from OGC and eGU (now the Cabinet Office Delivery and Transformation Group). A cross-government review of the Digital Strategy is currently under way under the supervision of the DTI).

In true government style, there are no timescales or information about quality measures and importantly, ‘who’ exactly is going to be held accountable to ensure the DTI’s Web site makes the necessary adjustments to make their site inclusive.

Furthermore, I think the government should have made a public apology for the DTI’s failure to abide by it’s own rules and promote best practice to industry. This is called eating your own dog food!

No wonder most organisations don’t respect the DDA (Disability Discrimination Authority) for enforcing what can only be described as fluffy legislation!

Web accessibility is not only a corporate and social responsibility but it is now also a legal requirement in many countries such as the USA with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 508 and the UK, under the 1995 Disabilities Discrimination Act (DDA) Part 3.

What’s the point in the DDA coming out with legislation if its own government is breaking the law? It wouldn’t be as bad if they provided revised timescales for future compliance.

The government’s failure to help is the reason why companies that provide accessibility services should promote the real commercial benefits to their clients. The stick of legalisation is likely to work better in the future, but until then, we should promote all the positive things about Web accessibility.

There are a number of significant benefits that have a direct commercial impact, either by enabling a potential increase in business, or by cutting costs for your business.

1. Broaden the reach of audience that can use the site
2. Increase traffic to the Web site
3. Expand potential market share
4. Increase search ranking potential
5. Improve the site and increase usability for all visitors
6. Generate positive PR and brand awareness
7. Demonstrate a commitment and care for people with disabilities
8. Comply with legislation to reduce legal liabilities
9. Protect the brand
10. Standardise Web design, build and maintenance
11. Cut overall production costs

The rest of this post is a little commercial…

Web sites that are certified by Segala or one of its Certified Partners provide a Trustmark to help organisation demonstrate their commitment and conformance to accessibility standards and legalisation.

More importantly, sites that have been certified for accessibility compliance, are also given a Content Label to ensure future search engines and browsers can detect them. This will enable users to search and find sites that make conformance claims about accessibility and filter out anything that doesn’t.

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Email careers@segala.com

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Basically one of the participants of the group, Luca Passani, complained about the group using the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a starting point for creating the MWI Best Practices document.

It was almost impossible to get across to Luca, that only relevant WCAG stuff was used. The group meticulously reviewed each checkpoint on conference calls and by email until it had exhausted each one. We then added best practices that were specific to mobile.

The conversation digressed into ‘why should we try to make everything accessible to disabled people anyway’. Nobody actually made such a claim in the first place and the conversation started to loose track as it did in my post. In fact, it’s still going on now so I’d like to take it to this post (if it hasn’t already died). Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.

The post appears to be attracting attention from Luca’s corner of the world. That is, mobile developers who build WAP sites (and other types of mobile related applications). These are very qualified comments so I’m not putting them down in any way. I’m simply highlighting that the conversation needs to be balanced. I think this can be achieved by soliciting feedback from people who wish to see the desktop Web realised on more devices such as mobile phones. Apple and Nokia appear to think it will happen soon.

So, a little background to the MWI

The principal objective of the MWI Best Practice document is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from mobile devices.
It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites. Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with the creation of Web sites, and to have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, such as Web servers and HTTP.

Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.

So, the MWI is not about encouraging more WAP sites, or any other type of content that is specific to mobile devices and which doesn’t work on other devices such as desktop computers. People who wish to develop such content can do so. So there’s no need to slate the MWI though.

Luca and I violently disagree when it comes to the future of the Web on mobile devices. In short, Luca believes that WAP is the way forward. Or at least, something that is created specific for mobile devices only.

My view, is actually more along the lines of what Tim Berners-Lee wants to see happen (although I’m not speaking on his behalf). I could be wrong, but at least I’m in good company. I believe we should bring the Web as everyone knows it today, to mobile.

Naturally, you can’t just browse the Web on a mobile phone and expect a great experience ‘today’. But we should look to enable it as best we can by delivering content that is a contextual representation of the device accessing it. This will be enabled through standardised mobile browsers, Web enabled mobile devices, cheaper tarriffs and of course, best practices design techniques for developers.

• The number of people without access to the Web is greater than the number who do.
• Most of these people are in developing countries.
• Developing countries are more likely to use mobile as the primary access device for the Web as it’s cheaper than rolling out a fix line network.
• People in developing countries don’t give a toss about the weather or travel information as suggested by just about every mobile ‘expert’ I speak with or listen to. The world is bigger than Slough. And not every train goes from Slough to London.

However, there will *always* be a use case for mobile specific applications. I simply want to promote the Web so it can be accessed by anyone irrespective of their ability, device or location.

That doesn’t mean that every Web site must be accessible to everyone all of the time. It’s about best endeavours.

What do you think? Are you happy to continue using WAP sites or would you like to see better mobile devices, cheaper tariffs and best practices that help developers build mobile friendly Web sites?

When you go into a phone shop as I did recently and ask for a Web enabled phone, do you want to be handed a handset that only supports a list of WAP sites that the operator wants you to access? Or, like me, do you want to browse the Web on a mobile (assume for a second that it’s free) in the future?

I’d love to hear what you think, whether you agree with me or not, of course

Original post

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To be frank, we screwed up and everyone thought everyone else was on the shift. I didn’t think the problems were bad enough to make early morning calls though, as they all worked very hard to design and build a new corporate site and blog within 3 weeks (staggering!).

Some issues that we know about include

• Popup window prompting you to login. If you experience this little bugger don’t panic, just hit cancel. The good news is that you can still make your way around the site and you can still post comments.
• We’ve lost images from a lot of pages and posts.
• There’s something still weird going on with our RSS feeds.
• Lastly, we have some accessibility issues to address.

They’re the main ones but we know there are other minor issues to resolve.

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The role will involve assisting with the testing of one the UK’s largest e-commerce sites. Role is based in Central London.

The successful candidate will be inquisitive, a quick learner, able to take instruction and able to work on their own.

We’re looking for someone to start ASAP. The contract will be 1 month initially with the opportunity to extend to 6 months.

Competitive day rate (will be determined by experience).

Please send your CV to careers@segala.com

NO agencies need apply (seriously, don’t call us)

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So, I’d like to inform (moan) everyone (more moans) that the recent announcement of Vodafone’s new community portal has nothing to do with the ‘immanent arrival of flat rate data tariffs. This is from the horse’s mouth as of 29/1/07.

If you want to learn more about the Betavine Portal, read my original post and if you’re interested, get in touch and I’ll give you login details before the official *soft* launch on January 31st. You can only get access from here!

Personally I think it’s time we got flat rate tariffs to help users embrace the Mobile Web a little more. Moreover, I want to see ridiculously high roaming charges dropped! I’m ‘currently’ an O2 customer so my gripe isn’t with Vodafone.

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“Update 29/1/07

The title of my post shouldn’t say ‘open source’. ‘The Betavine Portal’ is not an open source portal. All application owners will continue to own the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for their applications. The Portal however, will have a section dedicated to open source. Nothing has changed since I wrote my original post and its entire contents remain true.

I would like to apologise if I’ve caused some confusion.

——————

Vodafone is looking to stimulate the development of new applications in the mobile and internet industry through a new community portal. And I’m lucky enough to be the first to tell people

The Portal called Betavine, has been scheduled for a *soft* launch on January 31st 2006 and I’ve agreed to help seed interest within the community to help grow awareness on the ground.

I was lucky enough to take part in a workshop alongside Andy Tiller from Shozu, Hakon Martinsen of m-spatial and Tom Hume, from Future Platforms to help Vodafone put together their requirements. It was interesting to see how they had put most of it together already, demonstrating their understanding of the open source community.

If you want to take a sneak preview and take part in a field trial between now and the 31st (possibly longer), then get in touch and I’ll give you login details.

If you own a mobile application this is a great way to get free feedback and exposure.

About the Betavine portal
It’s a research and development space run by Vodafone Group R&D. It aims to encourage collaboration in the area of mobile and internet communications.

As a user you can:

• Download and test applications
• Comment and contribute on the forums and blogs

As a developer you can

• Create your own projects and host applications
• Blog about your projects
• Interact with your users and the Betavine community

On the Betavine Portal, interaction between developers and testers provides a testing ground for the latest concepts and technologies. New technologies are tested in real-world conditions, key technologies are identified and winning concepts come to the fore.

It’s an open community that self-regulates. You are free to register and contribute to discussion threads and create or comment on blog entries. As a developer you can create a project space to upload your application, showcase your work and engage the Betavine testing community.

For students it’s a chance to be involved in developing mobile applications through internships, ‘externships’ and competitions. Winning projects will be featured on the student page, and taken further through collaboration with the Betavine community.

Like featured projects and applications, the Betavine Web site itself is in continual beta testing by its users. Suggest new Web site features and discuss in the forum thread. Betavine’s developers take their lead from the Web site community.

To participate in a beta trial before it’s made public on January 31st 2007, get in touch with me.

This is a great opportunity to be one of the first to have an application on the portal.

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Luckily i was able to find this handy little application which allows my to install a stand alone version of IE6. Fantastic! My job is safe for a little while longer Sure, it has a few annoying little bugs (e.g. i can not access my favourites) but that suites me just fine as i only want to use it access test director.

Its also a great little application for developers and testers so they can view how their web pages look in different versions of IE. It has already come in handy when i’ve needed to perform accessibility testing across multiple browsers. It sure beats having a different test machine for each browser!

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