Posted by Eric Stewart
Sat, 21 Jan 2006 19:47:00 GMT
All you web developers and users out there should go take a look at the Google Word Verification Accessiblity Petition that was started by Blind Access Journal.
In a nutshell, it’s asking Google to make their captcha scheme used in registering for services accessible. A user that doesn’t see so well hits a roadblock when they are presented with those crazy little captcha graphics.
The typical solution for most cases of this problem is to provide an audio equivalent.
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Posted in Software Development, Technology, Ruby On Rails | Tags accessibility, captcha, web | no comments
Posted by Eric Stewart
Fri, 13 Jan 2006 23:21:00 GMT
Imagine you are a good web developer. You like following standards, paying attention to usability, and thinking about accessibility while implementing the latest, greatest whiz-bang next-generation web wunder-site. Yes, I’m talking to you!
Read more...
Posted in Software Development, Ruby, Ruby On Rails | Tags accessibility, rails, ruby, web | 1 comment
Posted by Eric Stewart
Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:35:00 GMT
As I mentioned previously, I have been working on a Rails plugin to help check the accessibility of pages in a Rails project.
I was inspired by Scott Raymond’s assert_valid_markup plugin for Rails and decided to whip up a similar plugin for testing the accessibility of pages in my current Rails project.
Using
You will be able to write a functional test that does something like:
def test_index
get :index
assert_accessible
end
I had really wanted to polish this some more before putting it out there for others to use, but I have been slow at finding the time so I’m making it available. It has been working well on my current project but there is much that can be done to improve it. It is still really rough around the edges and your mileage may vary.
You will probably get more mileage out of it by pairing it up with assert_valid_markup, as invalid markup usually triggers some sort of accessibility problem.
Installing
Check out the source from Subversion, or preferable use Rails own script/plugin script to help install it. All you have to do (from the root of your rails project) is:
script/plugin source http://www.eric-stewart.com/svn/rails/plugins/
script/plugin install assert_accessible
Or, for those that want to do a straight subversion checkout:
svn co http://www.eric-stewart.com/svn/rails/plugins/assert_accessible/
That’s it! Let me know how it works for you.
Update: The url’s above for subversion weren’t working externally according to an astute commenter. They have been corrected.
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Posted in Software Development, Ruby, Ruby On Rails | Tags accessibility, rails, web | 3 comments
Posted by Eric Stewart
Sat, 10 Dec 2005 18:56:00 GMT
Have you seen this yet? Amazon has opened a beta of it’s Amazon Mechanical Turk, a web services API ultimately powered by humans.
Apparently the web service API let’s you post a HIT ( or Human Intelligence Task) that Amazon will then offer up for people to perform for monetary compensation. It is based on the believe that there are many tasks that can just be performed better and faster by a human.
I found the link via someone (forgot who now, sorry) that though it was a joke and was correcting their earlier post.
Wild!
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Posted in Software Development, Technology | Tags programming, services, web | no comments
Posted by Eric Stewart
Fri, 09 Dec 2005 20:57:00 GMT
Now it has happened. Yahoo has purchased del.icio.us! This is on the heels of Yahoo purchasing Flickr earlier this year.
I can’t put a finger on why I’m slightly dissapointed. I’m pretty sure it is because:
- I am afraid of what a large purchaser will do to a service I (and apparently so many other people) love to use, and love for it’s simplicity.
- I worry about the inevitable tie-ins to their other services (Although this can certainly have some benefits as well)
- For some reason, I was rooting for Google. I just like their simpilicity, though they break that on some of their beta products.
- Yahoo, while initially interesting, has been the poster child for mediocrity for quite a while now. It hasn’t locked in my mind that they are competing and innovating again.
In the end, does it matter? Google and Yahoo competing might be good for us all in the long run. But in the short term I don’t want sites and services I love to get caught in the tug of war and ruin my online experience.
Posted in Technology | Tags business, tagging, web | 1 comment
