Web Professional Minute

Team Carson High School and Illinois Central College Win Top Honors at National Web Design Competition Kansas City, MO

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

WOW hosted the fifth annual Web design competition in conjunction with the SkillsUSA organizations National Champions competition in Kansas City last week. Over 5,000 outstanding career and technical education students joined the excitement of hands on competition in ninety-one different trade and technical fields.

Working against the clock and each other, some really amazing individuals representing over forty U.S. states, proved their expertise in the categories of Web design, Web development, Web business and professionalism.

Top students in the contest were:

Secondary Division

* Michelle DeLarge and Amanda Norman from Carson High School walked away with the Gold
* Stephanie Hutchins and Anthony Sweet from Barre Regional Vo Tech Center walked away with the Silver.
* Chelsea Parkhurst and Jesse Garrison from Fort Vancouver High School walked away with the Bronze in the secondary category.

Post Secondary Division

* Sheri Humphrey and Luan Railsback from Illinois Central College won the Gold
* Justin L Fregoe and Lindsay E. Jones from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College won the Silver
* Matthew Steiner and Gregory Malbraaten from Riverland Community College in Minnesota won the Bronze

Stay tuned for additional coverage on the event as well a handful of in depth and inspirational interviews with a number of some of the best and the brightest students from around the U.S. later in the week.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the Voices that Matter Web design conference. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lynn Grillo, Application Engineer at Adobe. I asked Lynn to summarize the goings on at Adobe with the “Sneak Peak” of the upcoming Adobe products.

Check out the four minute podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Stay tuned for more coverage on this topic including a one on one interview with Steve where I ask hip for a couple of tips for Web professionals that we can start using today.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the WebProTraining.org. Check out all of the great resources and links at: WebProTraining

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), the WOW Technology Minute, here at the Voices That Matter Web Design 2008 Conference here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I have the pleasure to be introducing and interviewing Lynn Grillo, the solutions engineer at Adobe, on the topic of her sneak peek session today about the upcoming releases of Dreamweaver and Fireworks. Lynn, good afternoon and thanks for agreeing to this interview.

LYNN GRILLO: Thank you.

BILL: I appreciate it. I had a couple of questions for you. Could you summarize the sneak peek today that you provided? And also, can you address the accessibility issue?

LYNN: Okay. So the summary part first. It was a lot of fun. I think a lot of people didn?’t realize that we had betas out on labs.adobe.com. And the betas are of Fireworks and Dreamweaver and Soundbooth. I didn?’t show anything in Soundbooth today, but I showed a little bit of Fireworks and a fair amount of Dreamweaver. A couple of the things that I did show relate directly to accessibility in the sense that we are going to make it a lot easier for Web developers to work with compound documents. Meaning for example, in today?’s world it?’s not just a static webpage and then another static webpage and another static webpage. It?’s a page that?’s drawing a server-side clue and an external javascript file, an external cascading style sheet. So compound documents, really difficult to manage and keep track of. There?’s a feature, my favorite feature, my favorite new feature in Dreamweaver, called Related Documents. Which now makes it really easy to not only see those documents but at the same time, while you?’re working on the code of those documents, you‘re still seeing the visual view of your page, even when you?’re switching back and forth between your css document, your doc script document and your source code.

BILL: Nice.

LYNN: They love it.

BILL: I bet.

LYNN: I think they really loved it.

BILL: I can believe it.

LYNN: So that helps with accessibility, right there. Now with Fireworks, there?’s just a ton of new features. But one of the things that I think that?’s going to benefit users a lot is the fact that now in Fireworks you can mock up your designs, do your prototypes. And two things that have bearing on this, one is, you can export directly out to a PDF. So you can send a prototype, a working prototype with javascript and everything working in it, as a PDF to your customer and make sure that it?’s all working the way they want it to work it. They can comment and review and send it back to you.

BILL: Nice.

LYNN: So then when you?’re done you can export that out as xhtml and css. Including the css being defined in an external style sheet. So it?’s allowing you to do best practices even if you?’re just solely, exclusively a designer and you?’re not a coder. So it?’s helping us help people create webpages that are going to conform to the modern standards of today.

BILL: Yeah, appreciate that. And it sounds like improving workflow not only between the designer and the developer, but between the client and the developer and designer as well.

LYNN: Well that?’s important because the client is king, right? So you want to make sure that you can give your client, your customer and even internal customers, for a lot of companies where they?’re doing work internally for their own company–

BILL: Sure.

LYNN: To make sure what they?’re working on, what they?’re delivering is going to be, is going to get a check off and say yes.

BILL: Yeah.

LYNN: That?’s what we want.

BILL: And for our accountable purposes you?’re actually recording that in a document form so, for later reference, right?

LYNN: That?’s right. Actually the PDF that comes out of Fireworks, you can put security on it. You can regulate it to the point of saying, “This person can open it up and comment on it but they can?’t copy out of it. They can?’t–” You can say no they can?’t print, or they can print. So you can do all sorts of things like that.

But back on the Dreamweaver side of the fence, we also have a really cool new feature in there called Live Code. So when you?’re working with code on server, what you?’re writing it to, what you?’re coding into your webpage is one thing and what comes out of the browser is something else. So if you look at the page in a browser, after it?’s been processed by the server, and you do “view source,” what you see there is not the same as what you?’re seeing in the page code prior to going to the server. So that one of the new features in Dreamweaver let?’s you see that, that actual change that?’s happening in the code so you can see exactly what?’s happening. You can even freeze javascript at a certain point so you can do diagnostics on it and introspection on it. And there?’s also code navigator, another neat tool that allows you to very quickly find the exact cascading style sheet you?’re looking for.

And the other big one is code-hinting for AJAX and custom javascript. So it?’s going to allow people to do their own custom hand-coding in Dreamweaver a lot quicker and be very precise about it, make sure that they?’ve got exactly, no, there aren?’t going to be any spelling mistakes or typos or anything like that. And it?’s a pretty cool tool. I saw some eyelids go–

BILL: Yeah, sounds like it!

LYNN: What!

BILL: What a great sneak peek. I appreciate that. Excellent stuff.

LYNN: Pleasure.

BILL: Yeah, thank you so much Lynn. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW). Thank you so much Lynn.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by webprotraining.org. Webprotraining.org offers a complete solution for all of your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out and webprotraining.org.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. I?’m here at the Voices That Matter Conference here in Nashville, Tennessee and I have the pleasure of interviewing Steve Krug, Krug, pardon me, usability consultant and author of the best selling book, DON?’T MAKE ME THINK. Steve thanks for agreeing to this interview.

STEVE KRUG: Sure.

BILL: I?’ve got a question for you, I had mentioned to you earlier that I represent a lot of generalists, webmasters, many of those you know, have a variety of responsibilities and also I represent those that teach those generalists. For that audience, could you give us a couple of, you know, tips on when it comes to usability, what they should focus in on.

STEVE: My favorite tip this year is to watch some people use what you?’re  building, which technically is a usability test, or a user test. But just grab somebody and  give them a task that is the kind of thing that people are going to want to do on your site, and watch them try and do it. And the advanced version is have them think out loud while they?’re doing it and tell you what they?’re looking at, what they?’re thinking about, whatever. And you?’ll find almost immediately they?’ll reveal to you the problems that your site has in terms of usability. They?’ll run into things that confuse them, they?’ll run into things that don?’t make sense to them, and often the fixes are quite simple. But they?’re not things that you can discover yourself, because if you?’ve been working on a site, you?’re too close to it and you?’re not going to be able to see those problems. So it?’s just enormously valuable to drag one person, I tell people to do like three people a month or something, but one is 100% better than none.

BILL: Yeah, I appreciate that.

STEVE: So if you haven?’t done it, then it?’s the one thing I would most highly recommend to anybody if they want to improve the usability of their website.

BILL: I appreciate that. And good point. So if you had the luxury of taking that up a notch, three people a month?

STEVE: Yeah, I tell people to do it one morning a month. And in that morning    you?’re going to bring three people in. And you spend up to an hour with each one of them and give them the same tasks to do. And set it up so that the people, there are people on your team, so that they can observe this from another room. It?’s easy to set up screen-sharing on another pc. And what I recommend is then over lunch, after the three tests in the morning, everybody on the team, the stakeholders and whoever, get together and decide what the problems were that they saw in the morning and how they?’re going to fix them before next month. And that?’s your usability program for the month.

BILL: Fair enough.

STEVE: You?’re all done in one morning.

BILL: I?’m curious to know then, would it be fair enough to say that you?’d want to get somebody who would generally use your site anyway?

STEVE: You want to if you can, but I?’m really careful trying to get people not to hung up on that. I mean, you want to get people, if you can, who are typical users of your site. But if actual users are, typical users are hard for you to come by, then I would say don?’t not test. Instead just test with anybody you can get. Because almost anybody will run into the worst problems, even if they?’re not your typical audience. So it?’s mostly a kind of Nike, kind of “Just Do It” thing, is the most important thing. And if you just try it you?’ll quickly see why it?’s so valuable. Because you just get insights. You can get a very large number of valuable insights in a very short time.

BILL: Excellent. Thanks.

STEVE: So you?’ll get psyched about doing it.

BILL: Yeah, great feedback Steve. I appreciate that. Bill Cullifer here with eth World Organization of  Webmasters (WOW).

STEVE: Nice talking to you.

BILL: With Steve Krug at the Web conference in Nashville.

Check out the three minute video and audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by webprotraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the VTM Web design Conference on the topic of Usability.

If you?’ve been practicing on the Web for awhile then you know first hand that Usability is a science and you can spend years studying the topic. That said, if you?’re like me, chances are you don?’t have that kind of time so I?’m hopeful that we can provide you with a better understanding of this topic and a few “walk away?’s” that you can use today with a series of podcast on the topic.

To that end, I?’d like to share with you additional insights from the roundtable with Steve Krug author of the best selling book “Don?’t Make Me Think”.  As you may recall, I sat in on the roundtable discussion with Steve and Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel, Vice President and Publisher at PeachPit.

It?’s clear to me why Steve?’s books are so popular and that?’s because he recommends on the surface at least are some pretty straight forward things that you can do today. For example, Nancy asked Steve about the reference in his book regarding the “third law of usability,” and that is one of his suggestions of getting rid of half the words on each page then get rid of half of what?’s left.

Steve commented back to Nancy by saying that it reality it “kind of hard to get rid of half of what?’s left but I could, I could get rid of half the words on most pages.”

Nancy also asked Steve to comment on what she heard someone saying at one his recent workshops regarding “usability testing is like psychoanalysis”. Steve?’s said was that he “always said it was, I said that for years, that it was like psychoanalysis because of the questions you ask” in the usability process.

“The whole point is to keep them thinking aloud said Steve. “You can see what is in the thought bubbles over their head, so that you can see where they?’re getting confused because that?’s the useful information you are looking for to figure out how to make the design better.”

Here are a couple of other zingers from my notes:

Steve continued to explain his comment on psychoanalysis with the explanation of the supporting role of a therapist. And that is “to keep their own opinions out of the process.” said Steve. “As a usability-test facilitator it turns out the hardest thing for amateurs to do is to keep themselves out of it”. His advice is to not give the person help and to not try and steer them towards a particular problem that they want revealed or to not give them encouragement or you know, whatever. So that is like a therapist.

Stay tuned for more coverage on this topic including a one on one interview with Steve where I ask hip for a couple of tips for Web professionals that we can start using today.

Check out the two minute audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links at: WebmasterSurvivalGuide

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

If you?’ve been following along with this podcast then you?’re already aware that WOW was a media sponsor of the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference in Nashville, TN last week. As a result, I?’ll be covering a wide variety of Web design topics.

For today?’s topic, I?’d like to talk about Usability. For starters, let?’s recap the definition of the term. To assist me with this, I revisited the Wikipedia website on the topic and here?’s what it had to say in short:

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object’s perceived efficiency or elegance.
The primary notion of usability is that an object designed with the users’ psychology and physiology in mind is, for example:

* More efficient to use—it takes less time to accomplish a particular task
* Easier to learn—operation can be learned by observing the object
* More satisfying to use

Check out for an in depth explanation of the topic Wikipedia.org.

For the remainder of this podcast, I?’ve lined up a snippet of the chat with Steve Krug and Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel, Vice President and Publisher at PeachPit regarding a question she asked Steve at the conference. Look for additional interviews with Steve in future podcast as well in depth coverage on the topics presented as well for the month of June.

Check out the three minute audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by webprotraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training.

A complete transcript of this podcast will be available in 24 hours.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

WOW participated as a Media Sponsor in the Voices That Matter Conference last week in Nashville, TN sponsored by the Pearson Education group. I had a great time at the three day event and Pearson promised some face to face time with some of the best known Web design authors around and they delivered.

In fact, for the remainder of the month of June, I?’ll be posting a few summaries of the goings on complete with interviews on a wide variety of Web design topics. For example, stay tuned for coverage on the following topics:

•Usability
•Concept Models: A new Design Tool
•Microformats
•Principles of Social Design
•Compliant CSS Layout from a PSD
•Color for the Global Web
•Style Sheet Strategies
•Designing CSS Layouts for the Flexible Web
•Findability: Deign Comp to Code;
•Adobe “Sneak Peeks”
•Web Design “Tips and Tricks”
•Designing for Today?’s Browsers
•Brand Relevance in a Web Made World
•Tagging
•Fresher Styles for Web Designers
•Beyond Web Standards
•The future of Web professional education for students, teachers and administrators

For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to share with you the events opening remarks from Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel, Vice President and Publisher at PeachPit Press. As I sat in the crowd and listened, a couple of things came to my mind. Nancy’s introduction validates what I?’ve been saying for years and that is as Web professionals, it?’s a struggle to simply keep up with the frantic pace of the Web. The second thought that I have is if Pearson Publishing is involved you can bet that theirs money in it. And that?’s a good thing!

Check out the two minute audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links at: WebmasterSurvivalGuide

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. WOW participated as a Media Sponsor in the Voices That Matter Conference last week in Nashville, Tennessee. And it was sponsored by the Pearson Education group. I had a terrific time at the three day event and Pearson promised some face to face time with some of the best known Web design authors. And they delivered. In fact, for the remainder of the month of June I?’ll be posting some of the summaries of the goings on, complete with interviews on a wide variety of Web design topics. For example, stay tuned for coverage on the following topics – Usability, Concept Models: A new Design Tool, Microformats, Principles of Social Design, Compliant CSS Layout from a PSD, Color for the Global Web, Style Sheet Strategies, Designing CSS Layouts for the Flexible Web, Findability: Design Comp to Code. And I?’ll also bringing you a couple of Adobe “Sneak Peeks”, Web Design Tips and Tricks, Designing for Today?’s Browsers, Brand Relevance in a Web Made World, Tagging, Fresher Styles for Web Designers, and Beyond Web Standards. In addition, I?’ll cover some of the best in education for students, teachers and administrators for Web professionals.

For today?’s podcast I?’d also like to share with you the opening remarks from Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel. She?’s the Vice President and Publisher at PeachPit Press. As I sat in the crowd and listened, a couple of things came to my mind. First, it validates what I?’ve been saying for years about the Web profession and our struggle to simply keep up with the frantic pace of the Web. Secondly, if Pearson Publishing is involved, you can bet there?’s money in it, and that?’s a great thing.

NANCY ALDRICH RUENZEL: So welcome everyone. Welcome [audience cheering]. I?’m so excited to be here in Nashville. This is terrific. So, whether you?’re a practicing Web designer or you?’re an educator or you?’re a student, or a publisher of technology like myself, you know that the pace of change in our industry is overwhelming. And some of us are in this business because of that, because we?’re energized by that, because we?’re excited by that. And then there are others, and depending on what kind of day I?’m having I might be in the other camp, where it can be really mind-boggling and you?’re always feeling like you?’re behind, always feeling like you?’re behind. As we talk right now, there are techniques and technologies and new tools that are being developed around the world, this very moment, that we don?’t even know about. So depending on what side of the fence you?’re on today, I think that we?’re all here today for the same reason. We?’re all here to learn from the most influential thinkers in our field.

BILL: You can say that again Nancy and I think you delivered. Thanks again for a great conference. Stay tuned Web professionals for more content on the Voices That Matter Conference throughout the month of June. Thanks for listening and thanks for watching today?’s WOW Technology Minute.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

We?’ve been covering the topic of Web accessibility in depth and for today?’s podcast, I am reaching out to Brent Norris, Web developer from the Aloha state for some closing thoughts on this important topic.

Yesterday, I summarized my thoughts on the lessons learned regarding the interviews that we?’ve conducted on this topic of Web accessibility and our own efforts to improve the WOW Technology Minute website. In short, I stated that we?’re making progress in the areas of improving our understanding of the importance Web accessibility topic as a profession and thanks to the community we have tools and resources to address this issue head on.

As a result of our recent efforts to update our own knowledge base on the topic, it?’s also clear that in addition to being the right thing to do, Web accessibility makes great business sense and resources exist to readily document this as a business case.

With our own WOW Technology Minute Web accessibility project in mind for example, we?’ve been able to demonstrate that with a little bit of time invested and some very easy to do processes, we can make small incremental improvements on our site that can have a big impact for those with disabilities.

For the ten minute audio response with Brent and his take on the “Top Ten” Web Accessibility Tips complete with explanations of the SEO relevancy, check out today’s WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Concentric offering small business and shared web hosting solutions.

Register for the FREE WEBINAR: Combating Spam! Wednesday, 7/30 @ 10:00am PST
Where will be discussing “Perimeter Email Protection” as an email security solution that can protect your business from spam, viruses, directory harvesting.

To register for this FREE one hour Webinar contact: robert(AT)joinwow.org

A transcription of this podcast will be posted within 24 hours.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

If you?’ve been following along with the podcast coverage on the topic of Web accessibility, than you?’re already aware that we conducted a number of interviews from some of the most respected experts on the topic within the Web profession. The goal of our coverage on the topic was two-fold. The first goal was to provide the members and subscribers of this podcast with some practical resources on the topic of Web accessibility that you can easily implement today. Secondly, our goal was to improve the accessibility and quality of the WOW Technology Minute website.

For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to summarize what we?’ve learned through the process and to share my own perspective on the topic. For the complete 3 minute audio visit the WOW Technology Minute. website.

Thank you for listening and watching today?’s WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProTraining.org check it out at: Web Pro Training.

Transcript:

Web Accessibility Project and WOW Executive Summary
Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
If you?’ve been following along with the podcast coverage on the topic of Web accessibility, than you?’re already aware that we conducted a number of interviews from some of the most respected experts on the topic within the Web profession. The goal of our coverage on the topic was two-fold. The first goal was to provide the members and subscribers of this podcast with some practical resources on the topic of Web accessibility that you can easily implement today. Secondly, our goal was to improve the accessibility and quality of the WOW Technology Minute website.
For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to summarize what we?’ve learned through this process and to share my own perspective on the topic. For tomorrow?’s podcast, I?’ll be reaching out to Brent Norris, Web developer from the Aloha state of Hawaii who as you may recall, I asked to consult with me on the WOW Accessibility project.

First, I?’d like to acknowledge T.V. Raman Research Scientist at Google for the inspiration for the in depth analysis and the WOW Accessibility Project. I met and interviewed T.V. Raman at the Seventeen Annual WWW conference in Beijing last month on the topic of Web accessibility and was inspired by his “cup half full” perspective on the topic and his passion to educate others in a very logical and upbeat way about the need for and the benefits of designing with Web accessibility in mind.

Now for my thoughts:

In reviewing the past WOW Technology Minute interviews on the topic of Web accessibility, I?’ve learned the following:

•As an industry we are making progress in the areas of improving an understanding and appreciation of the needs for Web accessibility and as a profession we should be proud of that
•I also learned that the cup is half full but according to the experts its much bigger and that this is a positive thing for our profession in terms of oppotyinty and for the Web in general
•Thanks to wide variety of Web accessibility specialist and standards bodies we have more recommendations (national and international ) and tools to better understand and address the problem
•In addition to being the right thing to do for those that are blind, deaf and otherwise handicapped Web accessibility makes great business sense and resources exist to document that
•With just a little bit of time invested and some very easy to do processes even the busiest of the busiest in the Web profession can make a small and incremental change that can have a big impact

To put those statements into perspective, I?’d like to point out that I recognize that most Web professionals do not have the luxury of working for the enterprise. More than likely, the majority of you have clients and tight timelines and operate within the constraints of a small budget. As a result, Web accessibility although important is only a small part of your over all job responsibility. If you?’re like me, than you?’re most likely the developer, the designer, the content, the security and the marketing guru as well. I recognize and understand how difficult it must be to manage the complexity of your daily lives of managing a wide variety of demanding clients and to do?’s.

That said, I?’d like to ask that you consider incorporating some of the lessons learned into your daily Web professional lives. You?’ll feel better for having done so. I know that I have.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web Accessibility and the second in a series of interviews with Shawn Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)and Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group.

Shawn holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is the author of */Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design at: UIACCESS.

For the complete four minute audio interview with Shawn on the topic of the W3C’s work on Accessible Rich Internet Applications check out today’s podcast at the WOW Technology Minute..

Today s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links at: WebmasterSurvivalGuide.

Transcript: WOW Technology Minute Web Accessibility Interviews with Shawn Henry, WAI and W3C

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage and the topic of Web Accessibility with Shawn Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) World Wide Web Consortium W3C and Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group. Good afternoon Shawn and thanks again for the continued support of the web accessibility topic and this podcast.

SHAWN HENRY: Glad to be able to take this opportunity to continue sharing information about web accessibility.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you so much Shawn. Can you provide the listeners and the viewers of this podcast an overview of the W3C?’s work on accessible-rich Internet applications?

SHAWN: Absolutely. So this work applies to, largely to, dynamic html, sites with AJAX and other so-called Web 2.0 applications. And basically the issue is that Midas functionality is not available to some users with disabilities, mostly people who can?’t use a mouse and people who can?’t see and use a screen reader. For example, when websites use tree controls for navigation, that is often either not accessible or very tedious to access. So it may be accessible, but it?’s not very useable. Things like drag-and-drop, obviously, very difficult to do without a mouse. And then issues with updating the DOM, with AJAX Live Regions, with updating content on a page based on user actions. So these are some of the areas that we?’re focusing on.

So we have this specification called WAI AIA. It stands for Accessible-Rich Internet Applications. And this specification defines a way to make these user interface controls and dynamic content accessible. It primarily focuses on the, this level of technology. It has some features that are useful for simple sites, such as specifications for marking up regions of a page, like menus, primary content, secondary content, browsers and things like that. It is currently a draft. Many browsers, assisted technologies, Java Script tool kits and others have already begun to implement it. So we recommend that Web developers start now to learn about ARIA so that they can implement it appropriately and be ready and ahead of the game when that is finalized and when it comes out.

And one of the new bits of information, even for those who heard about ARIA several months ago, is that we previously had just the technical specifications and now we have material that developed, for developers. So there?’s a primer and there?’s a best practices guide. And all those are available from the WAI ARIA view, which you can find on the WAI website or if you just go to any search engine and type W-A-I dash A-R-I-A overview, it should take you right there.

BILL: Excellent. Thank you Shawn. Sounds like a terrific resource and we certainly thank you for continued support. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters and the WOW Technology Minute on the phone with Shawn Henry WAI W3C. Thanks again Shawn.

ANNOUNCER: Today?’s minute is sponsored by the Webmaster?’s Survival Guide. When you need professional resources be sure to check out www.webmastersurvivalguide.com. There?’s something there for all skill levels and disciplines. And be sure to ask about advertising opportunities with this PR6 website from the World Organization of Webmasters.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters, WOW, and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage on the topic of Web Accessibility. To assist me in better understanding this topic from an international perspective, I?’m on the phone with Shawn Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative, WAI, World Wide Web Consortium and a Chair of the WAI Education and Outreach Working Group.

Shawn holds a research appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is the author of JUST ASK: INTEGRATING ACCESSIBILITY THROUGHOUT DESIGN. She?’s also presented for WOW in the past and is a great addition to this podcast.

Good Afternoon Shawn and thanks for agreeing to this interview and, of course, for your comments by email. Shawn, you commented on the WOW Technology Minute Web Accessibility Podcast with Brent Norris. Can you summarize your comments and can you provide us with the resources and the links that you mentioned in your email?

SHAWN HENRY: Yeah, first of all it?’s great to hear about your project to evaluate and improve the accessibility of the WOW Technology Minute website. I noticed the mention of Section 508, which is for US government procurement, and so I wanted to share some information about the international accessibility of web content accessibility guidelines. So it?’s an international accessibility standard, and that acronym is WCAG. WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and it applies to websites and web applications. It?’s from the World Wide Web Consortium, or the W3C, and that?’s the group that defines standards such as html, css, etc. Within W3C there?’s a group called the Web Accessibility Initiative, or WAI, and that?’s the group that developed the accessibility guidelines. So WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, just as with other W3C web standards, are cooperatively developed with people around the world.

It?’s a little different from US Section 508. In fact, Section 508 was based largely on WCAG 1.0, but it?’s only a subset. So WCAG covers many more accessibility issues. It?’s much broader. Now WCAG 2.0 is close to being published. As of the 30th of April we now recommend that people start using the draft of WCAG 2.0, as we don?’t expect it to change very much before it?’s finalized, hopefully later this year.

There?’s several benefits to using WCAG 2.0. It applies to more advanced technologies, both current technologies, future technologies and non-W3C technologies like flash and PDF and other things. It has extensive supporting materials that gives you practical how-to examples as what you need to do as developers to implement WCAG and how to, technical implementation details as well as understanding the functionality that users need.

So that?’s just a little bit about WCAG 2.0, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and if you want to get some more information I?’d encourage you to go look at the overview document and that is at http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20. And that will give you an overview of the documents. There?’s a link to a FAQ, there?’s a really useful resource called “How to meet WCAG 2.0” and it?’s a customizable, quick reference of all the requirements and the information you need. So that?’s a bit about WCAG 2.0.

BILL: Excellent Shawn, thank you so much for that international perspective, as well as those resources available. I?’m curious to know, you mentioned earlier in your email to me regarding valuation tools and business cases. Can you address that?

SHAWN: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to let you know that we have several, we have a wide variety of resources from the W3C WAI. And Brent?’s comment about evaluation tools and yours about business cases has brought up two of them that I wanted to share. One is, for evaluation tools, we have a database, and that lists over 100 tools, multiple types of tools, languages, etc. And that?’s all searchable. So that?’s a good resource for finding different types of evaluation tools.

Then we also have a document called “Developing a Business Case for your Organization.” And it goes into detail about the social factors, technical factors, financial factors, and legal and policy factors, involved in the business case.

BILL: And this is from an international perspective?

SHAWN: Absolutely. It?’s a very broad resource. It covers whether you?’re in education, whether you?’re in government, whether you?’re in the private sector, a big company, a small company, it covers all these different issues. And it?’s designed so that you as an individual can pick the aspects that are relevant to your situation.

BILL: Excellent.

SHAWN: The business case is a little different for everybody.

BILL: Yeah, fair enough. Sounds like a terrific resource, we thank you for that.

SHAWN: Yeah. So if you want to find that, or any of the other resources, those are at http://www.w3.org/wai/resources.

BILL: Thank you so much for that. Anything else to share?

SHAWN: Another thing I wanted to mention is an interesting aspect about making developers?’ jobs easier and getting more accessibility for less effort. And that is the role of authoring tools. So authoring tools include your html editor, content management system, anything you?’re using to create content on the web. And when those support accessibility, that makes developers?’ jobs easier. So we also have authoring tool accessibility guidelines. And we are encouraging vendors to meet those, to make developers?’ jobs easier. That?’s another thing that developers can do, is to ask their authoring tool vendor if they?’re doing everything they can to meet accessibility guidelines as well. So that we can all get more accessibility integrated into our work with less effort.

For those who are particularly interested in providing equal access to people with disabilities, another aspect of the authoring tools accessibility guidelines, is the fact that things like blogging software, and wikis and photo-sharing sites and things like that, are also authoring tools. So it?’s important that they are accessible, so that people with disabilities themselves can contribute to the web as well.

BILL: Yeah. Good point, thank you for bringing that up Shawn.

SHAWN: Great.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Adobe Corporation, where Adobe is debuting Adobe TV. That?’s right, if you haven?’t already checked out Adobe TV, check it out today at http://tv.adobe.com. And also check out their e-seminar series for web professionals for the month of July and August at http://www.adobe.com/go/webeseminars.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Adobe Corporation.

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