Last week WOW participated in the Adobe MAX 2009 conference that took place in downtown Los Angeles, CA. The goal for WOW’s participation was to report to WOW members and to the subscribers of this podcast the goings on, where the industry is heading, the trends and the skills that will keep Web professionals employed for sometime to come.

To that end, I reached out to interview Adobe’s executives and those attendees exiting the keynotes and sessions. For today’s podcast, I have an interview with Jeremy Schultz, independent Web designer from West Des Moines, Iowa regarding his take on the event and the Adobe Flash Platform Keynote that we sat in on and how designing with Web standards fits into the overall Flash Platform mix.

According to Adobe, the Adobe® Flash® Platform is an integrated set of technologies surrounded by an established ecosystem of support programs, business partners, and enthusiastic user communities. Together, they provide everything you need to create and deliver the most compelling applications, content, and video to the widest possible audience.

Check out the three minute interview on today’s Web Professional Minute.

A full transcript will follow in twenty for hours.

Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by WebProTraining.org. WOW is pleased to announce the availabilty of the Creating Accessible Web Forms Course. Creating web forms that are accessible to people with disabilities requires understanding of the labeling features of HTML markup and how browsers interpret labeling markup for assistive technologies like screen readers. The online course is being taught by Dr. Gunderson University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign. The course also provides great value and is highly reccomended by Web professionals worldwide.

WOW members will receive a discounted rate of $150.00. Check out all of the details on the Web Pro Training website and register today!

Check out all of the great links on the Web Professional Minute Website.

Today’s podcast is a continuation of WOW’s media coverage of the Web Accessibilty Conference that took place at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign campus last week. For today’s podcast, I’m on the phone with Victor Tsaran Senior Accessibility Program Manager at Yahoo.

Victor was the Keynote speaker at the conference and presented on a variety of Web acessibility topics including the value of accessibility for all. For your information, we are posting an FLV video file with an image of Victor, an audio podcast and notes below compliments of Professor Mark DuBois, WOW Education Director that sat in on the conference as an attendee.

Check out the six minute podcast on today’s Web Professional Minute website.

According to Professor DuBois’s notes, Victor shares his personal thoughts, years of experience on the topic and resources:

* Personal struggles
* Uses assistive technology
* Relies on everyday basis
* Read books, look up menus
* Technology more than just a toy
* Essential for livelihood
* For people who don’t have disability that can do everyday things technology is a choice
* Grab a book, turn on the light decide to read book or computer
* For people with disabilities, technology is essential. Up to point of cooking can’t use microwave if no tactile labels.
* Won’t know if something is charging if no beep to hear it is charging
* Technology makes life easier for everyone, for some people it makes their life meaningful
* Speak every week at new hire orientation ay Yahoo
* Lots of people join Yahoo and think they will be rich
* People talk about security and so forth
* Couldn’t see how accessibility fits into program (orientation) at Yahoo
* Has to do a lot with how we present
* Tests for new hires have them write a bunch of numbers 60 million people with disabilities, 16 million in US. And so forth
* Want to get word accessibility into their mind from first day
* People ask often how many blind people use Yahoo innocent question. Myth is that people want to know numbers before they have done anything
* If don’t build store in accessible way and people can’t get into store, how can you ask how many people with disabilities use store
* How would you know if person is blind using Yahoo. Think about making site accessible first, then focus on how many people use accessible features. Have to invest first.

Myths that exist today

1. People think accessibility is hard to implement. Yes, it is, but a lot of things are not all that difficult. Simple stuff alternate text to images so simple should not talk about it, but people still forget.

2. Accessibility will screw up beautiful design on website. Answer is no, but there are some cases where answer is yes. Design from the start. Think visual design separate from content. Can do what want with visual design, still keep content intact and everyone has great experience.

3. Have to comply with every guideline. Personal view not necessary. Guidelines only get you so far. Lots of websites claim 508 compliance after running through validator. Not every guideline may apply to your website. Less about guidelines, more about functionality. Guidelines are there to keep you on the right track. As long as users go to what you build and love their experience, no worries. Keep users happy. Put people first. They should have fun using what you built.

4. This is all great, but no idea how this technology works. Not a screen reader user doesn’t make much sense not my world. If visual learner hard to work with screen reader. Used to scanning for information visually. Will never feel native to you. Hard to test what you have built. Must involve actual users of the technology. Otherwise, will waste a great deal of time. Grab a couple of users and ask for their feedback. Help us test drive the application. They may tell you things you may never have thought of. Find out what you enjoy about process focus on that. Use that as main driving force for web accessibility. Yahoo is about innovation people don’t like to be told what to do. There are limits, but they want to innovate. Don’t tell them you have to comply with certain guidelines. Developers should be proud of what they have built. Demo one or two things built at Yahoo.

Complicated interactions can be made accessible. Web 2.0 pushing boundaries of user experience. Lot of angry screen reader users who don’t like usdoing what we are doing. Need to educate users as well.
Screen Reader tools NVDA open source screen reader for Windows. Not using JAWS. NVDA is free open source.
Download and play with it. Most precise not forgiving. http://www.nvdaproject.org/

http://www.yahoo.com

My favorites added recently http://m.www.yahoo.com/ search screen is pretty busy. Did search for origami using NVDA When module expands move focus this goes to top of module and screen reader can announce heading. When collapse, focus is back before. People will not get disoriented. http://developer.yahoo.com/ YUI widgets get accessibility for free. Yahoo Pipes visual programming language for processing feeds. Will this become accessible? Pipes is presently in maintenance mode. Refactoring into other products. Don’t need to rely on new technologies like ARIA. Firebug is now accessible so this may happen. 3rd party vendors don’t often give sufficient metadata so can make it accessible. Ads pushed back to agencies big problem.

A full transcript will follow in twenty for hours.

Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by WebProTraining.org. WOW is pleased to announce the availabilty of the Creating Accessible Web Forms Course. Creating web forms that are accessible to people with disabilities requires understanding of the labeling features of HTML markup and how browsers interpret labeling markup for assistive technologies like screen readers. The online course is being taught by Dr. Gunderson University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign. The course also provides great value and is highly reccomended by Web professionals worldwide.

WOW members will receive a discounted rate of $150.00. Check out all of the details on the Web Pro Training website and register today!

Check out all of the great links on the Web Professional Minute Website.

For today’s podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jon Gunderson, Ph.D. Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology Accessibility at the College of Applied Health Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.

Dr. Gunderson is a long standing member of the WOW organization and teaches the popular online Web Accessibility Web Forms Course for Web professionals. I caught up with Dr. Gunderson at the Illinois Accessibility Conference he was hosting on the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.

Keynoting the event was Victor Trasan, Accessibility Engineer Yahoo and the topics of the conference ranged from:

* Captioning Video Content Screen Reader and Disability Simulation Demonstration
* Web Accessibility and Usability Go Hand In Hand
* Adobe PDF Accessibility using Acrobat and Common Look
* Screen Reader and Disability Simulation Demonstration
* Adobe Flash Accessibility

Check out the three minute podcast on today’s Web Professional Minute website.

A full transcript will follow in twenty for hours.

Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by WebProTraining.org. WOW is pleased to announce the availabilty of the Creating Accessible Web Forms Course. Creating web forms that are accessible to people with disabilities requires understanding of the labeling features of HTML markup and how browsers interpret labeling markup for assistive technologies like screen readers. The online course is being taught by Dr. Gunderson University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign. The course also provides great value and is highly reccomended by Web professionals worldwide.

WOW members will receive a discounted rate of $150.00. Check out all of the details on the Web Pro Training website and register today!

Check out all of the great links on the Web Professional Minute Website.

WOW participated in the Web Design World 2009 Conference in Seattle last week as a Media Sponsor. For today’s podcast, WOW member and the principle of SeaGreen Software conducted an interview of Pete LePage at Microsoft regarding Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).

You may recall, WOW interviewed LePage a few months back regarding the anticipated launch of IE8. In this interview, Pete shares his thoughts regarding his own personal experience using IE8 and the robust tools that it offers from a developer point of view. Pete is confident that you will agree and invites you to test it out. Pete also shares his e-mail address and invites you to provide him feedback as well.

Check out the three minute interview on today’s Web Pro Minute website.

A Full Transcript of this podcast will be available in seventy two hours.

Today’s Web Professional Minute is sponsored by Sea Green Software.

Seagreen Sofware provides website form builder software for easy creation of online forms. Easy, wizard-like format; automatic creation of database tables; simple database search module. Check it out today at Sea Green Software.

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere.

Web Security is an issue of importance to Web professionals and to the customers we serve. To that end, I’d like to cover the topic of Web security or more specifically “Phishing” and some stats that I just learned about. For today’s podcast, I’d like to explain what exactly Phishing is, just how big of an issue this really is and who monitors such activity.

According to Wikipedia, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.
Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.

According to Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), the number of crimeware-spreading sites infecting PCs with password-stealing crimeware reached an all time high of 31,173 in December, and 827% increase from January 2008.

For the complete story check out today’s two minute podcast on the Web Professional Minute website.

Today’s minute is sponsored by Web Design World 2009 taking place July 20-22, 2009 in Seattle, WA July These days, everyone’s doing more with less. That’s why Web Design World Seattle is the design conference for the here and now. No fluff or filler, just great speakers and practical topics. CSS and markup that work. Smart user-experience and social-networking strategies. Power tips for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash.
Check out our lineup and sign up today!

A complete transcript will be available in twenty four hours.

Seasons Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals Everywhere!

For today?’s podcast, I?’d like to read from the notes that I gleaned from Shawn Henry?’s Web accessibility session that took place at Web Design World last week in Boston, MA. The hour long session entitled, Accessibility: It’s for Everyone and Everything” provided a few interesting walk a ways, and Id?’ like to share with you a few of them.

I’ve known Shawn for a decade or so dating back to the Comdex conference days. She is among handful of strong advocates for accessibility that I?’ve met over the years. She?’s written a book on the topic that?’s available as a download. She?’s also sought after speaker as well. As a result of her efforts in this area, Shawn now works for the W3C where she leads worldwide education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities.

For session starters, Shawn reminds the audience that anyone of us could become disabled in one way or another and at anytime. It?’s important to note that when Shawn speaks about accessibility, she?’s not just talking about addressing the needs for those that are blind or deaf. She also points out that that “accessibility is about people. In fact, “It’s about people with disabilities, and older users and people using mobile devices and people using new technologies including people with low bandwidth connections, and people with older technology.” This is a huge issue according to Shawn and if you’ve been following this podcast for awhile then you know we couldn?’t agree more.

If you?’ve been practicing in the Web profession for awhile, then chances are then you also agree that designing with accessibility in mind is a good idea and makes its makes great business sense. All of that said, I?’m surprised when I hear from industry colleagues like Shawn suggesting how many are not implementing even some of the most basic principles into the mix and its cause for concern. The reasons vary of course and will drill into a few of them in future podcast.

For today, I?’d like to share a few bulleted highlights from her session:

•Older people (ok yours truly are among that group) can have issues with color contrast. That?’s an issue because many older cell phone with limited color palettes have issues in bright lights.
•Accessibility is an issue because many people around the world simply don?’t connection. For example, low bandwidth connections is a huge issue in the US
•Also, included in the mix are people with low literacy and people who are not fluent in certain languages grapple with these issues.
•Last but not least, people who are either new and or infrequent users of the Web can experience issues.

One other walk away was Shawn demo using a screen reader. If you?’re not familiar with screen readers, screen readers provide individuals with access to everything on your computer from documents to spreadsheets and of course websites. It?’s worth learning more about this topic and how they work and I?’ve provided a couple of links for you to review.

Check out the three minute podcast on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by the Web Pro Community Challenge.
Sponsored by the WOW and the Adobe corporation, the Web Pro Challenge offers an opportunity to showcase your talent, gain industry recognition, win prizes and benefit the community by designing and developing a site for a non-profit organization.

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.

Adobe Debuts Adobe TV
If you haven?’t already, check out Adobe? TV at Adobe TV. It?’s a free online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products. Adobe TV features four channels, each targeting a specific audience: Photographers, Designers, Video Professionals, and Developers. Each channel features programming from Adobe evangelists, leading trainers, subject matter experts, and luminaries who pull in the crowds at industry events around the world. More than 200 videos are currently available on Adobe TV, including Adobe?’s popular presentations at NAB. And new content is added regularly.

July and August eSeminars for Web Professionals.
Join Adobe software experts to learn how to use the tightly integrated tools available in Adobe? Creative Suite? 3 Web Premium. Web eSeminars are designed for web designers, web developers and anyone interested in enhancing their workflows, and learning new tips and tricks. Learn more and register at www.adobe.com/go/webeseminars.
Introduction to Dreamweaver CS3

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Come learn how Dreamweaver helps you create standards-based websites, that will look great across different browsers. We will create a new design from scratch, based on a Photoshop composite, using CSS-based layout. We will also show some of Dreamweavers robust site management functionality, and see how Dreamweaver can help you learn various Web technologies.
From Pixels to Playback: Adobe Photoshop to Adobe Flash
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Deliver professional grade SWF and FLV content that?’s as easy for users to view as it is for you to create, edit, and deploy.

Prototyping with Fireworks CS3
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Fireworks CS3 delivers robust new tools for rapidly prototyping websites and user interfaces. Learn how to use Fireworks? prototyping features to create a working, click-through prototype; create multiple pages and share common layers across pages; import native Photoshop and Illustrator files, complete with hierarchical layer structures, layer blend modes, and layer effects; add rich symbols from Fireworks? Common Library, and customize symbol attributes in the Symbol Properties panel; and intelligently scale bitmap and vector symbols to avoid distortion.

It?’s ALIIIIIIIIIVE!: A Print and Web Designer Guide to Interactivity with Adobe Flash
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 10:00 A.M. PDT
Free the rich, interactive content inside your Adobe PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator images with Adobe Flash. Learn how these programs give you a leg up when creating interactive and animated content for mobile devices and the web.