PUBLIC MARKS from Monique with tag [en]

World Time Buddy (WTB) is a cross between a clock, a world time converter, and an online meeting scheduler. It's one of the best online productivity tools for those often finding themselves traveling, in flights, in online meetings or just calling friends and family abroad.

Why I created this resource

This list should not be taken as a stab against tools and tool vendors. I’ve said numerous times that we should do automatic testing first. When done properly, automatic testing offers a degree of efficiency that cannot be matched by other methods. However, that doesn’t mean that we should leave our compliance up to automated testing. As the tables above show, there are 9 WCAG Success Criterion (in Level A and AA) that cannot be tested for in any meaningful manner using a tool. There are another 13 that can be tested for automatically but require a human to verify. Full compliance and risk mitigation always requires the involvement of a skilled professional reviewer, even when you have a tool as well.

I first got to know Kim Patch when we worked together on the W3C User Agent Accessibility Working Group. As a resident of the Web since it’s inception and a long term voice input / non mouse user I was always fascinated to hear what she had to say about making web content, and how a browser interprets that content, accessible.

This mantra is as true for the mobile Web as it is for the desktop Web.

Let me be perfectly clear; Firefox OS is the start of something huge. It's a revolution in waiting. A breath of fresh air. A culmination of bleeding-edge technology. It's magical and it's going to change everything.

James Young recently surveyed his fellow designers about the biggest problems they face on responsive sites. Here, he reports on the results – and offers his solutions

Slide-Drive, explored what a web-native presentation tool might be

The revelation to me in this case was that the console and debugger are exactly the other screen we need for presenting and a very easy way to keep the interaction in the main window and get information in the other. You got to love browsers these days.

It’s important to note that PDF/UA is neither a spec to measure PDF content, like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), nor an everyday authoring guide. It focuses on giving developers of PDF authoring tools and viewers, as well as vendors of assistive technologies that support PDF, critical information on how to build and present PDF content more accessibly. The goal is to make accessible PDFs easy to author and use, however they are produced.

The new caption editor function, developed by a Google intern and his mentor, allows users to correct automatic captions within the YouTube website.

The first ever website was published on August 6, 1991 and served up a page explaining the World Wide Web project and giving information on how users could setup a web server and how to create their own websites and web pages, as well as how they could search the web for information.

This article is based on the WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), a worth reading set of recommendations for making Web content more accessible, that is, more friendly for people with disabilities.

IBM Research-Tokyo recently partnered with NCAM to research ways to deliver online audio descriptions via text-to-speech (TTS) methods, rather than using human recordings. IBM and NCAM explored two approaches which exploit new HTML5 media elements as well as Javascript and TTML

Le-Chal is a way finding aid for the visually impaired that uses a language of vibrations, complementing their natural adaptations and extends their limitations.

How it works

There are four “layers” of words that will be flying in, one after the other, making the previous one fade out. The letters will fly in rotating and get a little shake once they “smash” into their place.

The demo is best viewed in a browser that supports perspective.

If you are about to redesign your website, now is a good time to focus on getting a website that can be used by as many people as possible. Here are some tips on when and how to make requirements and focus on accessibility throughout the process.

Geoff Adams-Spink - the former BBC Age and Disability Correspondent - provides an overview of how users can adapt their computer setup.

This got me thinking that it would be useful to have an infographic showing the timeline for implementations of the various accessibility APIs and accessibility related technical specifications. Below is a rather large thumbnail version of the (non interactive infographic, based on the ‘Evolution of the Web’). There is also a full size version and related timeline available.