July 2006 Archives
BlogHer is all about the business cards. I've been conferencing and mingling and every time I leave a conversation I have a handful of other peoples' cards. Last year, three people had cards and everyone else was SO jealous. This year, cards everywhere! I will blog the best one I got when I get home, it requires a camera and I left mine in Austin.
I gave my accessibility presentation this morning. About 85% of the audience was paying attention - and this in a room full of people with laptops and (mostly on) internet connections, so I think it went well. I probably said most of the stuff in my notes. I can't remember, and I'm not looking at them again because I don't want to know.
Half a dozen people have come up to me to say I did a really good job. Since one of them wrote the blogging articles at the American Foundation for the Blind and one of them used to test applications with screen reader software while wearing a blindfold, I think my information was probably pretty accurate.
I also got video-blogged in a short interview afterwards, and when I get the link I will post it here IF I think I look halfway decent. Otherwise you'll have to find it yourself.
There are so many amazing women here. Elise Bauer's presentation on increasing blog readership was well-organized and clear, and she has an informal presentation style that's still professional. I always love seeing ae from Arse Poetica. I want to ask her to wear my friendship bracelet or sign my yearbook or something. Everyone should have a chance to listen to Lynne D. Johnson speak, because she has an amazing voice and great insight to go with it.
Tomorrow or Sunday I need to do a vendor and swag review, because damn, girl, there is some fun stuff here. I'll also hopefully post a review of a test drive I'm planning to do tomorrow. Hybrid SUV, this is The Princess. The Princess, this is Hybrid SUV that's such a pretty color of blue... Technically, though, that's just another opportunity to get swag. They have a gift bag, and I must know what's in it!
p.s. To Safari people, I apologize that my new site design in busted on your browser. I didn't know! I will make it right...but not until I get home.
How do you make your blog more accessible? This post contains some advice and specific instructions, related to a presentation that I am giving at BlogHer 2006.
The following information is culled from multiple sources. Big hat tips to Knowbility, an organization promoting barrier-free IT; to Mark Pilgrim for Dive into Accessibility; to the American Foundation for the Blind for their articles on blogging; and to Crabby Old Lady for her post Blogging for Older Readers on Time Goes By.
If you have any corrections, questions, or other feedback, leave a comment.
Break Up Your Post into Paragraphs
This one is easy. Just break long blog posts into paragraphs, and make sure white space shows up between paragraphs. It helps people with low vision, concentration difficulties, and many older people (whose eyes may tire out more easily) read all the way through what you have to say.
If you don't listen to me, you should listen to your elders. Crabby Old Lady says:
Crabby is sure you know that screens flicker and eyes, even young ones, tire faster reading on a screen than on a paper page. It is impossible to read paragraphs that go on and on without breaks.
Crabby first realized this when she was managing editor at cbsnews.com in 1996 and early on, she made a New Rule: no paragraphs longer than six or seven lines for ease of reading. She would be a less crabby blog reader if she could as easily enforce this rule for the entire blogosphere.
Make Your Link Text More Explanatory
Good example: I love this blog about vegan cooking.
Bad example: I've seen several articles about this.
Many people with disabilities who use screen reader software or text-only browsers either extract a list of links from a web page or tab through the links to get a sense of what's on the page. "Click here" is just not that informative. When the words you use as links are really small, it can be hard for users with mobility impairments (or anyone else) to click on the links. Blogs already have a lot of repetitive link text - comments and permalink, for example - so why add to the clutter?
In general, it takes a little more work for users with some disabilities to open a new link or back out of an unwanted page. It helps them to know if it's really something they're interested in before they go to that effort.
Sometimes it's fun to do a link like How Beautiful! or What a Jackass! and create a little mystery for your readers. Just don't overdo it.
Don't Open New Windows Without Warning People
The Back button is your friend. The Back button is always there, it doesn't move around, and it always does the same thing. It's big, which makes it easy to click on. So don't "break" it by opening new windows without warning people! A new window doesn't let you go backwards, which can be confusing. People with mobility impairments have to work to close an unwanted new window. Low-vision folks may have the screen zoomed to another area and not even know a new window has opened. For people who are blind, only the most recent versions of screen reader software gives any indication that a new window has been opened.
So warn them! And while you're at it, warn them if the link goes to any content that isn't just another web page, such as a Quicktime movie, PDF, or a YouTube video of your hamster in its little plastic hamster ball.
Further Reading: Give Back the Back Button and Dive Into Accessibility Day 16: Not Opening New Windows
Change the Style of Visited Links
A link should look different after you've followed it and come back to the original page. Users with short-term memory problems may have trouble remembering what they've clicked without a visual representation. Think about big collections of links like Blog Carnivals - if your boss walked by and you had to close your browser, would you really want to rely solely on your memory to pick up where you left off?
You can bold it, not bold it, underline it, highlight it, not highlight it, whatever. Just make sure people can tell them apart. But if you're thinking "Hey, I know, I'll just change the color!" then check out the next section.
Further Reading: Links That Don't Change Color When Visited
Use More Than Color Cues for Links
If your links are only designated by using a different color than your text, people who have trouble distinguishing colors may not be able to tell what's a link. Most common is red-green color blindness, which means the person sees green and red as greyish and can't tell them apart. Elders may also have difficulty distinguishing colors.
Further Reading: Dive Into Accessibility Day 12: Using Color Safely
Fun Tool: Colorblind Web Page Filter lets you plug in your website and see what it would look like to someone who is color blind.
Use Color and Value Contrast
We've all seen the sites that must have been designed by 21 year olds who eat a lot of carrots. Grey text on a black background just isn't legible to the rest of us. Use colors that are easily distinguishable from each other for the background and text of your site.
P.S. I hate to tell you this, but dark background with light text is just not as easy to read as the reverse. It's true. Yes, it's a bummer, and it doesn't mean you can't do it, but consider your audience before you decide on a color scheme.
Fun Tool: Juicy Studio Colour Contrast Analyzer lets you plug in the text and background colors for your blog and get an idea of how much they contrast.
Label Your Images
If you're using an image to tell a story or replace text, you need to add an "alt attribute" to label the image. Then users with screen readers or who browse with the images turned off can see the label you've created and they know what's going on.
The alt attribute is a part of the HTML code for your image. Depending on your blogging tool (see below), you will need to add it in or change the default. The text typed into the alt attribute inside a set of quotes is called "alt text."
Your alt text should be brief, but informative. If an image is being used to replace text, put all of the words in the alt text. Check your spelling, since screen readers will misread a word that is misspelled. Some people also use the title attribute to convey verbal information about an image, but not all screen readers provide the title to the user.
If an image is being used for purely decorative purposes, you can not enter any words. If it's a photo gallery or an artistic image, it's your call on whether to use words or not. But include the alt attibute itself anyway, because if it's missing, screen reader software will read the filename of the image, and that's not pretty. Just put in the quotes with nothing in between them and your image will become "silent."
To learn how to add or change alt attributes:
- Describe Your Image
- Dive Into Accessibility Day 23: Providing text equivalents for images
- Dive Into Accessibility Day 21: Ignoring Spacer Images
Blog Tool Specific Instructions:
- If you're using Movable Type, there isn't a field in File Upload for alt text. Edit your image tag once it's placed in your post.
- If you're using TypePad, upload your image into your post and then switch into the HTML tab. The alt attribute will be filled in with the photo's filename, so find that and replace it with your alt text.
- If you're using Blogger, upload your image into your post, then switch to the Edit HTML tab. The alt attribute will be there but blank, so if you don't need a label you can leave it alone. Or fill in your label in between the quotes.
- If you're using WordPress, "when you upload an image through the WordPress interface, there is a field to add a description - this comes through into the code as the alt text." (Thanks for explaining this, Candace!)
Resist Visual CAPTCHAS
CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. Visual CAPTCHAs are those little boxes with the squiggly text you can barely read, and they are impossible to solve for people with vision impairment or those using text-only web browsers, and may be frustrating or impossible for people with dyslexia. Use all the other comment spam control tools your blogging tool offers before resorting to visual CAPTCHAs.
Put Your Sidebar/Navigation on the Right
If you don't care whether your sidebar goes on the right or left, put it on the right! Otherwise, people using screen readers may have to listen to everything in your sidebar (recent posts, blogroll) before they get to your main content.
OR, Add a Skip Navigation Link
Or, you can add a "skip navigation" link attached to a small transparent image which screen reader users and Braille output users can select to jump to your latest post. This requires editing your template a little, but it's not too hard.
For instructions, see #7 - Provide Skip Links and Using Skip Nav Links.
Use Relative Font Sizes
When you select View > Text Size in Internet Explorer 6, it does not let you make the text larger if the stylesheet has the text set in pixels (px). Users of other browsers are fine, but this is a very popular browser. Set your font sizes using percentages, ems, or keywords instead.
Blogger folks are fine, yours are already like that. For everyone else, this probably requires getting down and dirty with your templates. MT/TypePad/LJ users can adapt or borrow from the Miniml style from The Style Contest, which is in percentages.
For a little help on this tip, check out Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design for a method using keyword and percentages.
- Andrew Bird - Skin
- Patsy Cline - Leavin' On Your Mind
- Luscious Jackson - Daughters of the Kaos
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Weeping Song
- Cibo Matto - Flowers
- Gomez - Shot Shot
- Cocteau Twins - Aikea-Guinea
- Joe Williams - I Can't Beleve You're In Love With Me
- The Church - Under The Milky Way (Acoustic)
- The Resentments - Rich Man's War
- Tori Amos - Angie
- Fiona Apple - Across the Universe
- The Blue Up? - Breathe You Out
- Dany Brillant - Suzette
- Lyle Lovett - You're Not From Texas
BlogHer presentation and notes are done, blog mega-post is halfway done, mega-post will become 2-pager handout... I am so tired... Did I mention I worked until 9:30 Monday night? Whine.
[Update, 9:06 p.m. Those of you who are reading this via Atom Feed probably see the correct numbering for the list above. Those of you looking at the page directly are not seeing the first digit of every two-digit number. I am too tired to fix it. Just marvel at it...]
Y'all, I swear I didn't procrastinate on my presentation for BlogHer, but damn I have a lot to do. So I'm giving myself partial credit for last week's missed letters by substituting 20+ hours spent working on a presentation to convince other bloggers to make their blogs more accessible.
This week's letters are one fax and two emails, but all customized by yours truly before sending. Next week I commit to paper letters.
Join in the fun:
- Genocide Intervention Network: A Failed Promise to Darfur
- NARAL Pro-Choice America: Help Stop Frist's Latest Anti-Choice Bill
- Amnesty International: Call for Action Into Murder of Guatemalan Women
(Hat tip to Texas NOW Blog on that last one.)
Hey Jackass,
That binder full of CDs? THEY'RE ALL BURNED! Worth nothing. And it wasn't even zipped up, so it shouldn't have taken you that long to figure it out.
Also, if you're going to steal car stereos, take 10 minutes and learn how to get them out so you don't have to destroy the dashboard.
Or you could also GET A JOB.
Fuckhead.
-The Princess
Whoops, not quite morning anymore. Had brunch with my good friend UnwiredBen and now C-Man and I are psychologically preparing for a day of cleaning.
But first, two bits of good writing.
If only gay sex caused global warming in the L.A. Times. They'll make you register, but then you can read things like this:
Global warming isn't trying to kill us, and that's a shame. If climate change had been visited on us by a brutal dictator or an evil empire, the war on warming would be this nation's top priority.
Why school sucks on Red Stapler by the inimitable Suebob. I don't have one particular passage that I would pull out, but it is very clear and well-written. And it reminds folks like me that just because I did well in school, that doesn't mean I'm all that. Check it out.
(Does this feel slapdash? That's because it is. Sorry, my six devoted readers, but my apartment is making me crazy and it must stop.)
You know the drill:
- good dammit
- makes me want to
- pronunciation of debridement
- next generation quilters
- lizard look alikes
- dishwaher no water burning smell
- what does ool stand for
- singer sewing maching bangalore
- kingdom of lowering
- husband's boyfriend
- take care of a virtual tadpole online
The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.
-- Abigail Van Buren
All right, here's the second wedding poll. But first, I have selected the winner of the first poll on worst gifts. Congratulations to Grace for her winning submission:
My mom and stepdad received a ceramic man pulling down his pants plant pot, complete with cactus where his penis would be.
Honorable mention for bizarro gifts, though it wasn't a wedding gift, goes to senior Russian finance ministry officials:
At this weekend's meeting of finance ministers in St. Petersburg, senior Russian finance ministry officials give their Group of Eight colleagues military-look wooden crates containing glass AK-47 assault rifles - filled with vodka.
Moving along, I present a poll on worst wedding dresses. I was going to put your options below the cut, but this is too much fun to hide.
First, I present THE LINGERIE:
Next, THE URN:
Third in our parade is THE CHICKEN:
THE TAUNTING seems designed to make any woman anywhere look bad unless she is wearing a rigid plastic corset:
The following is known as THE JAWS OF LIFE because you don't so much wear it as get trapped in it, and a rescue effort is required:
GILT seems to be dress after dress after dress combined:
COLOR ME BAD is, well, pretty damn bad:
POUF seems to have some structural defect that does not allow the wearer to stand upright:
The model wearing LAYER (NOT) CAKE will probably kill you:
The recommended one-bow limit is defied in TIES:
And finally, BAD FUNG SHUI proves that red can indeed be an unlucky color.
Submit your votes!
Dear The Dog,
I believe you're a person and a member of this household, and as such your preferences should be considered. I reserve the right to override your preferences if fulfilling them would overly jeopardize your well-being. And obviously, I think you're on the short end of the stick when it comes to getting your recreational needs met. If I walked the talk, I would put more of my own activities on hold to make sure you got more playtime. But I don't make your wear hats or clothes because I know you hate them, I don't bang jars on counters to coax sticky lids because I know it frightens you, and I try to minimize the number of pills I shove down your throat because you don't seem to like that very much at all.
That said, I'm not sure what to do about your new door-scratching practice. When I go to sleep early and you're in the room with me and you want to go into the living room to hang out with C-Man, you scratch on the door. When I'm in the bathroom and you want to come in, you scratch on the door.
I want you to have a vote, and truth be told I don't care what side of what door you're on most of the time so it's not hurting me much to let you in/out. You don't have any words with which to indicate your preferences, so this is as good as it gets. But should I really be encouraging you to scratch at doors?
Bemused,
Your Mom
A couple of days ago I read a review of the Bollywood movie Fanaa on the blog Kashmir. I started thinking about how much "information" I accumulate from films and television, especially with popular entertainment from other countries where I don't have any context for those narratives.
If I had caught Fanaa when it screened in Austin, I would have come away with images of the political situation in Kashmir that may or may not be accurate. (I haven't researched beyond that blog post, I don't really know whether the film is anywhere near reality.) I don't think I would have started applying to history departments to teach the history of Kashmir, but I can't imagine that these images wouldn't influence me - especially if I never gave them any thought. I don't have any information that would lead me to notice discrepancies, so I might have just carried those images around for a while.
With that in mind, I was concerned to read a blog post on the Carribbean Amerindian Centrelink Review about the new Pirates of the Carribbean movie. It calls for a boycott due to the film's portrayal of the people indigenous to the area where the movie is set, whom the CAC blog identifies as Caribs:
Let us keep in mind that such depictions were used to enslave and murder the ancestors of today's Caribs, there was never anything innocent or "fun" about these portrayals. In addition, generations of Carib descended school children in the Caribbean have been taught that their ancestors were savage cannibals. Shame over ancestry was inculcated as a matter of routine. In my own field research experience, I have encountered individuals in their forties and fifties who told me very directly that the main reason they did not wish to self-identify as Caribs is that people in the wider world see Caribs as cannibals, as inhuman man eaters, and they found the stigma unbearable.
This portrayal of a fictional event set against a historical backdrop should have been easier for me to identify as a problem. As a resident of North America, I should be very familiar with cultural images of people of African descent that portray them as "less than civilized." But honestly, I don't know if I would have picked up on it without reading this blog post. I did notice it in King Kong, but would I have caught this one? Or would I have been swept along in a story I enjoyed, with actors I enjoy?
That, my friends, is one of the ugly privileges of being white. You don't have to think about race.
You have to make the choice whether to hold yourself and your culture accountable for racism.
Every Sunday in July, the Blood and Tissue Center of Central Texas is holding an event where they take your blood and give you Amy's ice cream in return. They're calling it Sundaes on Sunday. C-Man and I went down to find out if this crazy barter arrangement is for real, and we can report that it is. I can't say I enjoy giving blood, but the people are nice and the cause is just.
Get on down there! I'm trying to go more regularly, even after the ice cream deal is over.
blac(k)ademic's post interracial relationships: my 2 cents is well worth a read:
i also see the side of the argument, where self-hate can drive us to ignore our history, our essence of blackness (whatever that may be), and force us to strive for acceptance from white people, through selectively dating white people, in an attempt to prove how we can be "just like them." those relationships do exist out there, however, to see them all as that, denies all black men/women in interracial relations agency and positions them as helpless pawns that are incapable of owning and controlling their sexuality.
The Internet Theologian Explains The Da Vinci Code is funny even if you haven't read or seen The Da Vinci Code:
Q: What does all this have to do with Jesus? Or, for that matter, Leonardo Da Vinci?
A: The premise of the book is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that the two had children, who passed along Jesus' bloodline through generations of French people. Leonardo was the member of a secret brotherhood of painters who protected this secret by painting pictures of men that look like ladies.
THE HISTORY OF MY HIP-HOP IS TOO DEEP TO BE DISSECTED, PROBABLY is a nice companion piece. I know, from the title you wouldn't think so. Trust me.
The first section in this post by Mimi Smartypants is quite lovely - here's an excerpt:
Although there is no way Crazy Lady could have known this, the idea of my kid's school tolerating even the slightest hint of race-based teasing is laughable. These are the people who whip up a Festival of Diversity at the drop of a (hand-knitted by Ecuadorian shepherds) hat. Seriously.
Check out Five things, besides lying, that Shakira’s hips don’t do. Ha!
And finally, I love, love, love the Racism FAQ on a blog called Egotistical Whining:
Q)But "if you switched the words around"..
A)The situations are totally different. You guys got the GI Bill, you guys get taken seriously, no matter what insane paranoid shit you made up, and we're supposed to cry for you? No.
Seriously, read the whole thing, and then read the comments. Especially if you are white.
Last Thursday I actually followed through with my "Thursday is for letters" habit, but didn't quite finish up the post. This week Thursday didn't go well, so now it's Saturday and I am doing my letter.
Last Thursday I wrote emails to both my Senators to ask them to co-sponsor the PETS Act, based on this alert from the Humane Society. My email to them is below the cut. Feel free to adapt and send to your own Senators - but check the Humane Society list of who has already co-sponsored first. If your Senator has co-sponsored, thank them!
I know that email may not have as much impact as a paper letter, but since I know it will arrive more quickly it's hard to resist the temptation. And while I'm trying to establish this habit, I'm going to do what I can and build from there. If you're pressed for time, you can also use the Humane Society page to send an email to your own Senators.
On a more grim note, 18-year old Iranian girl Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, who was sentenced to death by hanging for killing a man who ambushed and tried to rape her, has had her death sentence overturned by the Iranian head of judiciary and it has been sent back to a lower court. Save Nazanin has more info.
They are requesting that letters be sent to Iran asking that she not be re-sentenced to death. My letter to the Iranian embassy in the U.S. is below the cut, and as always feel free to adapt and send your own. I'll be mailing mine today.
I have finally admitted that my body's sleep clock is once again sproing. Since the beginning of April we have done much with the travel and I have done less with the rigorous bedtime and waketime schedule. Now I am paying the price.
I am in what I like to call the bargaining stage of recovery, which is the part where I spend a lot of time saying "Oh god it's 8:00 p.m. I am so tired can I please go to bed?" The implied other end of the bargin is that if I am granted permission to go to bed at 8, or 7, or 4:30, then I will not die. But C-Man always says that I can if I am willing to live with the consequences, and then I have to make good decisions. Mostly. If I don't want to feel this way forever.
So it's bedtime at 9:30 p.m. (forget doing anything fun in the evening), get up with the alarm between 6:00 and 6:15 a.m. (forget leisurely weekends), and most of all No Naps (really). Contrary to what we were taught as children, naps are not always benign. They can Fuck Your Shit Up if you are me. Once every six months, if you are crying because the level of tired is causing you physical pain, you are allowed to nap. But then you will start waking up again almost hourly all night long and will curse the nap.
At least right now I sleep for 3-4 hours before I start waking up over and over. It's just that last part that turns my brain into glue. Blogging will undoubtedly be somewhat trivial until morale improves.
