Pop Art Blog

The good people at Rose City SPIN (Software Process Improvement Network) and OGI had me back to talk about Accessibility. I thought the whole thing was going to be cancelled - we had a tornado in the area that night. Unlike the midwest, I learned that tornado in Portland are very rare. Almost as rare as snow we had on Christmas...that hasn't happened since the 30's. Thanks to all those that braved an ugly evening to come talk about accessibility and mobile applications. Slides: http://www... Read More...

"I’d rather answer a few dumb questions than put up with a few dumb assumptions." -- Aaron Cannon , in reply to a question about whether he tires of people asking him about his blindness Read More...

I recently had a fascinating conversation with our VP of Client Services. Long story short, I learned that selling web standards is difficult, because many of the benefits it offers are “soft.” For instance, if we tell a client that the extra money we charged them to upgrade their site to web standards will make future updates easier, the Client Services team is afraid the client will come back and say that we should charge them less for updates. For a standards zealot like myself, this... Read More...

Last year, I attended An Event Apart 2006 in Seattle . It was a great event, although I remember it being really rushed, because they seven sessions packed into one day. So when I heard that they were coming back to Seattle, and had changed the format to two days, I signed up right away. I’m happy to tell you that the new format is a huge improvement. The event no longer feels rushed, and even though there are six sessions every day, there’s a 15 minute break between each one, and a 1½... Read More...

Having already written a book introducing readers to the web standards movement, Dan Cedarholm returns to cover more advanced material. While his first focused on markup and basic scenarios like grocery lists, this book focuses on CSS and accessibility. In particular, he explores how to let a web page flex around things like large font sizes or lengthy headlines without breaking - hence, bulletproof. While this material is all certainly all available online, this is a handy reference to some of the... Read More...

Raymond from The Old New Thing has written a great article to remind us that " The Default Answer to Every Dialog Box is 'Cancel' ." He includes many examples, but what it boils down to is that average users are frequently intimidated by dialog boxes, and if given the choice, will avoid them. The solution is to clarify your messages as much as possible. For instance, in a dialog box asking if the user wants to save their document, Microsoft will present two buttons, labelled "Yes"... Read More...

Phillip Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped has written a fantastic article, titled " 9 Ways to Misunderstand Web Standards ." In it, he outlines some common misconceptions that people have about standards. These are the kinds of things you hear from people who know just enough about standards to be dangerous. All of the items in his list are great, but my favorites are "Accessability Means to Always Use ALT Text," and "With CSS We're Completely Separating Content and Layout... Read More...

Jeff Croft recently wrote a fascinating post and a followup which boiled down to asking where the responsibility for accessibility lies: the web designer, or the software used to access the website? His argument is that "the burden of accommodating the minorities should fall on the operating system and browser makers." This question really dropped a hornet's nest into the community, many of whom quickly and enthusiastically did exactly what you would expect: Accuse Jeff Croft of being... Read More...

I find it fascinating that I keep stumbling across debates about whether light text on a dark background is readable/usable or not . There seem to be two camps: Those who argue that you should never use reversed type, because it's not accessable, and people who argue that it's not a big deal for various reasons. Light text on a dark background is not inherently evil or even inherently unreadable. Certainly, white text on a black background gives me a headache just like everyone else. When... Read More...

Here's a good article from Garrett Dimon on form design. In a nutshell, he says that forms which are intended for frequent use should be streamlined, while forms that are used occasionally can be lengthier, with more detailed instructions. The moral of the story is to know your audience, and how they use your tool. Read More...