Lead Generation Company, Lead Generation companies, lead generation ideas

Gone will be the days when a person could really feel secure with just 1 occupation in hand. Many thanks towards the "hire and fire" policy becoming rampant in lots of organizations, you by no means know whenever you could be asked to leave. Employers are prepared to downsize their staff at any given minute and you may by no means know whenever you are going to be at the receiving finish! Nowadays, far more than in the past, it's grow to be essential for just about every person to get a lot more than one resources of income to maintain afloat even throughout tough financial times. So, what are the tips that you can look at to develop many resources of income?

Joomla Development – User Friendly CMS to Manage Websites

These days, there are number of open source CMS available in the market for developing and creating websites. While developing a website, the question arises; which technology to choose so that organization can reap maximum benefit. There are varieties of CMS available such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and many more. But in this post we talk about Joomla, which is one of the best and effective content management system, available free of cost. Most of the website owners choose Joomla CMS for theirs websites.

That Replicated MLM Website Is Killing Your Business

The Trouble With Your MLM Website
Every day I have distributors give me a link to their network marketing company's replicated MLM web site. In case you don't know the term, a "replicated" multi level marketing website is the company web page that every distributor gets to personalize with his own personal contact information. These type of MLM websites usually look superb, but contain some serious flaws when it comes to building your business.

Implementing Color Schemes on Web Models

Hues make existence a lot more fascinating. The way you recognize hues demonstrate how your individuality is impacted by it and the mix that formulates your style in normal. Color mix and all the shades of the standard hues is the very same in whichever you intend to use it. Semblance is quite much a aspect of the globe about us. The human currently being has the ability to perceive the reflection of mild into his optical perception recognized as consciousness. Color is one particular of the bases of recognition of almost everything in our physical globe. Semblance perspective is one way to support us make a decision our inner ideas, to enable us dwell the way we want our lives to be. To survive in the midst of chaos and diversity, semblance will be our manual. It will allow us to appreciate the splendor of a rainy afternoon like viewing an artwork on a wall.

The Ability of Web page design

The internet started in the late 1970s, and has evolved for you to becoming mankind's largest discovery considering that wheels. In the past 30 peculiar years, everybody gone electronic digital and online. From private social to marketing and sales has ended the net. In this particular phenomenal achievement, internet is now an inseparable a part of our lives. It's got dissolved the barriers involving distance along with separation. Nowadays, the world is connected with around half the populace of the globe interconnected delicately on this digital platform. For this reason web developing is such any sought after along with valued support - simply because websites are the company or perhaps brand's virtual deal with.

Have A Plan To Achieve The Goal In Web Hosting

Uptime - If your bread-and-butter maker website is down for a few hours, you'll lose hundreds of dollars and more. Even though most hosting companies promise 99.9% uptime, it's not common to see a website down for a few hours. A site could be down for a half day or even more if a company is doing a major update. 

PSD to Drupal Conversion: One of the most popular web services

As the scope and usability of internet has been amplified substantially, the expectation of online business owners, to have a quality website, is going beyond the usualness. This generates a huge demand for creating a good looking and fully fledged website. This overflowing demand for a unique website brought a cut throat competition in the web market. Moreover, the advancement in technology has geared up the web arena to produce more useful web solutions. Today, CMS based websites are one of the biggest examples of the latest web technology, which has provide an ease of creating a good looking and user friendly website. When we talk about to build a CMS based website, PSD to Drupal conversion is a preferred web solution to get a beautiful website.

Cost-free and Premium WordPress Themes - What's The Major Big difference?

Running a blog has been very popular for all world wide web people throughout the world, and it continues to spread about and around. When we communicate about blogging, it discounts with expressing by yourself by way of your own personal subject or interest in any niche. Should you be interested about journey, then you definitely really should web site anything at all about journey. It could possibly be strategies, updates or something that might attract your visitors. We understand that subject matter would be the major element on the running a blog technique, and it really is in which most visitors rely on.

Learn To Do More When Researching Blog Post Content

Every marketer, with a blog, dreams of having a post go viral in their market, and that can be done but only if your content is hot and valuable. We will talk more about how to do this in the rest of this article, so read on with interest.

Creating Buzz for Your Product

Product generation is a challenging job--nobody denies this. Not only will it take a massive amount time and hard work to come up with a good idea for a product, it takes even more time and work to bring that idea to life. Of course, once you've designed that product your time and effort will have been thrown away if you can't get anybody to buy it from you. So how do you find people to order the things you have made? This article will discuss some of the things that product creators and makers can do and some of the steps they can take to ensure that shoppers will both know about and want to buy the things that they have worked so hard to create.

Fixing Alt - MacGuyver Coffeemaker

No coffeemaker and need coffee?! So you search the web and find an article about brewing coffee MacGuyver-style, but can't access the large image which contains the vital points. Lifehacker's article Brew an Emergency Cup of Coffee with Two Paper Cups and a Filter is practical and fun, but the image containing the crucial steps is missing alternative text. So to save my fellow coffee fans in a time of crisis, here's the alt text:

1. Acquire 2 paper cups, 1 filter, boiling water, a cutting instrument.
2. Cut one cup towards the top so that it creates a ring at least 2 inches tall. Place the filter over the other uncut cup.
3. Slide ring down over the filter, which is sitting on the uncut cup. Push down until small amount of filter is visible on all sides.
4. Place desired/available coffee grounds in the cup over filter.
5. Begin slowly filling open portion with near boiling water. Do not over fill and occasionally stir.
6. Brewing may take anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes including set up and brew. However, it's a hell of a lot better than having no coffee at all.

Now on Facebook

Web Axe is now on Facebook! If you're on Facebook, please give me a "like"! I plan to post the best of the best there fairly regularly, but not too often (maybe every other day). I may even do a poll or two.

Yea, I know it's somewhat ironic, maybe even a bit hypocritical, that I'm on Facebook since it has major web accessibility issues (with no captioning support, just one of many Facebook issues). But nonetheless, I'm there. All things considered, it's the biggest social network in the world; it'd be silly not to take advantage of that in spreading the word about web accessibility.

Podcast #91: Game Plan, CSS, Lawsuits & Events

Dennis and Ross discuss the "Accessibility Game Plan", a couple good CSS tips, upcoming events, and a few lawsuits, and more!

Download Web Axe Episode 91 (Game Plan, CSS, Lawsuits & Events)

Transcript coming soon.

What's New

• Ross' book update
• Accessible Twitter is now Easy Chirp!

The Game Plan

• Barriers to Improving the Accessibility Game Plan
• Accessibility: Let's put away the wrecking ball!
• Takeaways:
• It about semantics (pun): universal design, inclusive design
• Educate others in a web camp, Refresh chapter, UPA.
• Share your and others' solutions.
• Practice what you preach.
• Advocate accessibility groups, websites, etc.

Careful with CSS

• Testing the accessibility of the CSS-generated content (with before/after pseudo selectors)
• CSS Background Images and Accessibility

Lawsuits

• Berkeley-based nonprofit sues CNN.com for not captioning online videos and CNN Being Sued For Lack Of Closed-Captioning Online
• National Association of the Deaf Files Disability Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Netflix and Netflix sued by deaf group over lack of subtitles
• Court to Hear Argument in JetBlue Accessibility Case. "JetBlue has asked Judge to throw the case out of court, arguing that California's disability civil rights laws do not apply to JetBlue's website or kiosks."
• Just announced: Blind Students Sue Florida State University for Discrimination

Conferences & Events

• AccessU keynote by Dennis
• Accessibility at Google IO 2011
• Events July thru Dec 2011 & IT Accessibility Goes To Camp

Jobs

• Scotiabank seeks a Project Leader Accessibility and Inclusion (contract), Toronto, Canada
• Mozilla seeks an Accessibility Engineer
• New Editions Consulting (for DHS?) seeks a Senior Accessibility Analyst in Washington, DC. Ability to successfully complete a secret clearance is required.
• Just announced: Web Accessibility Engineer at MIT

How to Use Web Hosting Service

One of the important elements that you will need to develop your website is a webhosting. Webhosting is a system which manages the development of your website physical as well as encrypted features so you can maintain an optimized website. Whether you are creating a personal website or commercial website you have the exact tools that you can use to accommodate your website building process. Webhosting service provides you the tools that you need to develop your website. First thing to do to find a reliable webhosting is find more references about good and suitable webhosting at webhosting services review site.

As you already find the suitable webhosting that meets your preferences and budget, you will be able to start your website building process. You can use the templates and tools that have been provided by the service that you use and start to build your website. Sometimes you are given complete tools to develop your website and sometimes you are not. Make sure that you get everything you need to develop your website when you choose your webhosting service. Some webhosting allows you free subscription for the initial year or two. Use this service to test whether you will run that hosting or not for your service. Cancelation of webhosting service is possible. You can also find references about the best shared or
best dedicated web hosting easily at webhosting review site to find the right one of your website development.

Events July thru Dec 2011

Here are some great web accessibility-related events for the remainder of the year. Know any others?

HCI International 2011: Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction
July 12-14
Orlando, Florida (Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek)

ARIA & jQuery UI Accessibility Hackathon
July 11-12
Toronto, Canada (Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University)

Open Web Camp III
Saturday, July 16, 8:30AM to 5PM PST
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
Twitter: @openwebcamp #owc3

Accessibility Camp Montreal
August 26, 2011
Montreal, Canada
Twitter: @A11yMTL

Boston Accessibility Unconference
Saturday, September 17, 10am to 5pm EST
Twitter: @a11ybos

Accessibility Camp Toronto
Saturday, September 24
Toronto, Canada (downtown, specific location to be announced)
Twitter: @A11yCampTO Email: a11ycampto at gmail dot com

Web Accessibility London Unconference
Wednesday, 21 September 2011, 10am to 4pm
London, UK (City University London)

Accessibility Summit (online event)
Tuesday, September 27, 9-5 Central Time

Accessibility Camp DC
Saturday, October 22
MLK Library in Washington, DC
Twitter: @AccessCampDC

Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) Chicago Conference
November 3-5
Schaumburg, IL

14th Annual Accessing Higher Ground
Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference
November 14-18
Westin Hotel in Westminster, Colorado

Ottawa Accessibility Unconference
Friday, December 2
Ottawa, Canada

Easy Chirp

In cased you missed the news a few weeks ago, the web-accessible Twitter application "Accessible Twitter" changed its name to "Easy Chirp". Here's the original Web Overhauls press release. Nice to see the story made it to other PR and news sites including MyNewsDesk.com, PR.com, and Accessible Insights.

Reasons for the change are explained in the press release.

The name change is due to several reasons, the foremost is that the Twitter rules of use for third-party applications does not allow the word "Twitter" in the name of the application. Also, the word "easy" is simpler to understand than "accessible", especially to those not in the accessibility or disability communities. And, the new name is considerably shorter, especially important with the 140-character limit in Twitter statuses, better known as tweets.

The former Twitter name/handle caused a delay in the update of two application settings that could only be resolved by changing the name.

Earlier this year, Easy Chirp/Accessible Twitter received the American Foundation for the Blind 2011 Access Award.

IT Accessibility Goes To Camp

A guest blog by Jennison Asuncion.

June 1 marked the date of the second Accessibility Camp Guelph. Led again by Sean Yo, it took place in an appropriate spot for a barcamp-type event, The Bullring Pub at Guelph University (Ontario, Canada). As with the five other accessibility camps I have been involved in over the last two years, Accessibility Camp Guelph offered participants a no-cost opportunity to build and drive an agenda and conversations focused on IT accessibility/inclusion.

I have been asked why I so enthusiastically "instigate" and champion the accessibility barcamp/unconference movement. As I said during Accessibility Camp Seattle last month, I have a keen interest in making the topic of IT accessibility, accessible, to the people who have a hand in making it happen: from the devs, to the usability and UI design folks, and everyone in between. As I experienced attending the first accessibility camp in Washington D.C. in 2009, the barcamp/unconference format lends itself perfectly to this purpose. By its very nature, it calls for a free, less formal, open atmosphere where folks with varying levels of experience with and perspectives on accessibility, including end-users with disabilities, come together to chart the day, discuss and learn. If the numbers of attendees and feedback surveys are any indication, these dedicated accessibility camps are being well-received. What's more, they are building community (the tribe), and have inspired monthly Accessibility DC and Accessibility Baltimore meetings.

Plans are underway in 2011 so far for events in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Boston, Washington D.C., and London UK. Want to learn more? Why not consider putting on an accessibility camp in your city. An accessibility camp website maintained by John F. Croston III is a good place to start.

You can also follow @A11yEvents on Twitter for the latest on these and other accessibility gatherings and traiditional conferences.

Get the Most Reliable Web Hosting Company only in Webhostingrating.com

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To help you convince yourself in choosing the best host or provider for your web hosting, this site will also provide you with
web hosting rating. This rating will show you the top web hosting available, in order to give you oversees about the best web hosting available these days. In addition, this site will also make everything easier for you, in case you want to resell your web hosting, or on the other hand you want to find reseller hosting to start your personal or group web hosting.

Fixing Alt - Mr. Twitter

The next in our "Fixing Alt" series is the Mr. Twitter comic on Agent-X Comics. Here's the alternative text for yet another comic which lacks it. The alt and title attributes are both blank. Sad.

So here the text description:

Image: Two men standing by wall with poster of man with sunglasses, mustache and bow tie. The poster reads "Mr. Twitter, the master of impersonation. Tonight only."

Man 1: Why do they call him Mr. Twitter?

Man 2: Because he only does 140 characters.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Accessibility at Google IO 2011

So I attended the first day of Google I/O 2011, my first time at a Google event. I was glad to hear a fair amount of talk about accessibility. There were at least 3 sessions focusing on the topic (see below) and a breakout area where you can talk with developers.

There was even an accessibility "Developer Sandbox" area which was great. I tried out the ChromeVox screen reader on a Chromebook with help from Google's Rachel Shearer. I got a quick demo of the built-in TalkBack screen reader on an Android mobile device. Mika Pyyhkala and I were shown the LevelStar braille device running Android. The University of Washington showed off their mobile ASL Android project which used video chat technology.

Some tips for Android development from the sessions are:

• In Android code, ensure images, especially ImageButtons, are labeled with contentDescription.
• Use standard controls.
• Stick with standard or modified views; custom very complex to make accessible.
• Ensure all controls reachable with D-pad and Trackball.
• Test with screen reader using D-Pad. To turn on, enable accessibility under Settings/Accessibility, then enable Talkback.
• Take advantage of device's "many eyes and ears" for alternative input/output (microphone, speaker, touch screen, camera, GPS)

The sessions specific to accessibility were:

• Accessibility: Building Products that Everyone Can Use by Brad Green, Erin Rosenthal (on YouTube)
• Leveraging Android Accessibility APIs To Create An Accessible Experience by Charles Chen, T.V. Raman, Tim Credo (on YouTube)
• Creating Accessible Interactive Web Apps using HTML5 by Dominic Mazzoni, Rachel Shearer (on YouTube)
• Added via comment below: The YouTube Caption API, Speech Recognition, and WebVTT captions for HTML5 by Naomi Black, Cynthia Boedihardjo, Jeffrey Posnick (on YouTube)

More resources:

• My Flickr album from Google I/O 2011
• Google Accessibility Resources for developers and publishers: APIs, captioning, and standards
• Android Developers - Designing for Accessibility
• The official Google I/O 2011 announcements

Tim Credo, Charles Chen, and T.V. Raman on stage at Google I/O.

Accessibility Twitter Lists

A list of lists! Here are some great Twitter lists relating to accessibility.

• Web Accessibility list by Me @WebAxe
• Accessibility list by Michael Mistak @MichaelMistak
• Accessibility list by Sandi Wassmer @SandiWassmer
• Accessibility list by A11Y @A11Y
• HTML5 Accessibility Task Force list by Laura Carlson @laura_carlson
• Accessibility list by Angela Hooker @AccessForAll
• Accessibility list by STCAccess @STCAccess
• Bonus! This is interesting. Here's a Twitter list of blind users: Vision list by @STCAccess

Know any others?

Kinds of web hosting

As the internet is considered as one of the famous way in promoting and advertising the service and the product of a particular company, there have been a lot of people and company owners who choose the promote their product using the internet. If you are interested in doing this kind of way, you will need to choose a
web hosting service provider that gives you a place on the internet that can be used as a place to promote your product and service so that you can get a lot of benefit from that. There are two common types of web hosting service features on the internet, the free and the paid types.



The free web hosting is a kind of web hosting that requires you no money to have it. What you need to do is to fill out the applications on the web hosting company and in a matter of minutes you will be able to have your own web. But this kind of web hosting will be different from the paid web hosting like
managed hosting. The different of free and paid web hosting will be on the feature it offers. The free one will only have one server to be shared with the other people while the paid web hosting, like we have in colocation, we will have our own server to host our web.

Resources for Writing for Web Accessibility

A large part of web accessibility is creating content which can be easily understood, and writing is often times an overlooked factor. Like coding a website, writing must account for a variety of user conditions and abilities. It's tricky! Here are some great articles to help.

FiveSeven-part series from 4syllables

• Introduction: Accessibility for web writers, part 1
• Text alternatives for images: Accessibility for web writers, part 2
• Info and relationships: Accessibility for web writers, part 3
• Sensory characteristics: Accessibility for web writers, part 4
• Colour: Accessibility for web writers, part 5
• Added: Contrast, part 6 (thanks to Karen's comment below)
• Added: Images of text: accessibility for web writers, part 7

More great articles

• Accessible writing versus writing for a global audience (Unleash Web Access)
• Writing for Real People (from PlainLanguage.com)
• Web Writing Guidelines for Content Contributors (Meet Content)
• I Don't Want to Read More or Click Here (by Karen Mardahl)
• WCAG 2.0 for writers (SlideShare)

Techniques from WCAG 2.0

• G153: Making the text easier to read
• G86: Providing a text summary that requires reading ability less advanced than the upper secondary education level
• G130: Providing descriptive headings

Learning How to Test with Screen Readers

Although accessibility checklists are important, testing for web accessibility requires more than that. Some testing requires tasks which can only be done by a human including testing with a screen reader. It's best for a regular screen reader user to do the testing, but it's also good for a developer or designer to do at least the basics (there was a big discussion on this last fall in Should Sighted Developers Use Screenreaders To Test Accessibility?).

Here are some good articles to help learn how to use a screen reader to test for web accessibility:

• Using NVDA to Evaluate Web Accessibility (WebAIM)
• Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility (WebAIM)
• Setting up a screen reader test environment (by Henny Swan)
• Easy Accessibility Testing with the NVDA Screen Reader (Yahoo)
• How to use NVDA and Firefox to test your web pages for accessibility (Marco Zehe)
• Establishing a screen reader test plan (by Henny Swan on spotlessinteractive.com)
• Testing with Screen Readers: Questions and Answers (WebAIM)

Podcast #90: Articles, Events, Jobs, Twitter

Dennis and Ross discuss a variety of topics including recent articles, conferences and events, some accessibility-related job openings and resources, and updates on Accessible Twitter.

Download Web Axe Episode 90 (Articles, Events, Twitter)

Transcript of podcast 90

What's New

• About Ross' book deal!
• TweetList now free with ad support (accessible Twitter iPhone app).
• Fixing Alt
• 6 Reasons Bacon Is Better Than True Love
• How one decides to build a web browser

Articles

• How blind people see the Internet (MSNBC)
• Font Resizing Widgets: A Help or A Hindrance to Accessibility? (Glenda Watson Hyatt)
• Accessible Tabs – Part 2: The Solution (Nomensa)
• Keyboard Accessibility For Web Applications (Jonathon Snook) Todd Kloots, Yahoo Mail
• 21 PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0 (W3C)
• Web Accessibility: 10 Common Developer Mistakes by Joe Dolson

Conferences & Events

• CSUN Wrapup: Tweetup, student contest, Web Axe Post-CSUN Resources.
• John Slatin AccessU Accessibility Conference from Knowbility, May 17-19, Austin, Texas.
• Free presentation on Evolving Standards in Accessibility, Wed, May 25, London, UK. A half-day event covering the new British Standard for web accessibility, BSI8878, and the international accessibility standards from W3C, together with practical examples.
• jQuery ARIA Hackathon, July 11-12, Toronto.
• Future Midwest - April 28th - 29th (UX focus).
• Next year no overlap between CSUN and SXSW.

Jobs

• Deque Systems seeks 508 Tester on-site in Washington, DC (on WebAIM)
• WCAG2 Content & Compliance Officers (Australia)
• Dartmouth college seeks an Experience Designer - Accessibility in Boston (on LinkedIn)
• AbilityNet seeks Head of Accessibility and Accessibility/Usability Consultants (London, UK)
• More:
• New! AT Work job board for accessibility and assistive tech specialties.
• On Twitter, follow @Accessible_jobs and @a11yjobs.

Accessible Twitter Updates

• Accessible Twitter over 2 years old!
• Accessible Twitter receives AFB 2011 Access Award.. Other recipients are CBS, Lexmark and Walt Disney Parks & Resorts.
• Speech from AFB Awards

Using Ofertas ADSL for the best connection

Do you ever use the internet? all people are familiar with the internet. This can be controlled in a variety of concepts. You can use some of the best connections for maximum results. you can use ofertas ADSL for the connection. You'll never watch live TV with the best Internet connection. you should get a lot of information about it. Everything can be controlled by way of maximum. You do not have to worry about with some balance. Internet is one of the growing technology in this day and age. Therefore, I hope you can use this opportunity well because the chance will not come a second time.

Many things can be in the know even though it feels difficult to get. You can use ofertas ADSL for best connection. you'll often disrupted by bad TV picture. Therefore, you can watch many TV shows online. You will get many advantages with this the best connection. You can use this solution for the convenience of watching TV. You do not need to do bad things and so forth. You can take the chance that this could be done to develop a good cause. You can perform a variety of ways to indicate something that maximum. Everything can be controlled properly. you can get the best broadband network. therefore, you should use this service very well. you can install the internet in the house moved at broadband quality.

--

Fixing Alt - How one decides to build a web browser

This is the next blog in a series titled "Fixing Alt" where I supply alternative text to graphics on the web that badly need it.

This time it's How one decides to build a web browser, an hilarious comic which makes fun of Google and takes a (deserved?) low blow at Internet Explorer 6. So here is the text version (a definition list seemed to work semantically):

How one decides to build a web browser

Simple illustration with three panels, one for each browser.

Mozilla Firefox

Two people at a computer. One with a pensive look on his face, and the other says "Let's create a better Internet experience that everyone can use."

Google Chrome

Three people at a computer. One says "How else can Google control the Internet?" Another says "Let's make a web browser!"

Microsoft IE6

A man squatting over a laptop computer with his pants half down and saying "I'm ganna shit on the keyboard and see what happens."

AccessibleTech Website Analysis; No Joke

Saw a new Google ad on Web Axe this past Friday, April 1, that I couldn't help but click. After viewing the ad's website briefly, I had slim hopes that this was yet another techie April Fool's joke. Unfortunately, it was not. The website for AccessbileTech has many accessibility and usability issues when claiming to be accessibility experts/consultants. Let's examine:

• Skip nav link is visually unreadable (due to lack of contrast from background image).
• Text links unclear; too many link styles; blue bullets appear to be links but not.
• Headings not marked up as headings, such as Products & Services.
• Mismatch in alternative text in News & Events heading image; alt says "events".
• The ordered list on the home page and on the Accessibility Goal page are not marked up as an ordered list; uses spans and break tags, yuck!
• Hover states on links don't have focus states.
• Home tab is highlighted on all pages. Confusing, especially for those with cognitive disabilities.
• Table layout, 5 levels of nesting. Nuff said.
• No language declared (in HTML element).
• CSS used for emphasis rather than markup (Company page) ".style1 {font-weight: bold}"
• Small decorative image (203 by 141 pixels) on About Us page is almost 40K in file size! Needs web optimization to make smaller.
• On home page News & Events section, audio and arrow icons are confusing, they appear to have functionality, but there's no behavior attached to them.
• Simple layout is fixed width; making flexible width would accommodate different screen resolutions.

Not funny. Agree?

Hosting Problems

If you haven't noticed yet, the web hosting account which stores all of Web Axe's CSS, images, and podcasts (EchoEchoPlus) has been down all day today and is still down. The CSS and most images have been restored by me a few minutes ago by moving them to another host. The podcasts are still unavailable. Big apologies for the inconvenience. And believe me, I'm more bummed (and pissed off) than you. -Dennis

Update:

Two days later, services restored. Fully functional now.

A VPS hosting for Compromising Shared and Dedicated Hosting Needs

There are many web masters who intend to make their website not just another site on the internet but forward than that. Thus, the devices to make that happen should be able to provide them the right feature to expand the website to a better level. Shared domain web hosting is a type of web hosting that accommodates ‘minimal’ needs of web hosting because it can only provide limited traffic and data storage. While the dedicated one is just too expensive for beginner who are not intending to do business on the internet. The compromising answer is getting a VPS web hosting.



VPS is also known as Virtual Private Server which is supported by a high technology that divides a single physical server in to multiple virtual servers. The division creates a number of isolated environments which can perform many individual functions just like individual machine. This way, without having to pay more, you will be able to enjoy more facilities to develop your website. There are
best VPS hosting reviews that you can look at to know what is the best VPS hosting that can give you what you want.

Post-CSUN Resources

My last podcast previewed CSUN (The 26th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference), which happened last week. It was a great success. Fortunately a few folks have written great summaries of the event, listed below. Also, I've posted some CSUN11 photos on Flickr.

Here are two excellent resources for session presentations and more:

• The Great Big List from the 2011 CSUN Conference by Curb Cut.
• CSUN 2011 Web highlights by Leonie Watson.

Some notable blog posts:

• My March Madness - John Foliot.
• CSUN 2011, jour 1 : compte-rendu des conférences (English translation) - Denis Boudreau.
• Notes on #csun11 - Joshue O Connor
• Lightening Talk on Accessible Twitter updates at CSUN Tweetup - Dennis Lembree.

Suggested presentations relating to web accessibility are:

• Accessibility of HTML5 and Rich Internet Applications (WebAIM and The Paciello Group): ARIA Morning Session | ARIA Afternoon Session
• Accessible HTML5 media players, captions, audio description and search (PDF) - Terrill Thompson.
• Making rich internet applications accessible through jQuery (PDF) - Chris Blouch (AOL) and Hans Hillen (TPG)
• Using the barcamp/unconference format - Jennison Asuncion, James Timony and John F Croston.
• Improving Web Accessibility for the Elderly - Roger Hudson.
• DISTCHA: an attempt to kill CAPTCHA - Vincent François & Samuel Sirois.

Any more to add? Please comment!

Additions

• Successfully Integrating Accessibility in your Organization's Web Development Lifecycle - Denis Boudreau.
• Role of engineering best practices to create an inclusive web - Srinivasu Chakravarthula.
• CSUN: A recap from the week in San Diego - Technology for the Blind.
• CSUN 26th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, San Diego - Virtual Imaginings.
• IBM CSUN 2011 presentations

Speech from AFB Awards

Last month, Web Axe announced that Accessible Twitter was presented with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) 2011 Access Award. I attended the AFB Awards Ceremony last Friday at the JLTLI conference in downtown Seattle, Washington (Web Axe is sister site of Accessible Twitter). Afterwards, I had the honor of dining with the President and CEO of the AFB, Carl R. Augusto. I met several other AFB folks who were all wonderful people.

Here is the acceptance speech I prepared (and closely presented) at the award ceremony.

Thank you so much. I'm deeply honored and very thankful to be here.

A little over 2 years ago, which like 20 years in web technology time, Gez Lemon, on his blog Juicy Studio, wrote about a clever script he developed to correct Twitter.com's lack of keyboard focus.

I wrote a tweet about it and about another accessibility issue on the Twitter website, and a friend and former co-worker Doug Diego suggested I use the Twitter API and create an accessible version. My wife and kids were away visiting family at the time, so it was a great opportunity. And that's what I did. Just a few weeks later, "Accessible Twitter" was born.

I emailed a few peers about the site, and before I even officially announced it, people were offering suggestions, blogging about it, and even better, offering to test it for me.

This anecdote illustrates the power and the cohesiveness of Twitter, and even more so, the accessibility community. And it's a worldwide community. It's the people themselves who make it work, and strive to make it work better. Some of those people are:

• Matthew Smith (a.k.a. Smiffy) from Australia, who had suggestions for the user interface and helped with coding issues.
• Steve Faulkner, outside of London, for special code called ARIA which help screen readers interpret certain kinds of content.
• Kerstin Probiesch and Per Busch, both of Germany, who helped with early testing.
• Jennison Asuncion, of Toronto, Canada, who continues to be one of the most active users of Accessible Twitter; he provides feedback and helps promote the application.
• Everett Zufelt, who's also from Canada, with recently suggesting a new method for hiding special content for screen reader users.

So the takeaway here is that the Accessible Twitter project, like many others on the web and elsewhere, is a collaborative effort. My name and my company's name, Web Overhauls, are listed as the authors of the application, but in reality, it's the community that makes it all happen. Thank you.

Accessible YouTube & HTML5 Video

YouTube is obviously a great site for video, but not for everyone as it contains various accessibility challenges, particularly keyboard access. The use of Flash itself to play the video can be problematic, not be mention requiring support of the Flash plugin. HTML5 is a pending solution (HTML5 video is available on YouTube as a "trial"), but in its infancy, HTML5 video has accessibility issues that still need to be resolved, as does HTML5 itself.

In the meantime, here are a few alternatives to the YouTube website which provide more accessible controls and a much cleaner interface.

• Easy YouTube - by Chris Heilmann.
• Your Tube - Accessible YouTube - by Dylan Neale, in joint venture with Povidi.com.
• Accessible Interface to YouTube - by Tom at majestyc.net.

If you still don't have what you need or want, why not build your own interface?! The following are tools and resources for building more accessible YouTube videos including captioning:

• Accessible YouTube player controls
• Keyboard controlled YouTube player
• Captioning YouTube Video and Providing Accessible Controls
• Easy YouTube caption creator (Accessify)
• Captions and Subtitles (YouTube)

Further reading:

• Accessible HTML5 Video with JW Player as Fallback
• YouTube and the Push to Improve Tech for Disabled
• Flash and the HTML5 video tag (YouTube API Blog)
• 10 YouYube URL Tricks You Should Know

If you developed an accessible YouTube solution, or know of another not listed, please leave a comment.

Why Alexa Ranking Sucks!!

Why I do not care much about Alexa rankings

The very thought of installing a spy in my machine to track my behavior is repelling enough for me. And a system that depends upon such spies can never be trustworthy, because there are millions out there, who thinks like me, and who would never allow any intrusion in their privacy zone. And how come you ignore the

behavior of such a huge community! Its more like the opinion polls conducted by various news channels before the elections here in India, and predictably every time they come out with a bizarre forecast, that ultimately never happens. This “type” can only work, if the samples taken to measure the effect are diverse enough and really big in volumes. In most of the cases this never happens and we get a faulty and biased result. I hate this man! How come you put on such a fucked up score sheet to calibrate ones quality?

Toolbar dependency

Alexa, solely depends upon the data fetched by its toolbars, installed in the machines of the users across the world. So, that means, if you have never heard of Alexa, and don’t have its toolbar installed in your browser, you are not qualified to cast your vote for a site. Fuck man!

A simple strolling will give you an idea, that all the technology related sites, tech blogs, web services sites, social networking sites and all are ranking really high in terms of Alexa. Reason is simple, Its young and tech savvy people, who install this toolbar the most in their browsers. So its easier for the tech and new age sites to get higher Alexa ranks, compared to others.

Feeble consideration of linkings

Though the speculation is there, but still no one can say with conviction, that Alexa considers, links while ranking a site. Even if they do it, I’m more than sure that the contribution is really feeble and amateurish, compared to that of Google.

Great presentation..thats it!

One thing that alexa does very well, is the way they represent their data. It makes people think that its really awesome and very analytical, which is not true. The presentation is great, but the data are not. It simply lacks the volume that is required for an authentic survey. So guys, beware, please do not come to a conclusion based on those incomplete data, better make a survey yourself or you can use a pretty cool tool named “Google”.

Social branding optimization: Optimizing a brand’s value through social media

Even 2 years back social branding as a profession was so naïve that, nobody would give it a serious look, and a few social branding experts, who were into it, used to be considered as just a bunch of net freaks. Well how quickly times changed! All the brands (big, mid or small) are now flocking to these “net freaks” to design their online branding strategies and to enhance online user engagement, which has become so much important for a brand these days.

These days, no matter whatever the vertical of a business is, it should have an online social presence, because if you are not engaging your customers online, then someone else will eat your part of the cake and you could be left starving. So irrespective of the nature of the business, everyone is taking the social media branding plunge.

Now the question is if everyone is getting conscious about the social media presence of their brands, then why the success v failure ratio is so low? Different social branding experts have come out with different reasons and opinions; some social branding experts have put the blame upon faulty strategy where some social branding experts are blaming the selection of inefficient Internet marketing companies for the job. Yes, you cannot disagree with the validity of these two points, but I dug down a bit deeper to find out the exact root of the problem.

Let us put a line through the stack of the brands and divide them into two simple stacks.

Stack 1:

Business Size: Large

Business age: Old

Offline Presence: Strong

In this stack we have brands that are real big; they have gained this reputation well before even the dotcom boom. Brands like, Pepsi, Coca cola, Nike and all come in this stack. So well before the social media came into the picture, the people already knew about them. And all that they did was just propagating their offline presence to online, and strengthening their overall brand value through enhanced customer engagement. So for them creating an online buzz was relatively easy. For them it was the product that came first, then came the social media branding. It still worked for them, because they already had a strong “Offline social presence”.

Though it’s an entirely personal take, but still I DO NOT find the Pepsi logo good enough. Now had Pepsi been a new product trying to penetrate the market and popularize its logo through Social media branding, I don’t think it would have been successful in its effort. In that case people wouldn’t accept that DUMB logo and the overall product could have been a disaster. But since we have been seeing this logo for ages now, we somehow have got used to it and in turn started liking it as well.

Now what I’m trying so say here is, for an already famous product or service, designing a social branding is comparatively easy and this strategy cannot be copy-pasted for an unknown or fresh product or service.

Stack 2:

Business Size: Any

Business age: Zero

Offline Presence: Zero

The real challenge comes in while doing social branding for a fresh product or service. Nobody knows about your product or service, so your social branding strategy should be strong and convincing enough to draw public attention.

And for this, the most important feature that a social branding strategy should have is, flexibility. A non-flexible social branding strategy can never survive in the longer run. Because with an ever evolving market, your business plan should also pass through a continuous evolution curve to stay with the stream.

Now several times, I’ve seen that a product, in spite of having very strong features, do not see the dawn of success. There’s a difference a good product and a popular product. A popular product must have something good in it, but a good product does not necessarily have to be popular. And many products get caught in this thin line of separation.

So what I believe is, it’s always better to build a product keeping its social branding and other online marketing aspect in mind, rather than building a product first and then worrying about its social branding and online marketing. Some may raise a concern with this theory as; in some cases this approach might make a developer compromise with his creativity. But at the end of the day, if you are building a product for people, then you must also consider their thoughts as well while building the product.

Most of the people do not do this and thus even before the social branding or online marketing campaign for the product gets started; its black fate gets sealed.

Fixing Alt - 6 Reasons Bacon Is Better Than True Love

This is the next blog in a series titled "Fixing Alt" where I supply alternative text to graphics on the web that badly need it (cartoons and infographics).

The Oatmeal has great comics, but badly needs alt text. One of their most successful comics is 6 Reasons Bacon Is Better Than True Love (you can even order a poster) and deserves to be enjoyed by everyone! So here is the text version:

6 Reasons Bacon Is Better Than True Love

Illustration: 3 strips of bacon, greater-than symbol, heart.

1. True love happens once in a lifetime. Bacon can happen seven times a day, if you want it to. Illustration: Man, drooling, with bacon in hand says "You are my everything".
2. Bacon you can keep in the fridge. True love you cannot. Illustration: Woman trying to get out of fridge says "Oh God oh God, let me out of here! Man holds door back with heart in a thought cloud.
3. Love is fleeting, but bacon stays in your arteries for all eternity. Illustration: Man laying down with bacon strips falling in his open mouth.
4. It will always be there for you. Illustration: Man with tears in eyes says "nobody loves me except my bacon".
5. Bacon won't divorce you over a little misunderstanding. Illustration: Wife gasping; man in skimpy underwear with goat on leash and 2 nearly naked women says "This isn't what it looks like. These aren't hookers, they are my 'consultants'".
6. Bacon does not nag or complain. Illustration: Woman says "You've been sitting in that goddamn chair for 8 weeks, go mow the lawn! Soiled man in lounge chair says "Shut up, more bacon please".

Google social search is getting bolder

Google has made their social search or real time search bolder by directly including the social search results in to their SERPs. By this they have confirmed that they have now seriously started to consider Twitter and other real time social medias for their regular search results and not just for the results that you get to see after using Social filter. They are now mixing the article or blog results that are shared using the services like Twitter or Google Buzz with the regular organic search results. For an example while searching “A Beginner’s Guide To A/B Testing”, I came across a Twitter result that Smashing Magazine shared with their Twitter account, and since I am connected to their Twitter account, I was dished out their twitter result along with other regular search results by Google.

And at present, we can see only Twitter and Google Buzz results for the search queries, so no facebook invasion as of now. But if the things go this way, we may soon start seeing the long awaited facebook public profile results in SERPs. That might change the total social search approach for the search engines. And we might not have to wait long for start seeing a complete mix of real time results and traditional results for relevant search queries. That only means that Google is going to give more and more importance to the freshness of a content. The fresher the content and the stronger presence it has in the social media channels, the better the chances will get for it to rank for a relevant search query. So no matter how good a content you have in your web page, you must circulate it in the social media to make it rank in the search engines.

Disney & Other Recent Web Accessibility Lawsuits

It's unfortunate that soon after Disney Parks & Resorts receives an award for accessibility from the AFB, an announcement is made for a Class Action Lawsuit Against Disney Alleges Inaccessible Websites. The lawsuit cites Disney's failure to accommodate blind persons in violation of ADA. Read more in this article by Nic Steenhout (@vavroom): Lawsuit Against Disney For Lack Of Accessibility.

Here are more headlines involving law and accessibility over the last few months, mostly web accessibility:

• Delta hit with $2M DOT disabilities violations fine (February 2011)
• Scarborough woman wins accessibility challenge against federal government (December 2010)
• Accessibility Lawsuit Filed Against JetBlue Airways - Law Office of Lainey Feingold (October 2010)
• Court orders Ottawa to make websites accessible to blind - The Globe and Mail (November 2010)
• NFB files complaints against 9 law schools for inaccessible web site (May 2010)
• Unfriendly Skies? Blind Passengers Sue United : NPR (October 2010)
• NFB files complaint against Penn State University for accessibility problems (November 2010)
• Blind MBA to have her day in court over inaccessible government websites (September 2010)
• Blind Students Sue Law Schools Over Online Applications - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 2010)

Accessible Twitter Receives AFB 2011 Access Award

Congratulations to Accessible Twitter which has been honored with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) 2011 Access Award. Other recipients are CBS, Lexmark, and Walt Disney Parks & Resorts.

An Access Awards Ceremony will be held Friday, March 11, at the 2011 Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute (JLTLI) conference in downtown Seattle, Washington.

Accessible Twitter is a web application which serves as an alternative to the Twitter.com website. It is designed to be easier to use and is optimized for disabled users. In addition to all modern desktop browsers (and IE 6), Accessible Twitter runs on virtually any user-agent such as Lynx (text browser), screen readers, the Kindle, Braille displays, and web-enabled mobile devices.

Music About Web Accessibility!

Here's a great list of music about web accessibility! Includes the premiere of the full Web Axe theme song.

• WCAG 2.0 Theme Song by David MacDonald (YouTube).
• Assistive Technology Boogie - fun, and it's accessible Flash! (direct Flash link)
• "Man With Small F" (The Inaccessible PDF Song) by Terrill Thompson. Listen at end of Web Axe Podcast 77 (Interview with Terrill Thompson) or from Terrill's album Flavors.
• inaccessible song by Daniel Davis.
• Listen to the Web Axe theme song! (MP3) composed by my good friend Jeff Ensign.

Anyone have a song to add?!

Podcast #89: CSUN 2011 Preview

Dennis and special guests Jennison Asuncion (@Jennison) and Jared Smith (@jared_w_smith) discuss the upcoming CSUN conference in San Diego, California, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, March 14-19, 2011. The official title and website is: 26th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference.

NOTE: Apologies for the poor quality. (But the content is outstanding!)

Download Web Axe Episode 89 (CSUN 2011 Preview)

Transcript of podcast 89

Sponsor:
Project:Possibility is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating open source software that benefits the disabilities community, and educating students on accessibility and universal design concepts. This is accomplished with the SS12 Code for a Cause: an opportunity for students to make a profound difference by developing innovative, empowering projects for persons with disabilities, as well as the chance to work with industry professionals.

Jennison presenting:

• Building IT Accessibility Awareness and Community Using the Barcamp/Unconference Format. Wednesday, 9:20.
• Do We Need to Change the Web Accessibility Game Plan? Panel with John Foliot, Sandi Wassmer, and Jennison. Thursday, 3:10.

Jared presenting:

• HTML5/ARIA pre-conference workshop w/ Steven Faulkner and Hans Hillen of TPG. All day Tuesday.
• Screen Reader Web Accessibility Face-off. Wednesday, 3:10.
• Do We Need to Change the Web Accessibility Game Plan? Panel with John Foliot, Sandi Wassmer, and Jennison. Thursday, 3:10.
• WebAIM's Screen Reader User Surveys: Data and Trends. Friday, 8am.
• Preview of WAVE 5 on Friday, 10:40.

More info:

• There is a (now annual) CSUN Tweet-up Thursday at 6pm. Lightning talks, food, and fun! (Contact Jared if you want to sponsor.)
• The Twitter hash tag for the event is "#CSUN11".
• Exhibit Hall-Only entry will be free once again.
• CSUN On Lanyrd
• CSUN11 on LinkedIn
• CSUN11 on Facebook
• Saturday morning: Dennis on a panel of judges (Sat morn) for the SS12 Code-A-Thon finals!
• Register for CSUN11

About Cognitive Accessibility & Related Articles

Cognitive accessibility is closely tied to WCAG 2.0 Principle 3: Understandable which states that "Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable". (WebAIM does a great job in explaining what Cognitive Disabilities actually are.) The guidelines under this principle are:

• Guideline 3.1 Readable: Make text content readable and understandable.
• Guideline 3.2 Predictable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.
• Guideline 3.3 Input Assistance: Help users avoid and correct mistakes.

There's been an increase in articles about cognitive accessibility which is great because it's the most difficult and typically least discussed. Here's a great list of them below. Feel free to comment with any that were missed.

• Cognitive Accessibility Online (Yahoo)
• Cognitive Disabilities and the Web: Where Accessibility and Usability Meet?
• Cognitive accessibility testing
• Supporting comprehension for everyone
• Cognitive Web Accessibility Assessment: First Attempt, Part 1 of 3 (Clear Helper)
• 10 Organizations That Promote Cognitive Web Accessibility (Clear Helper)
• Plain Language dot gov
• How the cloud can improve the lives of those with cognitive disabilities
• Web accessibility for cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties (Dev.Opera)

Fixing Alt - Social Media Definition by Peeing

Social Media Definition by Peeing by Mindjumpers is a pretty funny cartoon. Like most, unfortunately, there is no alternative text provided. So in the second of the "Fixing Alt" series, I've taken the liberty of providing it. The cartoon is one large graphic with multiple images. Here's the alt text, with each image in a bullet point:

• Man in Twitter t-shirt, holding crotch, face strained: "I need to pee."
• Man in Facebook t-shirt, hands on hips, pee on floor: "I just peed."
• Man in Foursquare t-shirt pointing at pee on floor: "I'm peeing here."
• Man in Slideshare t-shirt, arms raised: "Why I am Great at Peeing."
• Man in Delicious t-shirt with arms crossed: "I collect my pee."
• Man in YouTube t-shirt, holding and pointing to cup of pee: "Watch this pee!"
• Man in LinkedIn t-shirt peeing into cup on floor: "I pee well."
• Man in Digg t-shirt, kneeling to 4 cups of pee: "I digg my pee."
• Man2 in StumbleUpon t-shirt, man slipping in his pee: "Ups! Discover my pee"
• Man in Quora t-shirt, scratching chin: "Why am I peeing?"
• Man in Wikipedia t-shirt, man2 in Wiki t-shirt, woman with pants off, all with arms raised: "Together, we pee-dia!"

Created by MindJumpers.com