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

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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”.