There was one clear theme that ran through many of the talks at last week’s New Adventures in Web Design conference in Nottingham – that the future of web design lies in ‘Content out’: the idea that everything starts with the content, and it dictates how you approach every aspect of the design, rather than creating a design into which the content gets poured later. Amen, I say. But there’s just one problem. Most of us only get the damned stuff at the last minute. Continue reading ‘Content out: a new adventure in web design’ »
Last August I wrote a piece about using CSS to overcome a common problem for screen reader users with web forms – where help text associated with a field isn’t announced by screen readers when in Forms Mode. The CSS solution was convoluted and flaky in IE6. Fortunately there’s a better way: use aria-describedby. Continue reading ‘Using aria-describedby for form help text’ »
For screen reader users it can be both disorienting and frustrating if your form validation reloads the page when there’s an error on a field, and little (or no) feedback is given to the unsighted user. There’s many things you can do to make your error handling friendlier to screen reader users, but the easiest is probably also one of the most effective – add a “skip to errors” link right in front of your “skip navigation” link. Continue reading ‘Form validation & screen readers’ »
I’ve heard it said that the losers from Microsoft having to provide a choice of browsers on new installations of Windows 7 in Europe will most likely be Microsoft themselves. I’m not convinced. I think there’s a basic reason why Microsoft’s browser will continue to have significant market share – it’s browser’s name. Continue reading ‘Browser wars: it’s all in the name’ »
I’m a big fan of the BBC Glow javascript library (as I may have mentioned earlier), so it’s good news that Version 2.0 of the library is available as an Alpha release (the current stable download is version 1.7.2), promising enhanced features, improved performance and even better accessibility. Continue reading ‘BBC Glow 2.0’ »
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