Wild Web Wrestling: Standardzilla vs Tabelella
Moderator: Glenda Sims Sr Systems Analyst, University of Texas at Austin
Giorgio Brajnik Asst Prof, University of Udine
Liz Danzico Dir of Experience Strategy, AIGA
Steve Guengerich Knowbility - Austin Usability
Bob Regan Adobe
Glenda Sims Sr Systems Analyst, University of Texas at Austin
What is accessibiliy?
Regan - do we comform to standards?, www.w3c.org ex of meeting standards, JK Rollings site test for usibility, daughter
likes www.starfall.com excludes blind ect but accessible for kids with learning dsiabilities.
Brajnik - is accessibile if allows same experience for people with disabilities as with non-disabled. Does not have to have
same level of usability,
What id usability?
Danzico - usability is focused on the bottom line, cost and time vs returns, Steve Crug says just means something works
well, someone with avg or lower than avg can use it, Nielsen - not single one dimentional useit.com
Brajnik - whenyou design you think of use ease of site but testing have to think of parameters of user, productive efficient
safe and satisfactory in certain conditions and aspects. who are users, what they know and motivation and how they work,
mobile, laptop, sitting on floor, then can talk about usability, parameter related to users performance.
Testing:
Sims: SXSW: is a good site to start with. first thing is to look at some pre planning processes.
Danzico: how we might put things together,
Brajnik: user centered design is a good start, user should be involved in all stages, early prototyping and
testing/validation as early as possible.
Sims: ran one of the big tools against SXSW. a tool called Lift http://www.usablenet.com/ , shows all that is qrong and have
to prioritize what to fix. Ran SXSW through with 508 standards through one level. Web exact http://webxact.watchfire.com/ or
the Wave http://www.wave.webaim.org/index.jsp, Alt text for arrows on pages are meaningless and should be "" because not
really important in structure of page. Site over all is good. Another tool Wemxm.
Who's first?
Analyzed severalsite submitted by the audience, rollergirls austin, www.superviva.com,
Case study at UofT Austin: redesign of uni occured three years ago. As of Jan 15 still in old way, tables, JS rollovers etc.
but site was already accessible in many ways. Launched Jan 16 with same information archeticture, 30 sec adaptation time,
all css rollovers etc. kept old and new
Usability + Accessibility + Standards
Problems with visual design
html 31.54 20.24-36%
-71% in images
-500% in tables 5 to 0
fonts fixed to scalable
Macromedia Case Study:
Wanted to make a way for users to contact him (Regan) about accessibility, Added an accessibilty link at bottom with hidden
one at top that is read first by readers, had some excerps from emails received concerning problems for those who are
disabled to do what they need to have done on the site.
Brajnik : Target site showed it through a proxy showing text only, site completely inaccessible. Quick acc test is to take
out the mouse and try to navigate the site with just the keyboard.
Sims: glendathegood.com her blog :
1. Test with my browser - turn off images, don’t use the mouse, turn off speakers, increase font size, change window
size.
2. Test with toolbars - (Web Developer Extension & Web Accessibility Toolbar) turn off CSS, turn off Javascript, set to
Greyscale, display structure (headings, lists…)
3. Run online accessibility tests on representative pages
use more than one tool, example: WebXact & Wave
4. Listen to a few pages - JAWS or HomePage Reader
5. Run a sitewide accessibility report - LIFT or WebXM
6. Hands on accessibility testing with Users who have disabilities
Regan - as an independant web designer how do you find users to test pages? resources out there, participating on listd of
accessibility, a lot out there to give advice, a lot of power users tend to be not be avg screen reader, best to contact
local org of blind etc
Sims: doesn't test every single page but definately on front door and important pages.
Danzico: challenges to consider all things and details, arrows etc and to think about informal usability testing
Brajnik - if involved in team then to learn to be fluent in 3 land usability, tech dev and manager what is more imp what is
less imp etc
Regan - provide a way for some one is having problem to contact
Sims - do you have a checklist so you remember to do all from beginning, Kelly Goto's book Web Redesign 2.0
Usability, accesibility standards
what kind of disabilities
blind, low vision, mobility (mouse problems) deafness and hard of hearing
Cognitive, equal to inattentive user
Knowbility has reccomendations for people that need help to impliment
Guild of accessible web designers
Flash can be accessible such as JK Rollings site
Flash can now be readable by Google
Didn't write notes for the second morning panel, Making the Most of Maps. Wasn't the greatest panel should have gone to Women's Visibility on the Web. Oh well, just too much going on.
Went to half of the keynote speech with Jason Kottke and Heather Armstrong, basically just an open talkbetween the two about their experiences blogging. Left to go the the second half to demystifying the mobile web. A bit more interesting.
Walked around the expo then came to Making web 2.0 accessible late. Notes as follows:
Making web 2.0 accessible
Faruk Ates Owner CEO Web Kaizen Specialist, KuraFire Creations
Derek Featherstone Further Ahead
Shawn Henry Web Accessibility, W3C/WAI
James Craig Sr Design Tech, Frog Design Inc
Matt Vande Voorde Publisher, Accessible Content Magazine
Came late and stood for a bit so missed writing down the first part.
WCAG 2.o
WCAG?, ATAG? UAAG? WTF?
Accessibilty Content Magazine
What is web 2.0? Things like mashups, AJAX, dashboards
Forget the guidelines, test with a real person to whom the site might affect.
Involving users with disabilities in testing article on website, guidlines are difficult to understand.
Robust testing really helps.
Incorporating accessibility in user centered design.
Kepp html pristine use things the way they are supposed to be
If using javascript need to change source attribute and alt atribute, testing is a huge thing,
Things trying to do in AJAX can be done better in Flash, A lot can do with flash, Macromedia/Adobia has spent time/money to make flash more accessible. Tools are not in AJAX (yet). Not known to most who use flash that it can be accessible.
People define accessible flash with using a screen reader but other issues are there.
Need to make accessiblity cool.
Nobility booth has a FLASH game that is acccessible
IBM donated 3 programmers and 50,000 line of code to Firefox to make it accessible
How to make the most of maps
Cheng - Google map but neutral
Cosulich- community walk
Hyett - wayfareing
Murphy - dev of mehere ui eng at google
Catt - geotagging with flickr
Cosulich - started wotk before the api was released, CW let people map out there life, www.communitywalk.com, did demo on using the software mapping SXSW and can add photos and other interactive thigs, videos, panoramic, can look at other maps that have bebn made and explore world easily.
Hyett - wayfaring.com, make very nice maps in a dead simple manner
Murphy - mehere, add gps functionality to a browser, http://mehere.glenmurphy.com/ http://www.placeopedia.com/ - connecting wikipedia articles with their locations
Catt - was working with geobloggers but now works with yahoo
Cheng - how to ga about choosing
Catt - MS virtual eath works well esp if using IE and big dev team but other end of scale Google maps is easy and fast to use but take you so far. Yahoo is good middle ground.but yahoo uses flash.
Cos - only used google and changes in API so have risk of breaking, is a downfall or glass ceiling. Haven't ran into too many limitations of glass ceiling
Trying something new, making noted during the panel and then posting it unedited.
So, let's try with the first: How/Why to Podcast an Event
Podcasting an event
How, Why, making the most
blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher
How - tecnical and pratical
What went wrong
Gotchs - non obvious things you only learn from experience
Williams - always have a backup,who are you working with, most sound eng don't have knowledge of podcasting,communicate well
with a/v teamAllsop - exp with things just not working,
May - audio highjack pro, as long as not clipping or levels too low any thing can be fixed in post production, inportant to
get what your looking for, min inv that you ar ecompfortable with to get whT YOU WANT
Sherrin - lost 3 out of 15, dealing with disappoinment, used Garage band and laptop, only app running etc.
Williams - seekout podcasters for help or backup, don't let anyone go near the equipment,
What is "good enough"?
Allsop - file size issues, will have big files,
May - for music higher bit rate cuz of source material, for audio it's a scale thing, content is important thing, as long as it sounds good, low bit, etc is good enough, important i
Sherrin - 16 kbps good, don't be blase about file size, get smallest file you can possibly get, recorded at 192 but remixed at lower but may have caused problems with GB
Allsop - record best you can then remix
May - same analogy with camera , years from now those 640 x 480 won't cut it,can always go down but you can't go up
Williams - seek out host with high or unmetered bandwidth plan
Speakers POV
anything to be aware of
tricks and techniques
Allsop - speakers intellectual property
Meyer - have not yetbeen paid for podcast, imp aspect as speaker is live audience not the podcast, previous all you spoke to maybe backed by a blog, still concerned with live audience not who is going to listen later, is going to raise bar for speakers, boring speakers in room are going to be boring to a whole world, keynotes work but someone who uses lots of slides or a technical talk it loses out, played clip from web essentials, doing live wireframe but clip says notheing, in this situation then podcast my be a waste of bandwidth, technical show and everyone is doing code, wouldn't work, video cast would work
Allsop - some one did a sinc of slides with sound, videocast raises further issues with bandwidth but sincing could be wwork
Williams - more videocasting will come up or more interactive, sometimes get gaps in podcast when screen stuff is going on, need to inhance
Williams - provide visuals and links
Meyer - S5 slide slow solution, one speaker had used S5 and podcast and wanted to sinc, no time mechyet but indication of trend and where going, enhance podcast without doing full podcast
legals
pitfalls
workarounds and solutions
fair use - what is it?
May -
Williams - musicians are more aware of these issues, run gamet of opinions, one if you run music in your podcast I expect compensation
May - audio clips, ambiant music in background, sinc in video rights, CC on his show cuz he didn't have to go and ask for all the clearances, way to sidestep isues down the road,
Allsop - "fair use" some consider it like a get out of jail card
May - Get out of jail for a quarter of a million, not a license but a legel defence, even using three notes from a song is not fair use, key point is if you are making money from it,
Allsop - don't rely on fair use
Williams - research out rights organizations ASCAP harry fox
Williams - worse offence is I didn't know
Willams - issues aren't as problematic is not using music or pod safe music
Bandwidth
stories
issues
Benefits and concerns
why wouldn't you podcast something
whathave you gat to lose?
Allsop - didn't podcast An Event Apart
eric - had enough issues with adding podcast issues also a technical event so pocasting would be boring,who wants to listen to an hour of me typing? intellectual property how much canibalization of future registrations? As a speaker, if free podcasts no problem but if charging I want to see some of that, how much rotational capitol to
sherrin - worried at first cuz someone made a comment before Web Essentials that cuz of podcasts why did they spend the money and take the time off work, they were worried about attendance but all forgotten once event was happen cuz such good vibes, event is so much more than the podcast
Williams - Trying to create an asynchranous event, photos, blogging, podcast, videos, it's really about all the things, allready thousands of photos on SXSW on Flickr
why bither?
why have you done projects it in projects you have been involved in?
would you do it again and whyor why not?
May - last year stuff was put up and now you can see that no one ever attended SXSW again, much more than just the panels, He would pay money to access content from E-Tech, happens near same time as SXSW but can't do both
Allsop - same thing here is within same conference cuz of simultaneous panels
Williams - can get people to add addition content after and remix
Allsop - Web Esentials 320 attended 600,000 downloads liked the term asynchronous don't want to charge, likes the 20 - 30,000 who downloaded, relatively cheap to produce, may change tune next year if attendees go down,
williams - value for sponsors
Making the most of it
how shpuld you use your podcast?
can you sell this content
any ideas for genuinely developing direct income for an organization through podcasting?
Overwhelming!!!!!!
4 panels, 2 parties, 1 free book, 1 free t-shirt....
More and pictures to come soon....no really.....I promise......
After a couple of more gate changes and time changes the flight finally left Newark at about 9:30. Arrived in Austin at around 1:20am (12:20am Austin time). By the time I got to the hotel it was about 21 hours since I left my apartment.
I didn't think Austin, Texas was so far away from Montreal.....
Anyway, off to bed. Things have to be better from now on.
After being shifted to three differnt gates we are now being told that the flight from Columbus, Ohio (our plane) has not left yet but has a scheduled arrival of 8:21 and that our flight to Austin will now depart around 9. That means we won't pull into Austin until after midnight. ARRRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!
And like sheep we just keep shifting from gate to gate....
So I got in Newark just before 11. I certainly wasn;t going to sit around the Newark Airport for 8 so I took the bus into Manhatten. I have been coveting the Canon S2 IS camera for a couple of months and since they announced the S3 (not out til May) the prices in States have been dropping. Funnily enough the price has not really dropped in Canada. So it was on my agenda while in Austin to go and buy one. After a lot of research this week I found that CompUSA had the best prices and they had a store in Austin. I was going to take advantage of getting into Austin early on Friday and go and buy it but now that was all screwed up. But, the is a couple of CompUSA stores on Manhatten plus J&R World in lower Manhatten for accessories.
So I hopped on the bus to Manhatten. The airport bus actually stopped about 3 blocks from the midtown store. In the store they had a price of 399 but I said the online price was 349.99, the guy didn't even check, he just wrote it down. From there I went to J&R World and picked up on a good deal for a couple of 1 gig SD disks and some rechargeable batters and charger. They didn't have the Canon case cover though.
So I headed back to midtown to catch the bus back to the Airport. Boy, I tell you, lugging around a 15.4 inch laptop with a power supply, extra laptop battery and an external HD is hard work Add to the factor that it was warm today and although I was wearing my lighter weight gore tex jacket I was also wearing my fleece sweater so I was sweating like a pig.
Got back to the Airport around 4 and went through security. Checking the board I found out that the flight has been further delayed by an hour. Now it is leaving at 8:30 and won't arrive in Austin until just before midnight. AARRGGHHHH!!!!!
So I miss out on the pre opening parties, the early registration and a leasurely afternoon in Austin. I guess I'll just cut my loses and hit the sack as soon as I arrive.Registration in the morning doesn't open until 9:30 and the first panel is at 10. I'll have a leisurely morning instead.
Meanwhile, I am sitting in a bar at the Newark Airpot and still have another 3 hours to wait. Hmm, beer, computer, internet, what more could you want? ;-)
Off to an inauspicious start. Overslept my alarm waking up at 4:40am instead of 4am. Out the door by about 5:20. Hightailed to Sandra's, parked the car, transfered the luggage then made it over to the airport for about 5:45am. Finally found the Continental desk but she wouldn't process my ticket saying I was to late to clear customs, there was a 45 minute wait for that. I tried to tell her I knew someone at customs that would slip me through faster but she wouldn't budge. She rebooked me for a 9:30 flight to Newark but once there I would have an 8 hour wait and wouldn't arrive in Austin until 10:30pm! As I went through customs Susan wasn't there but neither was anyone else. It only took me about 5 minutes to pass through everything. I was at the departure desk of my original flight by 6:10 but because my luggage was already on it's way to the other flight they couldn't process me through. Damn.
So, I am hanging around Dorval airport until 9:30 then I guess when I get to Newark I will head into Manhatten for a few hours. Not going to hang at Newark Airport for 8 hours.
Worse thing is I am going to miss all the opening night parties. Oh well, being that it is my time of the month (started yesterday, good timing as usual) which caused me to oversleep at least maybe I'll just head to bed when I get in and be that much more refreshed in the motning for the start of the panels.
More later.....
Just a day and a half before I take off for SXSWi 2006 in Austin, Yexas. I'm really excited but also feeling a bit overwhelmed. There is so much going on. All the panels during the day is one thing but there is equally a ton of things going on in the evening.
I have printed out most of the panels I am interested in but in most case during any one panel session I have two or three panels that I am interested in. How does one make up their mind? Some will have be chosen by the people who are part of the panel. Many of the people I admire in the web world are going to be there and I wouldn't dream of missing their panels but even in this situation there are conflicts.
Then there is the evening meetups and parties. I hope I have the stamina to make it though it all.
Yesterday I received the 12 cell battery I ordered for my laptop so that should give me about 4 to 6 hours od battery power a day, hopefully enough to cover most of the panels. I will be blogging while I am there and posting photos.
Now I have to start figuring out what I want to pack. Where is my bathing suit bottoms anyways?