Archive for September, 2007

Let your readers be in control: Text resizing

Text resize buttons on a single website or enable your readers to take control and learn how to make all their internet viewing a better experience? Which would you prefer?

Later in this article, I’ll provide you with a helpful list of links to resources which can help you to understand more about accessibility.

As well as designing for the web, and supporting groups to make informed choices for their website ideas, I also help with accessibility audits too. Some people get ‘told and sold’ that their website is accessible because of a bit of code that shows buttons on their site to enable their viewers to resize their text on that site. In some cases, a few of these sites are highly in accessible in many other areas. I’m not totally against resize buttons, and have implemented it myself within reason on some sites where relevant and complimentary to compliant, accessible design. I also include helpful guides on how to resize text easily within your browser. I do feel though, that text resize buttons, don’t serve any real value and shouldn’t be needed. I also ensure that even without these controls, the site aims to be accessible from the users end, as best as possible, no matter what device, browser or platform they are using to access the information they are seeking.

Another common barrier to making a websites more usable for all can be the way that some accessibility statements on sites are written. They are conveyed in a manner which seem best read by other website developers, rather than for the understandable benefit to the end user who just wants to be able to access their site of choice without having to learn and understand a myriad of jargon about the way the site was designed.

One example of text resizing buttons acting in a complementing manner is on the Webcredible website. Not only do they have buttons, but also the site design is carefully constructed for maximum usability and accessibility, that’s what Webcredible do. Also they have a simple piece on their ‘about this site’ page which enables users to take control and learn how they can change their text viewing size for themselves. But sadly not all sites are that well designed.

One person that I know well, who has difficulties with many sites due to the font size, often finds that text resize buttons cause more of a barrier than a help. Especially when they are viewing sites with outgoing links. What use is making one site with text resizing facilities when that site then leads them to another website with a totally different ability to render text at an appropriate size?

So, shouldn’t we all be trying to help users to have a better experience by helping them to take control?
By improving your readers knowledge and understanding with help on suitable browsers (including Opera and Firefox) and showing them how to make their viewing easier, the internet can slowly but surely become a more inclusive place for all.

At Accessify, a website of tools and resources to help with accessibility for websites, Ian Lloyd has posted an article “Teach a Man to Fish (or How to Resize Text)”. It includes a visual guide video on text resizing. The video shows how you can take control by showing how easy this can be achieved in a variety of browsers. For those that cannot see the video there is a text transcript available too. The aim of the video and transcription is that it helps to provide a visual and audio way to complement “accessibility / how to use this site” statements on websites.

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Google Presentations

Google adds presentation tools to Google Docs. A great feature is that users can connect through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they’re watching. Could be a great tool for sharing learning.

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CommonCraft’s latest - Google Docs in Plain English

I’ve had several requests this week from local organisations wanting to understand more and use Google Docs to share documents (perfect for partnership and collaborative working!). CommonCraft have come up with a timely release to their ‘plain english’ series of quick and easy to understand videos to help people to learn and understand easily how to get up and running with technologies such as using RSS, Social Bookmarking and Wiki’s. I highly recommend them.

If you are a non-profit organisation, wanting to save time with tracking everyones changes when you email out a document out to a group for comment or sharing, you can learn here how to do it better and why Google Docs can help.

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Are we nearly there yet? Charities versus Technology

Several interesting articles appeared this week out there on the internet, all looking at different ways that non-profit organisations can harness or find difficulties with the power of technology and the internet to help communicate their cause. The first part of this article focusses more on social media and later, there’s some links to useful tools to help, and show that it’s not all just about web 2.0.

In Is the Web still a Windfall for Non-profits?, Beth Kanter highlighted Read/WriteWeb’s featured week of articles for non-profits on the web with their article asking about how charities and clubs and other organisations are using the web. Google Maps, Flickr, Delicious bookmark sharing all appear in the many tools available that many organisations use to help share and connect with others.
If you are from an organisation, I’d also love to hear how you use web orientated tools that help benefit your work.

Over on Beth’s Blog again, Beth reported about the Overbrook Foundation (a grant giving organisation in America) which released a report on Web 2.0 and nonprofit adoption “Web 2.0 Assessment of The Overbrook Foundation’s Human Rights Grantees”. The full report and information on how they surveyed their grantees can be downloaded from their website. It makes for realistic reading of where groups are with technology.

I found this really refreshing that a grant funder was looking into the impact of organisations using the internet and finding ways to use web 2.0 and social media to interact with their supporters. I’d like to see more funders over here in the UK exploring this with their grantees.
It makes for a useful read and helps us all to understand some of the difficulties that small groups especially are facing with the fast changing pace of the technology and using the internet.

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Nominations for IT Volunteer Awards open

iT4 Communities are welcoming nominations for the 2007 IT Volunteer Awards, which aim to recognise and celebrate the best and most innovative examples of IT volunteering. Find out more on their site at www.IT4Communities.org.uk.

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Modx makes it to finals - vote for it to win!

My favourite open source CMS has been nominated to be a finalist as the Most Promising CMS in the 2007 PacketPub Awards. Click on the image to find out more and vote for it to win!

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Suffering from RSS overload?

After returning from my recent holiday I discovered that I had RSS overload. Not a medical condition, but it did make me panic for a few moments, with the reality that whilst I had removed myself from technology and everyday life for a short time to enjoy the delights camping in the South of France, the rest of the world blogged merrily away.

I feel that I manage my reading fairly well, and use my Netvibes RSS reader which helps me to keep up to date with around 100 or so blogs and feeds. I read about a wide range of subjects that relate to what I am interested in including: nonprofit technology, social media, web standards, accessibility and usability, design for print, design for the web, typography and so on…Netvibes helps me keep in control. I can separate my thematic areas that I like to read easily, and also place my favourites where I want to see them first.
I only pulled all my feeds into one place back in June, which I must say has made a big difference to my ability to keep up with all the sites I like to regularly visit.

But I wasn’t prepared for the overloaded feeling when I returned. I managed to use my reader to quickly establish what I wanted to read and comment on and also to be brave and quickly discard what wasn’t relevant or to have the luxury of spare time to read at this point.

It took me several days to get on top of it all. I was just beginning to get up to date, and in my feed reader I spotted a really helpful posting about keeping on top of your RSS feeds.

Marshall Kirkpatrick has recently created a great article on his blog which I highly recommend to anyone suffering RSS overload, or even if you fear you may get overload with 10 ways to make remembering to read your feeds easier. He shares how he manages potential information overload and how he keeps up to date and in control with over 3000 feeds. (yes, I did type that correctly!). Check it out!

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Online Giving and Fundraising Moving Foward

Netsquared has a new article with some great links to articles - Online Philanthropy is Hot, Hot Hot!
Ideal if you are exploring online giving for your organisation.

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Working towards a new world of Interoperability and Accessibility? It’s not here yet…

In the web design arena, there is currently a lot of discussion about how and where the ‘web’ is headed. With the concepts and available draft of of HTML 5, and the air of disappointment to many that it potentially is not necessarily going to enable better accessibility to all. On the other side of the equation, CSS (cascading style sheets - the supporting code that helps enables your site to look good and separates the style from the structure of the site) has reached 10 years of age already, and there is enthusiasm at how the next stages will enable more beautifying of the web.

On a positive note, I’ve discussed recently with fair few nonprofits who are becoming really aware about wanting their sites being operable on all platforms and browsers. It’s been a great experience sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm to enable them to explore and reach forward with ideas on making their site usable, approachable and accessible to a wider audience.
I’ve also experienced frustration that whilst many nonprofits are striving to move forward with usability and accessibility, many businesses are not taking this seriously and therefore losing their customers and potential sales. I’ve experienced this first hand this week whilst scouring various estate agent websites, not one would operate fully in anything other than Internet Explorer.

So for those interested to see where the web is headed, I’ve collated a few links to some articles which have given me some food for thought on accessibility, usability and also internet design for the future.

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31 Days to a Better Blog: The final days

Firstly before I begin my summary of the final tasks, I’d like to say a big thank you to Paul Webster from the ICT Hub, who boldly took on the final days of the challenge whilst I hopped on a train with the family, leaving all technology behind and unplugged for a much needed vacation in France. Paul on his Watford Gap blog (about ICT support in the regions here in the UK, with a bit of railway coffee for good measure!), did a fine job of tackling the final days really well and I no doubt will be a slave to any of his requests in the future as compensation.
A big thank you too to the 31 Days to a Better Blog community who not only welcomed Paul into it all at a late stage, but a personal big cheers to you all. With thanks to this challenge first instigated by Michele Martin of the Bamboo Project Blog, I have a new circle of global friends who through the project have introduced me to a wide range of ideas, concepts and inspiration too. Congratulations to the MiniLegends, the fabulous class of 9 year olds in Australia with the support of their fabulous teacher Al Upton who won the Chocolate Challenge.
Do take a look at the MiniLegends site, they’ve used VoiceThread recently which I mentioned to them a while back. These young people are just fabulous!!!

Anyway, August is now over, and officially so is the challenge. I had a good excuse to fall behind with my holidays, and a few of us are still plodding through the final tasks.
It hasn’t ended there though, nearly all of us and quite a few extra have joined in as a new community to learn and discover more in our journeys with blogging. You can read more about the ideas behind this in a recent post by Michele Martin, or head straight over and join in on the new Building a Better Better Blog community. Also, I’d highly recommend that you keep looking at the taskmaster of this challenge, Darren Rowse’s site at Problogger. The interest and learning that have been shared on his site are really useful too, with many of the readers and participants giving their tips and experiences.

I’ve not had too much time to do all of the final tasks in great detail but listed them here, and I hope that you, my readers have enjoyed my journey into building a better blog. I still have much work to do. This challenge has inspired me to really understand the role of my blog, and also of my main website, and redesigns and tweaking will be much of a feature in the coming months ahead to refine my sites usability and look more.

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