Archive for the 'Web design' Category

Accessihacking

Chris Heilmann did an excellent thought inspiring post yesterday on his blog at Wait til I come! on Is it time to take Mashups and use them to solve real issues? where he writes about his mashup fatigue but also the recent events that have re-inspired him to think again with mashups especially later in the post on talking about the recent Social Innovation Camp with the winning and innovative Enabled by Design project, along with the Accessibility 2.0 conference and accessibility for all, with thoughts of creating an event for social and accessible hacking of currently used internet services.

As a web dev into all things participative and accessible to all, and with much of our modern fangled Web 2.0 which can unknowingly cause barriers to involvement for many, this was a refreshing post, I can’t wait to see if more unfolds from this.

Check out the article and add to the conversation at - Is it time to take mashups and use them to solve real issues?

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CSS Naked Day

Visitors to my blog will notice something missing today. (on the 9th April only) It’s the third annual CSS Naked Day and over 1500 websites and blogs across the globe will have taken part.

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your

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40 web based online tools for design

The Design Vitality site has a useful list of 40 helpful free web based tools to help you design anything from logo’s, create and edit webpages, includes collaborative online tools, and image editing and more. See the full list at Design Vitalitys’ 40 excellent web based tools.

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Common errors with web accessibility

Webcredible’s latest article on 10 common errors when implementing accessibility is a useful reminder for those making their websites accessible and inclusive to all.

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Free screenreader software to assist the blind and visually impaired

Over on David Wilcox’s Designing for Civil Society site, David recently reported about Roger Wilson-Hinds, who was demonstrating screenreader software at the e-democracy conference. The screenreader (known as ‘Thunder’) not only reads text out loud, but also can increase the text size for those that can see. It also helps with managing information, RSS feeds, podcasts and much more.

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Accessibility 2.0: UK newspaper websites featured in study

Today, I was contacted by Laura Oliver who writes for Journalism.co.uk - a leading website for journalists.

Laura informed me that their site is launching a series of features and articles that will be published throughout this week on the accessibility of the UK’s main newspaper websites to blind and visually impaired users. They’ve conducted their own study and assessment of the country’s largest newspaper media websites with a team of volunteers.

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sNews - an easy and simple web publishing tool for non profit organisations

I’ve been keeping an eye on sNews for a while now, and have given it a good road test for use as a simple CMS (content management system) that will meet the needs of many voluntary and community organisations.

The choice of CMS to use for any nonprofit organisation should be always considered carefully. Will it meet your needs now, but also in the future as your organisation grows?

I use a wide range of open source CMS, depending on the needs of the group or client that I’m designing for. MODx is and always will be one of my favourites for all sites from simple right through to complex needs as it is very web developer friendly and works well for web standards and accessibility. Drupal and Joomla I still use, although more occasionally now.
The CMS listed above I generally work with for medium to larger sites with more complex needs or for database integration.
What about the tools I use for smaller and simpler websites that need easy content managing and updating features?
Wordpress is another ‘CMS’ which essentially is a blogging tool, although very able and adaptable to become a good viable CMS for an organisation and I am increasingly developing more sites with Wordpress as a base at the request of clients and increased usage and recent promotion in the non profit technology area here in the UK. Wordpress is a good tool, although to me, isn’t the only one that should be considered as a ’smaller’ CMS for organisations.
(CMSMadeSimple is another great easy to use CMS which I aim to review at some point in the future).

So why sNews?

Wordpress as I mentioned above is at it’s heart a blogging tool. Often organisations, especially small ones such as clubs and associations and other small service providers stretched to capacity with lack of time, are seeking a way to have an effective website that they can manage and update content easily. When I create a site, and give training on Wordpress for example, I often find that for a simple website I’m saying “you don’t need that functionality, that’s if you are using it to blog” or “remember to tick that box in that corner if you don’t want comments” and so on. To the average occassional content updater, Wordpress has lots of information to wade through in the administration panel.

To those who are ’scared of technology’ I want to be able to give them a site that they can intuitively be able to create their content easily and quickly without the need to navigate through lots of different menus and become confused if they click on the wrong area. It makes sense to use a tool which they can easily use 100 percent rather than having a tool which they will only use a small amount of it’s capabilities. Hopefully, also they will keep the site updated on a regular basis by adding new features and content. This is where the beauty and simplicity of sNews can really help the person who is designated to update the content on a website.

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Women working in non-profit technology - are we visible?

A couple of days ago, Beth Kanter put a shout out to help her with a session she’s running at the forthcoming She’s Geeky Conference. Her session will be directed at women who might be working in the corporate or business sector and are thinking of switching to the nonprofit sector. Beth asked a series of questions including:

• What are the opportunities and challenges of being the techie in a nonprofit organisation?
• If you’re a techie in the nonprofit sector, how and why did you land in the nonprofit sector?

Head over to Beth’s article to see some interesting responses, you can add your comments there too, and I’d welcome any comments you may have too on my blog. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of the discussions that happen at the conference and hope to see events like this for women in technology over here in the UK one day soon.

Interestingly, the results of Web Design Survey which took place in April 2007. A List Apart and An Event Apart conducted a survey of people who make websites. Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the survey’s 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide.

As soon as the results were published I was keen to see the outcomes. I wasn’t surprised to see the low numbers of women responding to the survey, and have seen some great conversations about women in web design and also the nonprofit angle about these results unfolding.

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Free tools to test your site for accessibility

Following on from my posting earlier in the month where a US court issued two landmark decisions that the Target Corporation has to make their website accessible to blind people, web accessibility is an area which many nonprofits and charities still find difficult to implement on their sites.
In this article I’m going to show a few of the free easy to use tools available which can help you with testing your website not only for accessibility but also usability and web standards too. Later in the article, I’ll list some other useful resources and services that are available to help charities and organisations.

Accessibility and usability are key to a successful site. You will want your site to be accessible to the widest possible audience regardless of ability or browsing technology, including those who have visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments. Conformance to the W3C guidelines helps to make the Web more accessible to users with disabilities and benefits all users. In short, it makes the web a better place for everyone.

If you are the person responsible in your organisation for creating or updating your website, there are some free easy to use tools to help you test and examine your site.

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A different and free way to make a website - use a wiki

If you are looking for a simple and quick way to make a website for your organisation, there are many tools and choices available that are not only cheap or free, but also easy to use for the end user with no complicated need for in depth technical knowledge and ability. In this article, we’ll be looking at Wiki’s and how they could be used as a tool for your website. Their are many possibilities available when using a wiki. It could be used to create your website, support training and learning, creating a campaign or for sharing news, projects and developments within your own organisation.

Remember though when assessing which tool to use to create your website, there are a wide ranges of choices and options available. Wiki’s are just one of many tools that can help. Simple blogging software such as Wordpress for example, can also easily enable effective participation and for simple collaborative website projects.

Creating a website for your organisation using a wiki

A few weeks ago, Michele Martin of the Bamboo Project Blog ran a series of articles showing step by step how a non-profit organisation can use a wiki to build and produce a website. Michele used Wetpaint as her wiki tool.

Michele explained in her blog about why wiki’s can be a good way to produce a simple website for organisations.

“A couple of reasons why I think a wiki can be a good choice for building your site:

• Easy to set up and update - Wikis are really easy to use and require minimal technological expertise. Because of their ease of use, this also makes them easy to update because you don’t have to rely on your “web guy” to do the updates for you.
• Built-in Two-Way Communication - As you’ll see, wiki’s have built-in comment features, which means that you can get immediate and ongoing feedback from site visitors, something that many web citizens are increasingly expecting from any site they visit.”

Obviously, a wiki isn’t going to give you a professional custom designed website, but for many small to medium non-profit organisations, a wiki can be suitable for your needs.

They are free, very easy to use and update, with a wide range of different wiki’s available to choose from such as Wikispaces and Wetpaint. Many offer additional features such as customisation of the colours and layout. Some also offer the option of having your own domain name pointing to the wiki rather than a longer website address, and also you can also pay a very small fee to have any advertising removed from your pages.

How and why I used a wiki

I recently ran a training workshop with voluntary and community organisations to help with planning their website. I decided against using lots of handouts and traditional slide presentations, instead I would create a wiki to support the learning for the day. It was very easy to do and took very little time compared to creating seperate presentations and handout sheets on all the topics were were going to cover in our day.

The great part of using a wiki to support delivery of training is that the materials are available after the event for the participants to be able to refer back to rather than them having to look for their scribbled notes from the day. I also added photo’s from the day too. I found it was highly successful as a supporting tool. As we learned about each subject area, all the links to relevant websites were there immediately for them. I live resource compared to a static one. I’ll be using wiki’s a lot more in the future to share learning with others.

As a trainer using the wiki as a learning tool, I learn’t about using my wiki more effectively too with the way I displayed the content. I observed how users of the wiki were using the pages and how they found information. I had put too much text on most pages. At some point soon, I aim to break down the pages in to smaller chunks to enable better usability for participants in sessions, they had to do a lot of scrolling to find information and links!

Do you want an easy and quick way to learn more on how a wiki can help you to communicate or create a website?

Commoncraft have just released another of their fun and lively quick video’s on Wetpaint Wiki’s in Plain English, which has been commissioned by Wetpaint, a company that have created an easy to use wiki. Instead of showing the technical parts of what a wiki is, it delivers how you could use wiki to share your subject, and how you can easily create a connected community.

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