jebsblog

The good folks at the DO-IT Center at the University of Washington have a YouTube channel with a bunch of videos regarding people with disabilities and technology. Just bumped into one today Called “World Wide Access” which speaks to the importance of accessible and universal web design. It is very well done.

If you have a client or boss to needs convincing as to why you need to build accessibility into your web design, have them take a look at this video.

DO IT on YouTube

How to choose what’s right for your organization

Web sites come in many shapes and sizes and, given the magic of current technologies, can do many wondrous things. But to many, the inner workings of a website can be confusing. Having the responsibility of developing, or updating the web presence for your organization can be a major challenge. This article is designed to help.

Two Flavors

To begin this discussion, you should know that web sites still come in two major “flavors” – static and dynamic. To the knowledgeable purists reading this, I understand that there are no truly static websites, but please allow me some poetic license here.

The terms static and dynamic have little to do with the actual look of the website and refer more to the “backend” or inner workings of the site and to some extent the functionality of some or all of the features on the site. Either can be right solution for your organization, but how do you choose the right one for your organization? Let’s begin with some information about the flavors.

Static web sites are built using individual web page files written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML), along with some support files for styling (e.g., Cascading Style Sheets – CSS), images (e.g., JPGs, GIFs, etc.) and media elements (e.g., audio, video and Flash objects). Files are usually prepared off-line on a local computer using specialized web-authoring software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression, and then “published” to a web server connected to the World Wide Web (WWW). Note, there are other programs that purport to be able to create web pages (like MS-Word or MS- Publisher), but be careful. Good web design requires the right tools and techniques. Using the wrong ones can make your site misbehave or worse, not work at all.

The web files are typically “published” to a web server using a piece of software called a File Transfer Protocol or FTP client. The FTP client may be built into your web-authoring program, or it may be a separate program. The “web server” is a special application that runs on a specialized computer (also called a server) that is connected to the Internet. This web server does just what its name implies; it “servers up” your web files when “called for” by someone on the Internet.

Most organizations do not own their own web server and will use a “host” like Maine Hosting Solutions to serve up their website. The cost of this hosting service ranges from a few dollars per month to many thousands of dollars depending on the size of the website and the amount of traffic is receives. There are many options and a web design firm like jebswebs can assist you in this decision.

In a Static web site, when you want to change the content, someone has to change the local file and re-publish it to the web server, thus overwriting the original file. If it is something like a link on a menu bar, this may require that every web file on your site be changed and re-published also. So, this quickly can become time consuming.

With the exception of some simple executable files, most of the content in static websites is fairly flat, meaning it allows little or no interaction with visitors/users. In other words, people viewing the site will typically only be able to read or view the content and not able to write or submit content to the site.

When the World Wide Web was first developed in the early 1990s, designers had very limited choices of things they could do. Designs in those days were almost exclusively static in nature and developers were constantly challenged to make the user experience more interactive and exciting.

Dynamic web site development came out of that need for interaction. These sites often provide the user with the ability to interact with the content and provide some kind of feedback. But the real reason for calling these sites dynamic has to do with how the sites are constructed and maintained. In the dynamic web site, all of the content, styling files and related web documents are contained within one or more databases located somewhere on the Web and “controlled” or administered by an application called a Content Management System (CMS). The content is “hung” on the website using various templates written in a dynamic markup language such as PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion or Java. These templates are similar to HTML, but are more complex and can do a lot more things. Think of your website was a Christmas tree. The template is the tree itself with trunk and branches. It has some color and texture. The content is like decorations and lights that are hung on the tree. Each of your “pages” (also called nodes) uses the same tree, but the decorations and lights vary from page to page, node to node. Some of the “decorations” are built-in to the tree and will appear on every page/node. For example, the heading/logo area, the main menus and the footer of the page. You can also add blocks of content that will appear on every page/node. The choice is up to you.

There are many CMS applications out there  and each works a little differently. The three big ones, Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, have become the standard in the field. These are all “open source software” meaning that they are developed by volunteer code writers who are always trying to improve the code. They are also free and freely available to be modified and changed to meet your needs.

I should point out that there are commercial CMSs as well and they can cost many thousands of dollars to purchase and license each year.

The CMS is used to create and edit content and runs on the web server itself, requiring almost no additional software. Many of the CMSs have  built in image editors which can do some basic edits like resizing the image, however serious edits are usually done off-line with a local editing application. There are many modules, plug-ins and “widgets” that can be freely added to the dynamic site making the experience for the user very rich.

All CMSs allow for multiple users and the administrator can control how much access each user has to the website.

How to Choose

Generally the first consideration when trying to decide between a static vs. dynamic website is the basic size of the site. This can sometimes be decided by looking at the size of the organization. If the site is for a single person or small organization, you can probably get by just fine with a static site. If there are a large number of people going to be involved with this website, it’s probably best to go for a dynamic design. If you are looking at some kind of an e-commerce website – in other words you are looking to sell things on the Web – you are probably going to need a dynamic web site.

Next in your consideration is how often the content needs to be updated. Static sites by their very definition tend to have information with a relatively long shelf life. That is, if the information that you are putting on a website is relatively stable and will not be changing for months or years, you can get by just fine with a static site. If your content is changing more frequently than once per month, you should consider a dynamic website.

“Who will manage your content?” is your next question. If you have on your staff personnel that know how to design and update web pages, you are all set and can have either a static or dynamic site based upon your organization’s particular needs. However, if you have a small staff, or perhaps are a small nonprofit organization staffed with a handful of volunteers, you are going to need to either hire someone or find a volunteer with extra talents and time.

Finding staff or volunteers that know how to design and maintain a website is not as difficult as it once was, but sometimes keeping that staff is difficult. These people are usually in high demand and may get a better offer from one of your competitors.

Choosing a dynamic web site will be an advantage here in that adding, deleting and editing content is very easy. If you have ever ordered anything on line, written or commented to a blog, or added a comment to an online discussion group, you can easily learn how to work with a dynamic web site.

The last question you need to consider in selecting what type of web site you want is -how interactive do you want your site to be?

One of the big advantages of choosing a dynamic web site design is that they are designed for interaction. In some ways, that’s the goal of the dynamic design; it encourages lots of people to contribute and collaborate. However, you will be comforted in knowing that with a dynamic web design, you still have complete control of who can add, delete or edit content. You can also assign sections of your website to different parts of your organization so that only these groups can see and work with the content in that section. Or, you can open your site up to the whole world for input and discussion like many people do with blog sites. This is all entirely up to you.

Dynamic websites can also import content from multiple sources including automated ones so your website will be constantly updating and changing as these sources update content. And, as noted earlier, dynamic websites can be use to conduct commerce on the Web.

We can help

Whether you are considering your first website or updating one you’ve had for years, it can be very helpful to discuss your needs with a web design firm like jebswebs. We are here to help you with each stage of the design and development experience from concept development to implementation to staff training. Please feel free to contact jebswebs today to request a free initial consultation.

As a web designer with some high mileage on the odometer, I can scornfully remember the days of ole when the “browser wars” forced us to add all kinds of goofy code to make our web designs appear consistent – let alone appear at all – on various browsers and browser versions. There are still some designers out there who fuss about making their sites work on IE6. I say, let them eat cake!

But I have been watching the development of many of the new hand-held technologies and realizing that the time is coming when more people will be viewing websites on small 2-3 inch screens than on the 27-inch monster like the one I have on my desk. In fact, there is some evidence that day has already come.

I have prescribed for some time that the solution to all this was good coding – and by that I mean standards-based , universally-designed coding. My rationale has been that the new devices and their tiny browsers would eventually regress to the mean and adopt the W3C standards. This is turn would allow for an “efficient” transition from the big screen to the small.

With my purchase of an iPod Touch last spring and a Garmin GPS several months earlier, I have recognized that simply making a website that looks okay on the small screen is less than ideal. These small devices are much more interested in your content, not how it is displayed on the screen. When I access web content on my tiny Safari screen, I want to be able to read it clearly and navigate to the things I want. I don’t care about your “pretty pictures” and fancy Flash animation. In fact, I can’t even see your Flash!

Over the past month, I have started noticing certain blogs that, when I access them with my iPod, magically appear as though they were built inside an iPod/iPhone apps. The look, feel, buttons and controls familiar to iPod/iPhone users are all there and, more importantly, work. The first of these I notices was my local NBC affiliate WCSH-6 TV in Portland, Maine. A couple of months ago they introduced a new iPod/iPhone-friendly interface that appears when one accessed their website with a hand-held device (you can still access the “full site” by activating a button at the bottom of the screen). The effect was stunning to say the least, and joyous in that I no longer has to resize the screen repeatedly to read the content. I needed to get me one of those!

This morning I found a blogger who had a similar iPod-enhanced Word Press blog site and at the bottom I found the magic word WPtouch. A few minutes later my jebswebs blog was sporting the new look and I must say, I am very impressed.

The WPtouch Mobile Plugin by the BraveNewCode folks is an easy-to-install script that loads in seconds. Once activated, the settings page gives you all kinds of options and choices. And, once installed, my WordPress blog site instantaneously looks like it was built into an iPod app. Tres cool.

At this point, WPtouch is all I could ask for and more. But, I suspect that as time goes on, I will want more. Maybe a similar plugin for my Joomla! and Drupal sites! Maybe they already exist.

Gotta go, I feel quest coming on.

Last word, if you are looking for a great plugin that makes your WordPress blog look great on a mobile device, check out the WPtouch Mobile Plugin!

~j

I have written and published a new article about accessible documents on the Maine CITE website. This is the first of a series I plan to write on the topic called Making Accessible Educational Documents. The articles are based upon the series of articles I wrote for the Maine State Government Office of Information Technology over the past two years and will refine the content, focusing it specifically on the needs of classroom teachers and educational administrators at all levels – Kindergarten through college.

As more and more curriculum and school-related content is being provided to students, parents and the general public in digital form, it is essential that these documents be created in a form that everyone can access.

The articles will also appear in print form in the quarterly newsletter published by the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine (ACTEM).

The first in the series is called Making Text Documents Accessible and deals with word processor and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents .

Also featured on the new web resource will be quick tips and resources to help teachers and educational administrators communicate better with their constituents.

~j

For the past several months I have been the proud owner of an Apple iPod Touch. As you know from reading this blog, I am far from being an “applefanboi” and have tended towards the “I’m a PC” side of things. But I have been dutifully impressed by this device and the technology behind it.

Perhaps what has impressed me most is the “touch screen” that is the main user interface. Like the move from the keyboard to the mouse – which Apple also perfected more than 25 years ago – the touch screen, I believe, is the way we will interact with computers in the future. I probably should expand that to include the fantastical 3D user interface that Tom Cruise’s character used in The Minority Report even though in that futuristic fantasy the interaction is between hands and holograms as opposed to actually touching a screen. But the concepts are the same – a more direct connection between human physical movement and the actions of a computer.

I think what I like best about the touch screen is how, almost intuitively (and I hate to even admit this), I was able to navigate the device. Being the typical red-blooded-American-male, I didn’t bother to read the directions until after I had given the device a good spin. I found it easy to navigate and move between apps and generally work the browser. The less intuitive stuff related to moving the badges around on the home screen or how to remove them from the device (I still don’t know how to do that on the Mac OS), I had to study to learn. But even these make sense if you think of it (unlike ejecting a CD by dragging it to the trash can – huh?).

The movement of dragging documents around on the screen to view them, squeezing and stretching them to zoom in and out and even the “flick of the finger” action of moving between pages is very close to the “feel” of hands and paper.

Well, it seems everyone has gotten into the “touch screen act” these days and yes things are getting ratcheted up dramatically with the recent release of the new Palm Pre – another touch screen dependent smart phone - in addition to the pending release of the Apple iPhone 3G S. Add to this is Microsoft’s announcement that touch screen capacity has been added into Window 7 (additional hardware required), and it is pretty clear that within a couple of years we will see more and more people engaging their technology “by touch” rather than using a clunky piece of hardware like a mouse or keyboard. Or will we?

Of course all of this creates many new challenges for people with disabilities. How does this new technology work with people who cannot see?

I am sensing that solutions to some of these issues may already be on the drawing board – well at the very least, on Apple’s drawing board. We’ll have to wait and see if the solutions become widespread.

Apple’s solution is the inclusion of the native VoiceOver screenreader into the new iPhone O/S. By the way, I was a little miffed by Apple’s insistence that the iPhone O/S is actually a version of Mac O/S X – bit of stretch if you ask me, Cupertino.

In addition to VoiceOver – which at this point apparently only works with the iPhone’s Safari browser and “native” apps – the new iPhone has Voice Control which will make dialing calls, choosing music and even announcing music titles accessible to people with visual impairments. As demonstrated, Voice Control is a universally designed feature which give heads-up control to all users and allows those who cannot see the device better ability to engage it.

But the clincher may come with the issue of the touch keyboard. If people who are blind or have visual impairments want to use the iPhone 3G S to send text messages or otherwise input text into the device, they are going to have to learn how to “touch type” in a whole new way. And the success of that remains to be seen – sorry no pun intended.

Of course, the next iteration of the iPhone (4G?) might have voice-to-text built in, but since we haven’t mastered that on desktop computers, it might not be that soon. But those Apple people are crafty.

It’s only been 48 hours since Apple made their big announcements at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference – WWDC (which I affectionately have referred to as the “Apple-Love-In”). It is clearly too early to gauge how this new iPhone will work with folks with disabilities. So, I am waiting patiently for the final verdict from my screenreading colleagues who just can’t wait to get their hands on the new toys when they are release to the public next week. I am assuming that Apple live tested these new accessibility features extensively before now – at least I hope they have – but I want to hear from my friends about what they really think about these tools when the phone is released and in the hands of real users.

So to answer my own question, it is pretty apparent that touch screens are the next big thing in personal technology, but maybe just a temporary thing.

Your thoughts?

~j