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Category: Uncategorized

Color me accessible

Perception of color might be a forgotten or neglected disability. Some people notice or think about disabilities only when they are quite apparent, such as someone in a wheelchair or someone using a white cane when walking down the street. When you know that someone can see, you don’t immediately think that they might perceive colors quite differently from the way you perceive colors. Having only recently discovered the Webaxe podcasts, I have been catching up on all their older podcasts. Their 16th episode was about color and accessibility. It inspired me to post some information about color. The references apply to Web, but you can also think about these matters in document design. This particular podcast had a nice little discussion about color, and the related blog entry pointed to an article by Ann McMeekin, Byte Size Standards, where she discusses coloring with contrast and provides many useful links…

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Left thumb blogging

Glenda Watson-Hyatt writes a blog that discusses Web accessibility (among other things). With her left thumb. Glenda has cerebral palsy. I discovered Glenda in a Box of Chocolates. She was visiting Derek Featherstone’s site on her virtual book tour (excellent creative idea), and Derek posed four questions to her. Here is one of them: We all know that web accessibility for people with disabilities is much, much more than making sites work for screen readers. What parts of using the web are most difficult for you? Can you give us two or three things that we can do to make using sites easier for you? Yes, it is annoying when web accessibility is seen as an issue mainly for people with sight impairments. Often, it feels like the needs of people with other types of disabilities (and without disabilities per se) are ignored when discussing web accessibility. With my cerebral…

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Choreographing presentations

I have a penchant for graphics. Perhaps I am a graphic artist in a parallel universe? In this universe where I am just a wannabe, I relish great visual presentations, whether videos, graphs, graphics, layouts, website, or anything else where some concept is communicated visually. These visuals inspire me. That may not be evident right away, but the old brain cells register the inspiration, tucking it away to pop up at some future date. The fact that they do not relate to the actual work I am doing does not matter. Or perhaps that is the key. They might be so different that they simply jiggle my brain to get it to view some dry technical drawing from a – to me – previously unknown angle. One source of inspiration is a recent addition to my Google Reader: Presentation Zen. I don’t remember who led me here, but this site…

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