"Developing WordPress themes, templates and WordPress plugins"

I came accross an interesting blog from Bruce Lawson which he wrote 20 April 2009 concerning the new link relations in HTML5. For those not sure what I mean, link relations are a way to explain why you’re pointing to another page.

Common link relations include (for importing CSS rules) and (for Atom feed autodiscovery).
e.g. telling the browser to look at a stylesheet containing the CSS rules it should apply to a document.

Bruce is suggesting rel=accessibility pointing assistive technologies to discover and offer shortcuts to accessibility information, such as a WCAG 2 conformance claim, or a form to request content in alternate formats.

A standardised way of indicating related accessibility information is fantastic.

This idea is so worth supporting so why not do one of the following:

• send feedback: whatwg@whatwg.org

Join the WHATWG HTML5 Forums and leave feedback

• Lobby a committee member (Sorry to members in advance) – you will find many on Twitter
• Encourage as many people who you know to promote:

HTML5 – rel=accessibility – yes please

Despite a heated debate on Bruces site the one thing that I feel is that anything that helps with webs ite accessibility helps. OK, in Bruces blog there are a number of comments – good & bad – but to me the point is if we can create a standard way of identifying a sites accessibility – great.

It could work for the good if the Googles of the world could include such a statement in their alogorthims and present search results in such a way that a web sites accessibility had a weighting then we may be getting somewhere

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There is a lot of talk about how Twitter and Google are “in competition” – from my standpoint they aren’t (yet!) The big difference is that Google serves you up answers (data) based upon any search request (query) from it’s database and the information that contains. If your web site has not been indexed recently then the information Google can serve up is out of date.

Whereas Twitter can give you real answers from real people in real time. With Twitter you have 140 characters to ask your question which plenty of people can easily understand. If not then they may @you you to get more information – in real time.

Twitters can provide thoughts and recommendations.

Until Twitter Search goes fully ‘live’ it enables us to gather information online: via conversation, rather than via data dump. Twitter is compelling because it is opening up tremendous new possibilities to enable useful information flow that simply wasn’t possible before.

This is great for accessibility. It goes back many years, before the web, can’t find it? ask someone. Afterall which would your prefer, an automated responce or a “personal reccommendation”

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Have just spent time re-reading the W3C page HTML 5 differences from HTML 4 and I feel quietly positive about their implimentation – when it comes. BUT.. I do have a few reservervations.

Whithout a shaddow of doubt HTML5 will help make the web much easier for people, there are many new elements (the html tags like < p > which are used to define a page) and there are some which are being “taken away”. The new elements are aimed at reflecting the way the web is developing and the way the web is used.

For example there is a new element in HTML5 – footer – which represents a footer for a section and can contain information about the author, copyright information, et cetera. This type of new element will make identifying sections on a page much easier.

Whilst HTML5 is backwards compatable (of course) many HTML4 elements are being discontinued because they are better handled in stylesheets – again another good thing, but – and this is a big but – there are too many unvalidatable style sheets out there already and until Microsoft create a version of IE that actually renders a stylesheet in line with specifications without hacks it may lead to more unvalidatable stylesheets and badly rendered sites.

Overall I applaud the transfer of “design” elements to CSS and the inclusion of elements introduced for better structure.

Bring it on.

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Morning folks from a sunny Kefalonia, it’s only 8.20 here but still hot already. Just setting up a more friendly version of Squawk, hope you agree, a few more bits to do, but I think we are getting there. This theme (inspired by Twitter if you hadn’t guessesd) look good and is quiet easy to edit via the CSS. From an accessibility view point the orginal uses colours that are quiet “hard on the eye” – i.e. bad contrast, so I am changing to better contrasts, hopefully to a contrast ratio of at least 10:1 for level 3 conformance to guideline 1.4.

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The internet or web – depending on your pereferences – is about mass communication, indeed the internet or web is the only tool that can cross country boundaries influencing people thousands of miles from where you are sitting right now. Why then do so many people ignore 25% of the people who vist their web site?

Yes – I said 25% of web site visitors.

think of it in simple terms – your web site is seen by:

• 100 people or 125 people
• 1000 people or 1250 people.
• 10000 people or 12500 people.
• 100000 people or 125000 people.

Which would you rather have?

Years before we started blogging we gave some advice to a ’small’ company with a web site.  At the time of consulting they were turningover about 2.5M per year.   5% of that derived from their web site.  We gave advice which they acted upon (makes a change).  Within 3 months of acting on that advice they were forcasting an increase in turnover of more thaan 150% for the forthcomming year – all driven by the new web site we advised on.  Their website traffic went from about 20 a day to 100+ per day.  What was best was they forecast that the on-line turnover would increase from 5% to over 50%!

Not bad.

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