Assistive technology

11 September 2011

If you develop accessible websites it’s worth knowing how people will physically interact with them. Most of the software, peripherals and hardware described below are to assist people with visual and motor impairments.

Web standards content is platform agnostic

1 September 2011

A while ago I wrote ‘It’s not HTML5! But that’s ok’ and then I finished a web standards version of The Guardian’s interactive in order to prove they do not require Flash. So when I saw I had been mentioned on The Guardian website’s technology section I was excited!

Guardian interactive review: Flash vs. web standards

23 August 2011

The Guardian Interactive Team use Flash, almost exclusively, to create data visualisations and infographics for interactive content on guardian.co.uk. The two main reasons are that it is quick to build and that it looks identical in all browsers.

It’s not HTML5! But that’s ok.

13 April 2011

Web 2.0, AJAX and now HTML5 – all buzz words that have got non-developers a little bit more excited about web development and me using a lot more /facepalm.

As a developer you know what these buzzwords mean and can read between the lines when asked for an HTML5 site. They don’t really want a site full of offline-storage, data-* attributes, video and audio elements but you can give them one that is progressively enhanced and standards compliant.