18 August 2010 | No comments
A DTD (document type definition) tells the browser what version of (X)HTML you are coding your web page in. Standards compliant pages must contain a DTD as the first item on the page otherwise it will not validate. Which one should you use? Continue Front-end developer essentials – which DTD to use?…
26 July 2006 | 3 comments
Google recently unveiled it’s Accessible Search, which prioritises the search results to favour pages that are more easily used by partially-sighted and blind users. Good work, but it was too much to expect that they would listen to their own advice and ensure their own pages conformed to any standards or took account of any accessibility guidelines. Continue Google: Accessible Search…
22 July 2006 | 3 comments
The WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 1.0, Priority 2 Checkpoint 13.2, states that you should:
Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites.
Don’t disregard this checkpoint because of the word “metadata”, as I first did before I looked into what it really meant. I was associating it with metatags packed with keywords to improve SEO, which is now virtually obsolete for this purpose. Continue WCAG: Metadata for Semantic Information…
12 July 2006 | 4 comments
Recently I was asked how I go about testing the accessibility of a website, something I have only done seriously for a few months. I use a combination of checklists, tools and common sense to draw up a document that explains where things are going wrong and provides guidance or tips to correct the problems.
Here I discuss the tools of my trade with advice thrown in for free. Continue My Accessibility Testing Tools…
2 July 2006 | 3 comments
I first heard about microformats during the first @media conference in 2005, but didn’t understand what they were about so didn’t think any more about them. They’ve been mentioned at various times since then but each time that I’ve tried researching nothing has been simple enough for me to understand what the fuss is about.
Within the last few months, microformats have come back into my radar and now seems to be the time to try harder to understand them. Continue Quick Guide to Microformats…