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NEW REPORT SHOWS 97 PER CENT OF WEBSITES ARE DISCRIMINATING AGAINST USERS WITH DISABILITES, DESPITE LEGAL LEGISLATIONS

An Accesibility Agency that has been investigating how easy websites are to access by users with disabilities, has concluded that most of webdesigners are failing to produce sites in line with the minimum levels of accessebility for all. Commissioned by the United Nations as part of its International Day of Disabled Persons,Nomensa investigated many of the world’s leading sites,taking a sample from five different sectors in 20 countries. The sectors studied included : travel,retail,banking,goverment and media. In the UK, the brands under scrutiny were : British Airways, Marks and Spencer’s, Lloyds TSB, the British PM’s site and the Guardian. Among the portfolio of statistics it was revealed that 93 per cent failed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphics, 78 per cent used colours with poor cotrast causing issues for colour blind sufferers, 97 per cent denied the ability to resize pages and 89 per cent offered poor navigation. “It’s important fot commercial, legal and moral reasons that websites put in place a strategy for accessibility,” urges Alex Metcalfe, Nomensa’s head of client services, “both in terms of quick wins and longer term improvements”. The World Health Organization has slammed web designers failing to meet the grade,claiming that around 10 per cent of the world’s population suffers from disability.

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Adobe has announced that the brand new CS3 edition of Photoshop went into beta distribution on Friday 15 December. This was one Christmas present that most photographers,digital artists and web designers wouldn’t have expected to receive, despite all the hype and anticipation that has been flying around on the online community in recent times. Available from Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com) to those users who hold a license for CS2, the application already supports the intel-based Mac,Windows XP and a Vista platforms.Although we won’t see the final and completed release version in stores untill spring, this beta does still manage to showcase the much talked about new features that are promising to make this huge event in the 2007 software calendar. What’s more, you’ll also get to try the updated application such as BRIDGE, VERSION CUE, DEVICE CENTRAL, EXTENDSCRIPT TOOLKIT  and Stock Photos. However they managed to outline some very exciting ,spanning the multi-plane Vanishing Point 2 and the jaw-dropping automatic layer alignement and blending functions. The latter could prove a valuble addition to the inevitable CS3 Flash when it surfaces, while powerful options for making rapid image selections, edge refinements and monotone conversions are also most wellcome.             

Using UIY LIbrary can make adding this kind of functionality far easier than it would be if needed to write it from scratch. The UIY LIbrary was also tested in different browsers and operating systems, so the customers could be confident that the basic code will work. It is very important to test this kind of functionality thoroughly .Not only for cross-browser compatibility, but also to ensure that users don’t find the functionality difficult to use on confusing.

Okey, anyhow you  probably thinking : “But what about users without JAva script?”

The good thing about Javascript writing in a modern way that usually we start out with regular markup. We do’t write the list into page with Javascript,we created a regular HTML list and then use JavaScript to manipulate it. This means that,at the very least ,any user without JavaScript can read the content of the list.As we are writing the image drag handles with JavaScript ,they won’t see those and end up with a confusing situation of seeing something that says ‘drag’ but doesn’t work. In the context of your application you than need to make the decision as to whether the odering is a core part of the functionality and needs to be provided in another way, or if it can simply not to be there for users without JavaScript.  For users without JavaScript, you would need to first create the list along with text fields to set the order by entering a number, then remove them in JavaScript before adding drag and drop. This means that you may feel you’r creating functionality twice, however it is important to ensure your application is usable by all. For more info go to http://addactio.com/articles/1150   

Buisness is beginning to pay attention to the future that the mobile internet can bring. With 190 milion mobile subscribers in the US the mobile market is very much alive. As a commercial platform the mobile could leave the internet in its wake, with  analysts predicting mobile content sales to reach 9$ billion in the next year along. As a commerce platform, the mobile phone has a lot going for it. Nokia recently announced that it has shipped 100 milion Symbian smartphones to over 250 network operators. Nigel Clifford, CEO, Symbian says: “We see two trends driving smartphones onward. The first is that while smartphones have their highest penetration rates in the most saturated and developed markets, the highest future growth rates are likely to be in rapidly developing markets such as China, India and Brazil. The developing world will be likely to account to 50% of smartphones sales within five years, as smartphones are a huge opportunity to fast-forward into the information era. The second is the rising youth market, a generation who are demanding the most inovative, fashionable devices and are attracted by the services that they can offer.”