Abledaccess — ... And the solution is inclusion

Point is, assumption hurts

Posted May 9th, 2012 by Johnny Taylor

Today, Wednesday may 9th, marks the very first Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). I encourage you to take a few minutes to experience accessibility first hand by going pointing-deviceless (whether you use a mouse, trackpad or rollerball, use the keyboard) or using a screen reader to navigate your computer, for even five minutes, at some point today. Every little bit helps.

But in combing through various articles and Twitter links this morning I stumbled across a post by Derek Featherstone, titled Awareness, that immediately had me contemplating both my Grandparent’s struggles. To be fair, I’m not sure they saw their disabilities as anything they “struggled” with, as it was just something they had to deal with to successfully live a life. But for the purposes of this post and what GAAD actually represents it’s nearly impossible, for me at least, to fathom their lives as anything but a “struggle.”

When both my Grandparents were young — my Grandfather was 3 when he was struck by a motorcycle and contracted Red Measles while in the “Fever Hospital” and my Grandmother was 7 when she was afflicted with Meningitis — they were each left with their disability’s. But in spite of such matters they lived out their childhoods and met each other at a social club organized by/ for the Hearing Impaired in Dundee Scotland as young adults. They were married in 1948, had two children by 1955, then immigrated to Canada in 1957…

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An issue using rem

Posted April 15th, 2012 by Johnny Taylor

Some time ago I came across an article by Jonathan Snook titled Font sizing with rem. Not so long story short;

In the early days of the web, we used pixels to size our text. It’s reliable and consistent. [...] To get around that¹, we can use em units. [...] The problem with em-based font sizing is that the font size compounds. [...] CSS3 introduces [...] the rem unit, which stands for “root em”. [...] The rem unit is relative to the root — or the html — element. That means that we can define a single font size on the html element and define all rem units to be a percentage of that…

A pretty sweet solution, regardless of not ever having any significant issues with the em compounding dilemma, none that I can reliably recall anyway. And I’ve used it on a few projects since reading it. It is a very tidy solution to what could potentially become quite a messy problem. For organizational’s sake, at the very least, I’m really quite fond of this solution…

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Adaptive web design

Posted February 29th, 2012 by Johnny Taylor

I’ve thought, for quite sometime honestly, that most of a persons success in using technology, and the internet specifically, is directly related to both a person’s willingness and ability to adapt. And while parts of my thinking still reflect this belief, large parts of those thoughts are not so much changing (in the sense my opinion is flipping), as they are evolving.

Before I proceed I’d like to define what it is that I meant by “success in using technology” above. Just for the record, I’ve never thought a persons perceived (whether it’s an internal or external perception) failure to interact with any given piece of technology was the fault of the user. It’s not. It most definitely is the fault, or better still, a short-sightedness of the creator. Nor do I think the word “failure” is valid in this context either. Failure and it’s implications would suggest this is a black and white issue. And it’s not. Not by any stretch of the imagination. As with anything there are shades of grey. As there are varying degrees of success.

That said, I’d very much like to alter what it is that I meant when using the word “adapt.” How I was using the word wasn’t entirely fair. It placed too much of an expectation on the user. It’s not any users job to adapt to technology. It’s technology’s need to be used by us. Otherwise why was it thought of and built? I’d simply like to swap “adapt” for “learn.” Most of a persons success in using technology is directly related to both a person’s willingness and ability to learn how to use it. The trick is to make that initial learning curve as inviting as possible. Easier said than done…

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Some things will never change

Posted February 12th, 2012 by Johnny Taylor

This is my long overdue third and final post in the series of “describing my computing career.” Please refer to The origins of interest and The gamut of ever changing ability for the first two parts in this series. However I think we need to back track a little from where we left off, especially considering certain events that I was alerted of this past week, which are largely responsible for me writing this post today.

As I’ve discussed previously (again in The gamut of ever changing ability), I started school in the fall of ’98 with the intent of pursuing a certificate in Web Publishing. But by the summer of ’99 something changed. The web no longer had the same allure as it once did for me anymore. Honestly as I was starting to consider enrolling in college I had my eye on two prizes. Web Development specifically and Digital Publishing more broadly.

There was no denying it, Photoshop had it’s claws in me. It was that summer when I began my slow transition away from the web towards a focus on digital imaging. And just prior to my graduating college, which was actually December of ’01 (I missed commencement for that year so I had to wait until the next October), I attended my first of 4 PhotoshopWorld’s in September of 2001.

It’s a damn good thing I have more to talk about today than my Photoshop work. Aside from a bunch (is that 4?) very exciting trips to Florida and the amazing experience I was able to glean from being part of the most recognized gathering of Photoshop talent in the world (that may not be true, but it sounds great), keeping busy with Photoshop, at least, proved very tricky. I couldn’t find a market for what I spent a good 4, probably more like 7, years learning and doing. Fortunately I kept my other eye on the web. And my feet just barely wet enough to return to it should I ever wish (read: need) to…

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Mobile first with a twist

Posted January 15th, 2012 by Johnny Taylor

Frankly between the two of us, while I do see the merits in designing a mobile website first — in terms of a website’s information architecture as well as the aesthetic appeal, especially for the sake of its usability and appearance on a small screen — I’m not sold yet on whether a mobile site has to be designed first. That said, it does need to be designed at the same time. Semantics, eh? I’m hilarious, I know. But thanks for thinking it.

So what’s this “mobile first with a twist” schtick? Basically it’s a bunch of borrowed idea’s from Ethan Marcotte’s amazing little book, Responsive Web Design, Luke Wroblewski’s “equally” little book, Mobile First, (by the way, me calling each author’s book “little” isn’t a slight in the least, both book’s strength lie in their size, and that’s the point) and something I’m sure Harry Roberts wrote a little while ago but I can’t relocate now. About designing for less capable browsers first then adding on top of that base for more capable browsers — or specifically how such an approach plays with Internet Explorer 8 and below.

Anyway the “mobile first with a twist” approach is quite simply a matter of designing a website for mobile, meaning for small screens (not just visually but functionally too), then tweak it larger, with the least amount of effort and the most basic — yet responsive — CSS possible. This as your starting point. A base from which to build. The thinking is this is what a visitor will see and use who is using a less capable web browser…

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