"Code Talks"

If you build it will they come?

http://wiki.codetalks.org/

We need a new logo.
We need authors.
We need advice on organizing the wiki.
We need to figure out what we want this wiki to be.
We includes you.

Thoughts?

W3C internal ARIA drafts now public

In April I joined the Protocols and Formats Working Group (PFWG) at the W3C as an "invited expert". In joining I gained access to the internal ARIA drafts. I'm pleased to participate and am particularly happy with our recent decision to go public with our internal drafts: WAI-ARIA, and the WAI-ARIA Roadmap.

But... these are not like the regular public drafts, so please be sure to look for disclaimers as noted in this email: Updated WAI-ARIA Editors' Drafts Now Publicly Available.

Now, let's all get ARIA 1.0 wrapped up soon!

Thanks for reading.

Accessible Web Interactivity Today!

You can use ARIA to make your DHTML accessible today.

I'm still seeing discussion about old techniques for JavaScript accessibility without any reference to the new draft WAI-ARIA specification and best practices guide. I find this alarming, and I can only conclude we need to do a better job at getting the word out.

WAI-ARIA provides a way to give semantic meaning to the DOM nodes which make up your DHTML user interface. Add ARIA role, property and state information appropriately and your DHTML widgets become accessible to assistive technology such as screen readers, and your whizbang Web2.0 application can reach that many more people. It is just good business sense.

The main browsers and JavaScript toolkits are adding support for ARIA. Let's move forward!

What is this thing we call "design"?

Today I attended a lecture by Nigel Cross titled, "Designerly Ways of Knowing: Understanding how Designers Think and Work".

For me, the "take home" stuff came near the end when Nigel juxtaposed his analyses of conventional problem solvers, and great designers. Here are my notes:

Conventional problem solvers:

• tackle the problem in the 'easiest' way
• accept the problem rules
• adopt standard problem representations
• re-use previous solutions

Expert designers:

• tackle the problem in a 'difficult' way
• challenge the problem rules
• construct novel problem representations
• create new solutions from first principles

Where do you fit in?

Mozilla and Accessibility

Aaron Leventhal has started a thread called: "Mozilla accessibility -- collecting stories & dreams". If you'd like to read what folks say about the Mozilla Foundation and its relentless commitment to keeping the internet a place for everyone, check it out.