Archive for category Rants

My Thing About the Thing That Thing Wrote About Thing

Posted by John in HTML5, Rants, Web Accessibility on November 15, 2011

Late last week, Divya Manian wrote an article entitled Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value, where, after sort of getting things half-right, half-wrong she concludes with the following:

There is no harm using div elements; you can continue using them instead of section and article. I think we should use the new elements to make your mark-up readable, not for any inherent semantic advantage.

Divya is quite confused about web accessibility. I examine everything she says in a detailed, semi-sarcastic, no-holds barred manner. Conclusion: Semantics matter – a lot.

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Not The Blog Post I Was Going To Write Today

Posted by John in Rants, Web Accessibility on November 5, 2011

Death to CAPTCHAs – do your part. The user-pain inflicted by CAPTCHAs on persons with disabilities are well known and documented. Not only are CAPTCHAs impossible to decipher for non-visual users (the entire premise of CAPTCHAS is that you can see something that a computer cannot), but they also are difficult-to-impossible for users with cognitive disabilities, low-vision users, your Mom, my Dad and very often you and me.

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A Letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary

Posted by John in Rants, Web Accessibility on April 23, 2010

John Conyers, Jr. Chairman U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Washington, DC Dear Mr. Conyers, You don’t know me. However, I feel that at the very least you should know that I’ve dedicated the last decade of my life working towards making the Internet accessible to everyone. To you, your family and friends, [...]

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It started with a simple thought…

Posted by John in Rants on April 14, 2010

I follow a lot of people on twitter. Honestly, some of the people I follow are not necessarily “web accessibiity” people, although most have some level of tech savvy. Some of the people I follow are people whom I follow simply to help me understand the perspective of people with disabilities. Blind users. Deaf users. [...]

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Standard or Specification?

Posted by John in HTML5, Rants, Web Accessibility on February 8, 2010

Preamble You skipped over a question I asked in the previous e-mail: If there is advice in the UAAG spec that you think implementors should follow here, then the best way we can ensure that it is followed is, IMHO, to also include it in HTML. Is there something I’ve omitted that UAAG recommends of [...]

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Standards Are Not Just Stuff and Nonesense

Posted by John in HTML5, Rants on January 12, 2010

While HTML5′s generals play with toy soldiers, designers and developers who just want the war to be over, get on with the fight by speaking about, writing about, teaching and using HTML5. Andy Clarke

Standards are more than just specifications. Standards are translated into numerous languages, printed with actual paper & ink in books (which are sold in shops, stored in libraries and used as teaching materials in schools), combed over by legal folk, management folk, and other stake holders who might not know a CSS child-element from a JSON call, but they do know what ‘broken’ means.

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Are We Still Arguing About Validation?

Posted by John in HTML5, Rants on October 7, 2009

As someone who has been teaching HTML for over a decade, I have recollections of students (authoring in Notepad) in total panic because they forgot to close their </table>s, and thus Netscape 3 would deliver a blank page (Draconian error handling has a history too) – I also remember that they only made that mistake once, and never forgot it after that.

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