Nate Koechley » Accessibility http://nate.koechley.com/blog Web professional with deep frontend engineering expertise skilled in user experience design and product strategy. Successful team leader, manager, and executive. Sought-after speaker, writer, and trainer. Fri, 14 May 2010 22:52:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Test Suites for CSS 2.1, ARIA, and HTML5 http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2009/01/27/test-suites-for-css-21-aria-and-html5/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2009/01/27/test-suites-for-css-21-aria-and-html5/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:43:59 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/?p=511 Just hours ago Microsoft released an amazing new resource that helps the entire frontend engineering industry. Their Windows Internet Explorer Testing Center contains thousands of test cases covering CSS 2.1, HTML5, and WAI-ARIA.

CSS gets the most coverage with 7005 tests, 3784 of them developed just since IE8’s “beta 2″ a few months ago. IE8 passes all 7005, including, mysteriously, 52 tests that do not pass on any other major browser.

For HTML5, coverage includes 13 cross-document messaging and 30 DOM Storage tests. For WAI – ARIA they submitted new samples to support their previously-submitted ARIA to MSAA roles, events, and mappings.

While a great resource for the standardization movement in general, it also goes a long way to support their stated belief that “IE8 RC1 has the most complete implementation of the CSS 2.1 specification in the industry.” It will be very interesting to see if any of the other browsers care to comment. I’m hoping for a four-way tie.

Read more:

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2009/01/27/test-suites-for-css-21-aria-and-html5/feed/ 1 Accessibility Movers – Henny Swan to Opera from RNIB http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2008/09/09/henny-iheni-swan/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2008/09/09/henny-iheni-swan/#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:44:50 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/?p=504 I just noticed that Henry Henny “iheni” Swan — Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at Royal National Institute of the Blind for the past six years — is taking a job at Opera Software as a Web Evangelist. In addition to wishing him her well, his her post, Hello Opera provides a few quick tidbits about the Opera roster these days.

Congrats, iheni! I hope to see at a conference soon.

Update: I wrote this post in the middle of the night after working entirely too long and late. In my delirium, I misread Henny as Henry and used incorrect pronouns. Further, in the headline I mistakenly typed Swar instead of Swan (though I got it right in the body and in the permalink).

Sincere apologies for my clumsiness. Thanks to Henny for setting me straight!

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2008/09/09/henny-iheni-swan/feed/ 1 CNET Announces closed-captioning http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnet-announces-closed-captioning/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnet-announces-closed-captioning/#comments Sat, 15 Dec 2007 04:02:50 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnet-announces-closed-captioning/ Earlier this week CNET began providing closed-captioning for the online video offerings. This is great for web accessibility, and needed with the rise of web video. As far as I know they’re the first large outfit to provide captioning. It’s about time, the need to “provide a text equivalent for every non-text element” is Section 1.1 of the W3C’sWCAG 1.0 specs (published in May of 1999) and retains that prominence in WCAG 2.0 (which issued its second Last Call Working Draft on 11 December 2007).

The day will come when all online video is captioned, and I’m proud of good ol’ CNET for leading the pack.

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/12/14/cnet-announces-closed-captioning/feed/ 1 Is That You? http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/05/02/is-that-you/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/05/02/is-that-you/#comments Wed, 02 May 2007 16:57:05 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/05/02/is-that-you/ I’ll keep this short: I’m looking for a few top-notch front-end engineers / web developers for some interesting and challenging projects. If you think that’s you, please drop me a note at nate at koechley dot com.

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/05/02/is-that-you/feed/ 0 Speaking in Singapore http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/03/12/speaking-in-singapore/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/03/12/speaking-in-singapore/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:30:23 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/03/12/speaking-in-singapore/ I’m scheduled to present two sessions at the upcoming Webinale conference in Singapore on April 23rd and 24th.

More details soon, but wanted to give you advance notice.

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/03/12/speaking-in-singapore/feed/ 1 W3C News: WAI-ARIA Suite Updated http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/01/05/wai-aria-update_20061220/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/01/05/wai-aria-update_20061220/#comments Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:25:56 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/01/05/wai-aria-update_20061220/

The Protocols and Formats Working Group has published updated Working Drafts of WAI-ARIA Roadmap, Roles, and States and Properties. The suite describes accessibility of rich Web content using interactive technologies such as AJAX and DHTML. These concepts are further introduced in the WAI-ARIA Overview. The PFWG charter has been updated to allow the group to publish Recommendation-track documents. Accordingly, WAI-ARIA Roles and States and Properties are now intended to become W3C Recommendations; the Roadmap remains a draft Working Group Note. Visit the WAI PFWG home page.

Note that there is a new WAI ARIA introduction and overview document, and that comments are welcome until 19 January 2006.

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2007/01/05/wai-aria-update_20061220/feed/ 0 Web Builder 2.0 Slides http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/12/05/webbuilder-vegas-slides/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/12/05/webbuilder-vegas-slides/#comments Wed, 06 Dec 2006 05:38:22 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/12/05/webbuilder-vegas-slides/ I’m back in my suite at Ceasar’s in Vegas, having just finished presenting my third of three talks at the Web Builder 2.0 conference. Yesterday I presented two talks: my Accessible DHTML talk, and my Yahoo! vs. Yahoo! DHTML Case Studies talk. Today I presented a new talk titled Inside the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library. All three seemed well received, and it was an honor to have a packed room for each. I met lots of great people, and am looking forward to following up with all the new people I met. (Please drop me a note if I didn’t get your email address!)

The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library

This talk was in four parts: Why we build it; What we built; Why we gave it away; Why you might like using it.

Accessible DHTML

What are some techniques for making modern web interfaces accessible?

Yahoo! vs. Yahoo! – Case Studies of Three Mainstream, Large-Scale Ajax/DHTML Implementations

How do you manage complex object/event interfaces? Memory Management? Data Transportation? Etc.

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/12/05/webbuilder-vegas-slides/feed/ 6 XHTML News: “Role Attribute” and “2.0″ Working Drafts http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/07/26/xhtml-news-role-attribute-and-20-working-drafts/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/07/26/xhtml-news-role-attribute-and-20-working-drafts/#comments Wed, 26 Jul 2006 23:01:05 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/07/26/xhtml-news-role-attribute-and-20-working-drafts/ Two interesting pieces of XHTML news this week. Yesterday the Working Draft for the XHTML Role Attribute was released, and today the eighth public Working Draft of XHTML 2.0 was released.

XHTML 2.0 is clearly important, but I’m especially interested in the Role Attribute because this first public working draft comes out of the excellent Accessible DHTML work contributed to the W3C by IMB, and already functional in Firefix > 1.5.x. Here are the blurbs for each:

XHTML 2.0: Working Draft

2006-07-26: The HTML Working Group has released the eighth public Working Draft of XHTML™ 2.0. A general purpose markup language without presentation elements, XHTML 2 is designed for representing documents for a wide range of purposes across the Web. See the introduction for the differences between XHTML versions 1 and 2. Much of XHTML 2 works in existing browsers. The draft includes an implementation in RELAX NG with DTD and XML Schema implementations to follow. Visit the HTML home page. (Permalink)

XHTML Role Attribute Module: Working Draft

2006-07-25: The HTML Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of the XHTML Role Attribute Module to provide the ability to integrate the role attribute into any markup language based on XHTML Modularization 1.1. Developed in conjunction with the accessibility community and other groups, the document is the first of a series of XHTML modules designed to help extend the scope of XHTML-family markup languages into new environments. Visit the HTML home page. (Permalink)

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/07/26/xhtml-news-role-attribute-and-20-working-drafts/feed/ 2 New stuff from Yahoo! Developer Network http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/05/09/second-yui-release/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/05/09/second-yui-release/#comments Wed, 10 May 2006 05:15:58 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/05/09/new-stuff-from-yahoo-developer-network/ Blatent plug for work stuff here: I wanted you, my readers, to be amongst the first to hear that we’ve just released lots of new and improved stuff this evening. These three blog posts on yuiblog.com will get you started:

Now you’re ready to head over to YDN for all the details:

Two other things to point out. First, we’ve included CSS packages in this release for the first time, specifically CSS Grids, CSS Fonts and CSS Reset. The second thing, beyond the cool code and design stuff, is that we’ve moved our code distribution and public bug tracking to SourceForge. This will, I believe, be an important step forward for us. Check it all out and let me know what you think.

]]> http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/05/09/second-yui-release/feed/ 1 The future of HTML, in two parts, from IBM Developer Works http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/04/16/the-future-of-html-in-two-parts-from-ibm-developer-works/ http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/04/16/the-future-of-html-in-two-parts-from-ibm-developer-works/#comments Sun, 16 Apr 2006 23:38:44 +0000 Nate Koechley http://nate.koechley.com/blog/2006/04/16/the-future-of-html-in-two-parts-from-ibm-developer-works/ I’m not sure how I missed these two articles, one from 2005.12.06 and the other from 2006.01.25. They are both writen by Edd Dumbill, Chair, XTech Conference, and are cross-published to the XML and Web architecture sections of IBM’s developerWorks site.

In these two articles, I’ve presented the salient points of both WHATWG’s HTML 5 and the W3C’s XHTML 2.0. The two initiatives are quite different: The grassroots-organised WHATWG aims for a gently incremental enhancement of HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0, whereas the consortium-sponsored XHTML 2.0 is a comprehensive refactoring of the HTML language.

I recommend reading both (though perhaps start with the second), because together they’re a authoratative, thorough and current introduction/summary of where we are today and where we’re going. If your development practice involves thoughful consideration of your markup layer – and it definitely should – they you’ll want to know this stuff.

They quickly cover significant ground, offering concise overviews of W3C & WHATWG, HTML 5 & XHTML 2.0, some specifics like canvas, Web Forms 2.0, XForms, Web APIs, and Web Application Formats, and make a strong case for “Why XHTML 2.0?”.

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