This post is an unexpected follow-up to my post Image alt Exception Change Re-Re-Requested (note one fewer “re-”) from June 2012. Back then, some had called into question the need for alt attributes to be required and ubiquitous on all img tags. Well, guess what — alt is back under…
Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the University at Buffalo (my alma mater) to give a presentation for its CIT professional development series. I got to talk about responsive design. Knowing in advance that the room would have technical and non-technical users I went for a code-free presentation. One…
Yesterday Matt Cutts from Google tweeted that Google search results for users on smartphones may be adjusted based on the kinds of errors a web site produces (of course I was excited): Important: if your website has smartphone errors, we may change rankings for smartphone users: goo.gl/x8R4A #smx— Matt Cutts…
This post isn’t proposing any solutions (although I do toss out a hack). This post is a rant that I hope helps influence browser makers. Background Much of my web work isn’t for public facing web sites. Often it’s for enterprise-level software that is deployed via the web and used…
On Friday, May 17 I had the pleasure of speaking for the first time at Stir Trek, a one-day conference in Columbus, Ohio, that drew over 1,200 attendees (and I understand sold out in just a few minutes). Apparently the name is a reference to the MIX developer conference, for…
As of today I am an author over at Web Standards Sherpa. I wrote an article discussing the process of juggling a no-budget, tight-timeframe web site for Buffalo Soccer Club while still trying to adhere to best practices. The article is titled “Balancing Act: Features, Budgets & Timelines.” I get a…
Last week I spent my Friday afternoon trying to get my head around how to apply ARIA properly to a tabbed interface. I even got so far as to map it out on my whiteboard and snap a photo so I could mull it over during the weekend. And then…
I have no illusions that accessibility on the web can be tricky. It’s primarily tricky because of the way developers choose to implement it. Web Axe nicely sums it up: Most people don’t realize that the web IS accessible. The problem is that designers and developers break it.— Web Axe…
Why yes, Dominos, I’d love to tap again to get your real home page to order a pizza when I could have done it right here, below your over-sized app pitch that could be done in a tiny ribbon. This may be old news to some of you, but I…
Now that the (Western, my favorite) holiday season is upon us, the tradition of advent calendars whose chocolate is replaced with web-related tips and articles is back. This year’s crop is missing some from last year, but there’s still good stuff to be found. If you know of any others,…
When I saw main proposed as an element a few months ago (or content or maincontent as alternate names), I didn’t think the process to fold it into the HTML specification would move very quickly. Much to my surprise on the W3C HTML Working Group mailing list the main element…
Typography on the web has come a long way from the days of a handful of web-safe fonts, six sizes, and little other control. With the ability to embed custom typefaces in web pages and exert a great deal of control via CSS, it was a matter of time before…