Links: captioning, accessibility, reading, etc.

November 23, 2008 / Links round-up and associated commentary.

This is how the web gets regulated #

Timely article on A List Apart by Joe Clark about the (appalling) state of captioning on the web, and the possibility of a legislative requirement soon in Canada and Australia. It’s pretty dismal currently despite the fact that WCAG+Samurai and WCAG 2.0 require (yes) captioning for video. He mentions, and criticises, YouTube’s closed captioning model.

Blue Beanie Day II #

Blue Beanie Day II is coming up. Show your support for web standards and accessibility by wearing a blue beanie on Friday, November 28, wherever you lurk on the web. Here’s some photos from the inaugural BBD last year.

The 100% easy-2-read standard #

Another touchstone article about usability and web text by Oliver Reichenstein, author of the reasonably infamous “Web Design is 95% Typography” essay. This one is just as thoughtful, more practical and very easy to read :P (Via Joe Clark.)

Notepad++ and E Text Editor #

I’m looking for a Windows text editor for occasional use on my work PC. According to a couple of Mac-to-Windows switcher threads on Ask MeFi, Notepad++ (free, donations accepted) is pretty popular. E Text Editor, “the power of TextMate on Windows,” looks pretty nice in the promo video, especially the way that code completion works in HTML mode (US$35).

Some thoughtful UI on ffffound.com #

Ryan Singer looks at Ffffound’s use of keyboard shortcuts to navigate images on the site. “J” skips you down the page to the next image, “K” back up, and if you get to the end of the page the same key requests the next or previous page instead. Rad. (Via John Gruber, who notes that the same shortcuts work within posts on The Big Picture.)

Social Media Classroom #

SMC is a Drupal application that provides a set of tools for web-based collaboration (wikis, blogs, media collections, Twitter and Delicious integration). It was developed by Howard Rheingold with the goal of increasing and facilitating media literacy. It looks like it would make Drupal an even better tool for communities who need to meet and work together online. My friend Brian Christiansen worked on the UI.