Category: News

Obama’s Web Transparency: not for everybody.

May 18, 2009

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Topics: Accessibility, News.

President Barack Obama’s approach to information transparency is admirable. His connection to the public through the major media channels of the digital age: the White House web site, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media methods is impressive. It’s a great way for the public to keep up to date on the activities of their government. Unfortunately, the accessibility level of these web resources is — all in all — not really up to the levels one would hope for. […]

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Minimum Color Contrast Ratio Changed in WCAG 2

December 15, 2008

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Topics: Accessibility, News, Web standards.

In the final release of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2, the acceptable minimum color contrast ratio was changed from 5:1 to 4.5:1. I’ve updated both my color contrast tests — Color Contrast Comparison Tool and the Color Contrast Spectrum Tool to reflect the change in contrast ratio. What does this change mean? Essentially, this means that the working group decided that color combinations with lower contrast (more similar colors) were acceptable for general use on the web. This is […]

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WCAG 2 Reaches Recommendation Status

December 11, 2008

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Topics: Accessibility, News, Web standards.

It’s been a long time coming, but as of today the standards of accessibility expressed in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are officially updated. A W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) recommendation is the most final state a document can reach in the W3C standards system, and should now be considered the standard document for accessibility, superceding WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 1. A W3C Recommendation is a specification or set of guidelines that, after extensive consensus-building, has received the endorsement […]

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Joe Clark’s New Book

September 24, 2008

4 Comments

Topics: News.

“Organizing our Marvellous Neighbours” is now available for purchase! So, Joe Clark — web accessibility guru, now retired from the field — is publishing a new book. The new book is on what could be considered an obscure field, except for the minor detail that approximately 33,383,245 people deal with the subject every day. The name of the book is Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours: How to Feel Good About Canadian English, and the subject is the peculiarities of English spelling […]

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Target Lawsuit: Settlement Reached

August 27, 2008

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Topics: Accessibility, Law, News.

Read more at the WebAIM blog: “Target Lawsuit Settled.” No legal definitions established today, I’m afraid to say. Although this is a victory on behalf of the claimants, who were awarded substantive damages on their claim, there was no establishment of any kind of legal precedent. This is primarily due to one singular item in the settlement: No Admission of Liability. By agreeing to and voluntarily entering into this Agreement, there is no admission or concession by Target, direct or […]

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