Category: Monday

Monday, March 10th 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Michael Alex Wasylik, Esq. – ricardolaw.com
Anitra Pavka – anitrapavka.com

Cost of Lawyers vs Web Designers/Coders
-Target Defense Team: 8 highly-paid lawyers from one of California’s most expensive law firm
– Just fixing the site would be much cheaper – worst case scenario: total site redesign and recode
(they may spend millions of dollars just defending this case – how much would it cost to just fix?)

Disability Stats
-In the world: 10% of the worlds population has some disability
In the US
-10 million visually impaired, 1.5-3 million use the Internet
In California
-140,000 visually impaired, 10,000 use the Internet

Section 508 (Rehabilitation Act of 1974)
-Applies primarily to govt. and govt. contractors
-Passed in 1998 to expressly include web sites

Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990
-Title III of the Act applies to private businesses with “Public Accommodations”
-Does not expressly mention web sites

Is your site a public accommodation?
Twelve types listed:

• inn, hotel, motel, or other place of lodging
• restaurant, bars
• movie theater, concert hall
• auditorium
• retail sales
• retail services
• terminal, depot, or transportation
• museum, library, gallery
• park, zoo, amusement park
• schools or education
• day care, elder care, or social services
• gym, health spa, exercise

2002 first case to address Title III’s application to web sites.
“A public accommodation must be a physical, concrete structure”
ADA does not apply to web sites in 2002 – case dismissed

Target Case:
Target stores are “places of accommodation” under ADA
ADA broader than merely limited physical access
Unequal access to Target.com denies the blind the full enjoyment of the goods and services offered at Target stores, which are places of public accommodation

What NFBlind said:
Not accessible to screen readers (JAWS)
Images lack ALT tags
-image maps for navigation
-images used as form buttons
-merchandise images
Inadequate use of headers to structure content
Improper form labeling
Mouse required for major functions

Online only may be covered – amazon.com, 37 signals, Dell – not covered by title III
Brick and Mortar stores that are also online are covered by title III – Borders, Apple

Monday, March 10th 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Jon Wiley – Google

Why?
Why does Google have ~117 images for search?
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make is UNIVERSALLY available.

Does internationalization = translation?? NO
Internationalization is the design of the product for many different areas (i18n = internationalization).
Localization is the act of taking your product (which you have already internationalized) and turning it into something appropriate for your particular market.

Localization is more than translation. – involves local content for a particular area – legal compliance – marketing – keyboards – currency formats – date formats – cultural appropriateness

Character Encoding:
It was easy once when there was just ASCII – many others came around but eventually everything came into Unicode.
Specifically want to use UTF-8 (8bit unicode).
Why use?
It is compatible with legacy ASCII content – makes ASCII a subset of UTF-8
Modern OS’s support it (not all platforms/browsers support ALL unicode)
Has all the characters you need
You can present a mix of scripts at once
Smaller than UTF-16 for most content – uses smaller bytes and could take up less space.

Careful wen using markup characters (less than greater than)
when you need hard to see characters ( )

Tell the browser:
in your content type declaration in response header (browsers give higher priority to ct)
meta element
external CSS

Find content in the right language.
Be sure to serve content in the correct language.

lang and xml:lang attribute on html element to clarify language
meta element in the doc header
content language in response header

Text direction:
LTR = left to right text
RTL = right to left text
bidi = bi-directional text
How does this work? It is going to be in logical order.
Markup is LTR. Numbers are LTR. Spaces and punctuation are neutral – they take on the characteristics of the words around them.

Dir attribute in html – dir=”rtl” <p> – there is a CSS attribute but best not to use.

Text expansion:
English is a compact language (compared to other languages)
small words can expand 200-300% in other language. This is usually not good, especially in menus etc where they could break things in other languages. Rule of thumb is =40%.

Tools:
Google translation service (http://translate.google.com) – good for a quick check to test a site – don’t use for production output.
CSS Janus – script for flipping CSS-based layouts – table layouts don’t have this problem – not a total solution (http://cssjaus.commoner.com)

Monday, March 10th 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Paul Boag Founder, Boagworld
Jina Bolton Sushi & Robots
Mark Norman Francis Web Architect, Yahoo! Europe
Steve Ganz LinkedIn
Steve Smith Web Guy, Ordered List

Social Networking Defined:
myspace facebook linkedin – much deeper – everything we do w/another person online – email twitter podcasts flickr
Any interaction between two people online is social networking.

Brand Defined:
who you come across as a person online and your own identity – not just logos and letterhead
Your brand is the promise of an experience they will have with an entity.

Ways to use personal brand:
use as a sales tool – personal brand is directly connected to what you do (writing and speaking)
many times just for business purposes

Steve Smith is tough to brand with a name (very common) chose something unique and memorable and keeping consistent. Consistency is the key!

Tips and Tricks:
If there are other’s out there with your name or brand, you need a way to set yourself apart. Screen names and avatars – pick a name and stick with it.
Commenting and the frequency of comments can help/hurt your brand.

Failures:
Do searches and see what is currently out there about you and keep an eye on it. Google yourself and be conscious of your image.

Tools:
Twitter
Podcasting – not for everyone
Upcoming.org

The Real World:
For visual people, find a photo to go with a business card you receive to help remember people.
If you’ve appropriated branded yourself online, it should carry through to real life. If you’re genuinely interested in the networking and branding aspect, it will carry through to your real life.