I gave a presentation in a workshop this morning on the topic of “HTML tables best practices”. The catch: I didn’t get time to prepare properly and the audience was predominantly designers and non-technical types.

I cobbled the thing together in half an hour during the first presentation of a colleague and the result is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but might be helpful to you aswell:

Best practise on HTML tables for the non-techie audience

Yes, I couldn’t resist creating my own slideshow JavaScript thingy…

European Digital Rights and Privacy International have sent an urgent letter yesterday to the UK Presidency and the European Commissioners for Justice and Media to show restraint in today’s extraordinary JHA Council. EDRI expects the UK Presidency to table a new urgent procedure for the proposal on telecommunication data retention, bypassing the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Full news and downloadable PDF on the EDRI site

• www.edri.org
• http://www.privacyinternational.org

I just went through some sites for an accessibility audit and keep bumping into the same issue: Alternative text for the sake of alternative text. If I surf some pages with a text browser, IBM Homepage Reader or Jaws and it takes me 10 minutes more to find my way around, I start wondering where the common sense was when the site was created or who was the main target for these alternative texts. Take this gem taken from a noscript block:

We use javascript to write a “breadcrumb” here. If you want to view it you need to enable scripting in your browser. If this is not an option for you, you can navigate easily and in an equivalent way, by modifying the address of the page that you are viewing. For example: if the address shown is http://www.example.com/section1/a_and_b/c_and_d.html – you can change this to http://www.example.com/section1/a_and_b.html to navigate to the previous page in the hierachy or to http://www.example.com/section1.html to navigate to the top page in the hierachy.

They forgot to mention that I can also go to their competitors site, who didn’t bother using JavaScript to generate breadcrumbs, and offers me three easily understandable links.

Another issue is that a lot of developers rely on title attributes to deliver crucial information, like “PDF Document” or “opens in new window”, and not all who use assistive technology do have title reading enabled. Some even get rid of it by default, and who could blame them when you get titles like “Click to skip to content (skips navigation)” for a “Skip to content” link and a “click to visit the xyz page” for links stating “xyz”?

Generally, there are some sins I try to avoid:

• Alternative text that is dependent on the image/effect
• Alternative text that is overly elaborate – think of explaining something over the phone, not read out a manual
• Needless repetition of text. A link is a link, no need to repeat that (My favourite was “link to www.example.com – click to activate – opens in new window” as a title).

The sites with the best usability are the ones that helped us reach our visit goal without realising how the site helped us. As soon as you need elaborate explanations it is a sign that you either broke a convention or your interaction steps to reach the goal are simply too complex.

To anybody arriving here via “graphic images london bombs” in Google: What is wrong with you?

I left the house at 8am, and wanted to get to work in time. I crossed Kings Cross probably 10 minutes before the Explosion and got evacuated at Victoria. 50 minutes bus ride later I arrived at the office at 10:20 just to hear that the workshop I had to hold got cancelled. Now I am stuck here and don’t see much chance to get home tonight (south west to north east). And some lowlife spams me with comment spam. Cheers.

And that after all the happy news yesterday. The olympic games are coming, software patents got fought off and the crazy frog gets it in the netherlands .

Update
I am deeply touched by all the emails, text messages and instant messages coming in asking if I am alright.
This is what is important right now, not how many people are dead and injured, where you can find the most graphic pictures and who did it. There is a reason for terrorism, and fighting terrorism is protecting us, but it is fighting a symptom, not a cause. There is also no protection against terrorism. You can do a lot, but there is no way to prevent people from killing other.
It seems causing harm to one another is one of the parts of the human psyche where we are the most inventive. In the middle ages people were unable to read or write but they knew how to torture people and how to create weapons that maim the most.
I don’t want to sound like a hippie, but caring for another and enjoying life and getting on with life is the most important thing right now. I just came back from the shops as I had to buy some clothes to wear tomorrow (I am staying in a company flat nearby) and on my way here I saw a bunch of kids driving their small scooters through a fountain and giggling like mad when they got splashed. It may be a trivial sight, but the innocence and carelessness of it was wonderful to behold. It is not us terrorists fight, it is what we supposedly stand for. Do not let them turn us into bad people full of hate, cause this will mean they have won.

Aspiring athletes can book a place to put their sleeping bag in my flat now. £250 a night, no breakfast included.
At least that will mean we can use the Dome for something again, depending that it still stands then.