Presentation

• Download the slides
• Download the handout

Videos

• Panther Goes to College
• Panther: PCC is Tobacco Free
• Twit Panther
• Poppe On Copyright

Web forms rock

They are easily accessible, can feed information directly to a database and replace tree-killing paper versions.

Web forms suck

They are difficult to style, require massive validation and and the elements look drastically different on each browser.

And don’t get me started on accessibility.

OK, get me started…

It takes a lot of work to make forms accessible to those using assistance devices.

Yet, it is worth it – people with differing levels of sight and mobility deserve to be able to use your form. And sometimes, your form becomes the only option when they can’t interact with the paper version.

So webmonkeys, please think about:

• Proper fieldset nesting.
• Labels and titles that make sense.
• TabIndex when appropriate.
• Validation that works with screen readers.

But, even with all that – some users will be frustrated by the computers lack of cooperation. For instance…

On a Mac (OSX), using tab to navigate FAILS

You see, buried deep in the system preferences (the computer’s, not the browser’s) is a setting for “Full Keyboard Access” that is set, by standard, to skip select, and radio button inputs.

FireFox seems to respect this and skips those elements. Good for FireFox. Bad for users.

The funny thing is that Safari partially ignores it and allows you to tab to select inputs. However, radio buttons are still out.

So, let your users know where to chance this setting:

Computer System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > Look to the bottom at “Full Keyboard Access” and select “All Controls”

… but of course the setting to recognize radio buttons IS A RADIO BUTTON!

So, good luck navigating to it via the keyboard.

The Accessible Video Interface

Notes and resources for presentation at the 2009 eLearning  in Portland, OR.

The age of video on the Web is here! Both content creators and users have high expectations and you may become caught in the middle. Learn how to create an accessible media interface that will allow your institution to deliver high quality Flash video with closed captioning, convey a consistent design across your Web presence, and remain easy to maintain even after your “small” project is unexpectedly scaled to include hundreds of videos.

• 2009 Presentation slides: keynote format or plain old pdf
• Audio Recording: high (53MB), Med (27MB),  or Low (13MB)
  (you may also want to view the notes and edits from presentation)

(more…)

We were supposed to have a 2hr layover in Denver. Now going on 3 with the sign still just blinks “DELAYED”

At least Luis and Karen are here to keep me company. (more…)

The age of video on the Web is here! Both content creators and users have high expectations and you may become caught in the middle. Learn how to create an accessible media interface that will allow your institution to deliver high quality Flash video with closed captioning, convey a consistent design across your Web presence, and remain easy to maintain even after your “small” project is unexpectedly scaled to include hundreds of videos.

• 2008 Presentation slides
• 2008 Overview handout

Downloads to get you started:

• Download:
  • Version 1.0 (basic, a good place to start)
  • Version 1.1 (recently used in production)
  • Version 1.2 (adds full screen, link to transcript)
    
• Examples:
  • View the basic and production versions
  • dfxp.xml caption file
  • smil.xml file

Other Resources:

• Creating Captions
  • NCAM/Media Access Generator (MAGpie)
• ActionScript3 Documentation:
  • Using the FLVPlayback component
  • FLVPlayback component details
  • FLVPlaybacCaptioning component details
    
  • UILoader component details
  • Using a SMIL file
  • Handling events
• Community MX
  • Flash Video: Why the Other Players Don’t Get It By Robert Reinhardt
  • The Working with SMIL Series by Robert Reinhardt (You will need to be a member)
• GoToAndPlay.Net
  • Learn about the trouble we had with our streaming provider (and how it was fixed)
• SWFObject
  • Javascript Flash Player detection and embed script

I was asked to give a presentation on “new media” during the 2008 ELC Inservice. Beforehand, I contacted a few of the faculty that planned to attend. They helped me decide to go the 101 route which ended up working well.

For each topic, we covered:

• What is this thing?
• The good, the bad…
• Getting started (join the community)
• Master the tool (set up your own)
• And then some time for questions

This format worked and was well received by the final audience.

Materials

• Download a PDF of the slides

Yes, I still have not corrected the “feeda” spelling mistake!

“HighEdWeb is an organization of Web professionals working at institutions of higher education. We design, develop, manage and map the futures of higher education Web sites.”

Each year, the organization puts on a conference where web professionals from colleges around the country gather to learn, discuss and network. I had the opportunity to attend in 2006 and had a great time. Afterwards, I thought about how to contribute and ended up submitting two proposals for 2007. Both were accepted. There will be an hour long session called “The accessible video interface” and a poster presentation called “Pattern Matching: An Introduction to Regular Expressions“. (more…)

The new camera just came in at work – a Nikon D40X.

I decided to bring it home over the weekend and get some practice. Posted below are some sickeningly sweet pictures for you to enjoy. The puppy “Plinko” belongs to a friend of ours. The kitten (well more of a cat at this point) lives with us. Her name is “Bebop”. Click for larger versions.

The Student Success and Retention Conference was held February 8-9, 2007 at Portland State University’s University Place, 310 SW Lincoln Street Portland, Oregon. The SSR Conference was sponsored by the Joint Boards Articulation Commission, Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development, the Oregon University System, and Oregon’s community colleges.Together, Andrew Roessler and I were invited to present: (more…)

The web team started getting requests to post pages of images. Maintaining photo galleries Flikr style seemed a bit odd for an education site. How usefully would a separate page of random images be for a prospective Mathematics student? However, I do understand that there are times where a single, static image is not enough. So I created a simple slide show interface.

(more…)