Monthly Archives

 

Whitecap Custom Rods

My most recent project at Riven Design was a brand new Drupal site for Whitecap Custom Rods. The owners of WhitecapRods.com pride themselves on building rods "with an enthusiasm for excellence". It shows in their work, and I hope it shows in their site.

Whitecap Custom Rods

Posted on Wednesday May 27, 2009
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Riven Design Online

My business site, RivenDesign.com, has a new look. As well as the new style, I've improved the accessibility with better skip links and a better use of headings. It also has an updated version of Drupal.

Riven Design

Posted on Wednesday May 27, 2009
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Two Accessibility Discussions You Need to Follow

There are two good accessibility discussions going on right now, and you need to be following them. The first is Glenda Watson Hyatt's Four Parties Contribute to an Accessible Blogosphere. Glenda is pushing for more accessibility in blogging platforms and on blogs themselves. This is an idea whose time has come. Blogs by design are dynamic and adaptable. Let's adapt them toward accessibility. The second discussion is accessibility in the US Government. This discussion is being driven by Jim Thatcher and Joe Dolson

I have also managed to put in my own two cents worth a couple of times.

The one tragic similarity that I'm seeing in these government site's being discussed is that they're all very close to being accessible, but they fall short. How close? Joe Dolson suggests that WhiteHouse.gov could be significantly improved by the addition of five short lines of CSS. By my count that's about 83 characters. The addition of that CSS wouldn't solve everything, but the other changes aren't much more significant. To come so close to being truly accessible, and still falling short. It's like running the perfect marathon and walking off the course a few feet short of the finish line.

Posted on Monday May 18, 2009
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NY Senate, Drupal, and Accessibility

I just noticed at Dries Buytaert's site that New York State Senate is using Drupal. It's now a very stylish looking Drupal site. Its' visual style is quite nice, but what lurks below the surface?

  • No skip links to bypass blocks of content for screen readers or keyboard-only users
  • Links not clearly identified
  • No hover or focus effects on links to assist in navigation and link identification
  • No level one header (h1) on home page to identify the page
  • Drop down navigation is useless for keyboard-only navigation. It leaves some content extremely difficult to reach, if not completely beyond reach.

Why the half measures? Making a site accessible is more work. Making a site this un-accessible takes an active effort. The default CSS property for a link is to have an outline. This site has a focus outline property of zero. It's turned off so that a link with focus is not visible. An active effort to remove one property that identified focus, without adding another in its place. The default link property has an underline text-decoration. This site uses links with no text-decoration. A property helpful for identifying links was actively removed without replacement. I'm happy to see a very good platform like Drupal being more widely used, and this site is a good place for it. Dynamic content, multiple RSS feeds, press releases and more. All features with which Drupal excels. Unfortunately this is a bad example of Drupal theming. A good layout, a good overall design, but no thought to accessibility. What could have been a beautiful site, unfinished.

Posted on Tuesday May 12, 2009
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Drupal 6 - Social Networking: Review

I was recently given the opportunity to review the Packt Publishing book Drupal 6 -  Social Networking by Michael Peacock.  I'm impressed. The book was well written and well organized. It starts with the basics of a Drupal installation, and quickly walks you through to the more complex configuration of a Drupal site with a social networking focus. While you might not be starting a new social media website, there are aspects of social media that can benefit almost any site. Blogs can drive traffic, and forums can aid with project discussions. Do you have a FAQ section on your site, maybe a well done WIKI would be a better choice. The possibilities for enhancing an existing site are huge. Like all good technical books, this one made me think. Michael Peacock made me reevaluate what a website is, and what it should be. I'm not yet planning a dedicated social media site, but I'm giving serious thought to how I can use social media function to improve my current projects.  If you're a designer or developer using Drupal, then you need to read Drupal 6 -  Social Networking.

Posted on Saturday May 02, 2009
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Recovery.gov Revisited

I wrote a quick post on the lack of accessibility of Recovery.gov back in February. Jim Thatcher has now done an in depth study of that site as he recently did with WhiteHouse.gov. As I noted before, the Recovery site is surprisingly inaccessible. I'll let you read Mr. Thatcher's evaluation yourself, but I think there is one feature on recovery.gov that really shows how low a priority accessibility is on this site. The keyboard-only link to WhiteHouse.gov is a JavaScript based link that requires a followup mouse click to function. That sort of defeats the purpose now doesn't it?Go read Mr. Thatcher's Accessibility of Recovery.gov in full, it's worth the time.

Posted on Friday May 01, 2009
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