ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

Some of you may not be aware of the Canadian Foot Phenomenon.
In the last year and a half, a number of feet have been found washed up on the beaches of Northern Canada. Yes, feet. As in the sorts of things which people normally keep attached to the bottoms of their legs.
We pick up the [...]

Read: Canadian Feet »

It’s coming up to Christmas time: the time when my kids start asking questions about Santa Claus — “would Santa have seen me being naughty then, Daddy?”, “how long is it now until Santa comes?” and “can we get some jelly babies to leave out for Santa?”
I’m quite familiar with the concept of believing in [...]

Read: What Do You Believe In? »

I have been prompted by someone to republish some articles I previously wrote about WCAG 2.0. Well, I’m not going to do this, on the basis that I’ve not ‘un-published’ them, so you can still find them via my site search or via google.
However, for those of who who want a little potted history of [...]

Read: WCAG 2.0 development »

Apparently, passionate kissing can make you deaf.
Yes, that’s right, deaf. And I don’t just mean “so you don’t hear her parents letting themselves back into the house”; it turns out that a Chinese woman has lost all hearing in her left ear after kissing her boyfriend passionately.
It appears that a “strong” kiss may cause an [...]

Read: Kiss of Deaf »

Yes, it’s a controversial subject, talking about stuff like euthanasia/ assisted suicide, so it was obviously a toss-up for which flippant song title I would use as the title of the post. In the end I went with the song best known as the theme from M*A*S*H, although I did also consider Ozzy’s Suicide Solution [...]

Read: (Assisted) Suicide Is Painless »

This is a continuance of the previous piece looking at BS 8878, “Web accessibility — Building accessible experiences for disabled people — Code of Practice”.
Problems
The ‘Accessibility Policy’ section demonstrates that for all the “we can’t be using WCAG 2.0, as it’s not ready”, it appears that this document is not ready itself. We’re asked to [...]

Read: Accessibility: A Very British Standard (Part 2) »

WCAG 2.0 was released today, and they’ve issued a press release about it. (Thanks to Orchid on AccessifyForum for the spot).
It was made a Proposed recommendation on the 3rd of November, and today it has been released as a full W3C Recommendation.
Everyone, get adopting. It’s time for government bodies, industry, the world in general, [...]

Read: WCAG 2.0 Breaking News »

BS 8878 Web accessibility — Building accessible experiences for disabled people — Code of Practice has been published. While this is a little bit of a mouthful, it is basically the first draft of an official British Standard for web accessibility.
It’s important to note that it is not necessarily the final version: it has now [...]

Read: Accessibility: A Very British Standard (Part 1) »

Sometimes, and for whatever reason, there are books that you just don’t get around to reading. At this point last week, I owned five books by Giles Milton, two of which I had read. Firstly, I had encountered The Riddle and the Knight, which as I have mentioned before, is probably one of my favourite [...]

Read: Samurai William »

The humble computer mouse is now forty years old.
Forty! It’s one of those things that you knew was obviously developed at some point, but the idea that the mouse was first used the year Yellow Submarine came out and before Neil Armstrong took one small step onto the moon seems a little odd.
Also, [...]

Read: Birthday Mouse »