Marañando and Information Technology
Sunday, 20. September 2009, 11:54:37
(Back to blogging, and thinking about it)
Posts tagged with "accessibility"
On top of the world...
Thursday, 3. April 2008, 15:20:57
Well, around the top half of the world, followed by a break over easter...
Adios, Rafa
Friday, 14. March 2008, 18:07:03
Rafael Romero was a great champion of accessibility, doing practical stuff that made things better. Like smiling, and bringing up the mood of those around him. And calling it like he saw it, not like he would like things to be.
The first time I saw a real movie on the Web with captions, he had done it (and translated it into spanish for good measure). He was one of the people who taught me to speak Spanish, and to love Spain.
He turned up one day at a conference with his guitar and sang us a song he had written, to a tune of his, that I recorded on my phone. He later recorded it in a studio. For me, it is the song of accessibility. It may not be the best song he ever wrote, but as a memorial it's not a bad one.
Te echaré de menos, Rafa. Ahora tengo lagrimas en lugar de las palabras.
The first time I saw a real movie on the Web with captions, he had done it (and translated it into spanish for good measure). He was one of the people who taught me to speak Spanish, and to love Spain.
He turned up one day at a conference with his guitar and sang us a song he had written, to a tune of his, that I recorded on my phone. He later recorded it in a studio. For me, it is the song of accessibility. It may not be the best song he ever wrote, but as a memorial it's not a bad one.
Te echaré de menos, Rafa. Ahora tengo lagrimas en lugar de las palabras.
Go the Oz...
Wednesday, 20. February 2008, 19:54:31
Ben Buchanan, just quietly, is a great bloke. As well as being a choice companion for sharing a beer or three, nice guy, and champion of accessibility and other good things, he has actually done some really basic practical stuff that takes time to show results. And recently he announced something really cool...
A new baby Kestrel
Tuesday, 4. September 2007, 08:39:29
If you read my blog obsessively, checking every 15 minutes to see if I wrote something new and reading it immediately, you should probably relax a bit. On the other hand, thank you (it would be nice to think that someone likes what I write enough to do this) - and as a reward you find out that we just made a public alpha version of Opera 9.5 - the new "Kestrel".
The vision thing
Thursday, 19. April 2007, 12:25:02
I have new glasses. This is lovely, because it means I can actually see well again.
My left eye is not bad. My right eye is not very good. A couple of months ago I lost my glasses, and had to revert to my "emergency" pair. Which had become my emergency pair becaus the right lens dropped out and was lost forever.
A month of working with those (and needing them, because my right eye was so often useless that I was really pushing the left) had me wondering if I would have learned to favour one eye.
At Gregory's place, the courier delivered my glasses. They are new, funky, don't have real frames, just arms and things stuck onto the lenses. They sit high, and they are amazingly light. (I have worn glasses for about ten years. When I was younger my eyesight was just as bad, but I had more energy to strain my eyes. I started with glass lenses, and have moved to ever-lighter glasses bit by bit).
Funnily enough, the courier also delivered my privacy screen to Gregory. It's a bit of plastic, made by the same people who invented those little yello sticky notes that are everywhere now. It is almost transparent, so long as you look at it straight on. From about 45˚ it is hard to see much at all, so I can sitin a meeting and read confidential mail in large type without worrying about who else is having it waved in front of them.
I wonder if the couriers thought about this, as they asked a blind guy to sign for a package. When I was younger I delivered televisions and the like around the suburbs of Melbourne for a while. Occasionally I would be asked to explain how to operate a new television or video recorder - and I remember that while blind people would ask for detailed explanations, they would also actually be good at remembering them. It struck me that having a couple of video recorders and a couple of TV's, all connected together, it would make sense to be good at remembering how each one worked. I don't think I had thought about it much before, but it seemed reasonable for people who had a lot of spare time to want to copy video cassettes, and record a lot of stuff.
Someone recently asked what blind people do with a photo website. I recall going to buy my first digital camera, with a blind friend who was replacing his (I should have just bought his old one, I guess), and asking him where he put his photos. He collected them, asked a bunch of friends to tell him which were good and which weren't (and what was in them), and then he stored them or sent them to people. Same as anyone does. After all, there are only a few things you can do with photos.
My left eye is not bad. My right eye is not very good. A couple of months ago I lost my glasses, and had to revert to my "emergency" pair. Which had become my emergency pair becaus the right lens dropped out and was lost forever.
A month of working with those (and needing them, because my right eye was so often useless that I was really pushing the left) had me wondering if I would have learned to favour one eye.
At Gregory's place, the courier delivered my glasses. They are new, funky, don't have real frames, just arms and things stuck onto the lenses. They sit high, and they are amazingly light. (I have worn glasses for about ten years. When I was younger my eyesight was just as bad, but I had more energy to strain my eyes. I started with glass lenses, and have moved to ever-lighter glasses bit by bit).
Funnily enough, the courier also delivered my privacy screen to Gregory. It's a bit of plastic, made by the same people who invented those little yello sticky notes that are everywhere now. It is almost transparent, so long as you look at it straight on. From about 45˚ it is hard to see much at all, so I can sitin a meeting and read confidential mail in large type without worrying about who else is having it waved in front of them.
I wonder if the couriers thought about this, as they asked a blind guy to sign for a package. When I was younger I delivered televisions and the like around the suburbs of Melbourne for a while. Occasionally I would be asked to explain how to operate a new television or video recorder - and I remember that while blind people would ask for detailed explanations, they would also actually be good at remembering them. It struck me that having a couple of video recorders and a couple of TV's, all connected together, it would make sense to be good at remembering how each one worked. I don't think I had thought about it much before, but it seemed reasonable for people who had a lot of spare time to want to copy video cassettes, and record a lot of stuff.
Someone recently asked what blind people do with a photo website. I recall going to buy my first digital camera, with a blind friend who was replacing his (I should have just bought his old one, I guess), and asking him where he put his photos. He collected them, asked a bunch of friends to tell him which were good and which weren't (and what was in them), and then he stored them or sent them to people. Same as anyone does. After all, there are only a few things you can do with photos.
Photographs in the dark
Thursday, 19. April 2007, 09:13:37
Gregory posted a bunch of photos, wondering what they actually were. I finally made some time to go through them and label some. We used to talk about having a system that would let a blind person ask a number of different people to describe things. So, here it is (although we haven't yet automated the process of extracting a handful of descriptions, that has been done by people who build CAPTCHA-busting software).
So, if you wonder what a blind person does with a camera, the answer seems to be "same as everyone else - take some great photos and some dreadful ones, and show them to people".For some of the shots, the fact that the camera is a cheap nasty one is actually a bonus - it creates a real mood. For others it is a big shame, because they would be cool with a little higher quality.
Anyway, if you have time to describe a few photos, I am interested to see how other people go about it in practice... Maybe something really useful can be built out of this.
So, if you wonder what a blind person does with a camera, the answer seems to be "same as everyone else - take some great photos and some dreadful ones, and show them to people".For some of the shots, the fact that the camera is a cheap nasty one is actually a bonus - it creates a real mood. For others it is a big shame, because they would be cool with a little higher quality.
Anyway, if you have time to describe a few photos, I am interested to see how other people go about it in practice... Maybe something really useful can be built out of this.
The perennial popularity contest
Sunday, 18. March 2007, 11:02:06
The web, and particularly the rise of the "blog", has enabled more people than ever before to publishto a global audience. And while there aren't necessarily more great writers than before, there are more people trying to get a bit of attention and love online. Or share something. Or just get something out of their system...
Speaking out...
Tuesday, 30. January 2007, 19:51:50
Screen readers allow blind people to use the web (and computers in general). We have just got Opera working with screen readers again, and in a major way...
The one handed browser...
Friday, 14. July 2006, 05:32:35
If you're lucky enough to have a new Macintosh, it might have come with a remote control.
And if you are curious, or keen on some of the accessibility features in Opera, or just can't go past the preferences of a new program without looking into it, you might have come across the feature released as an easter egg in one of the preview releases of Opera 9.
Or if you look into the keyboard shortcuts, you might find some odd ones for Mac, like RC_PLAY as a key.
Yes, you can use your remote control for browsing (or anything you can do in Opera, although text entry requires a fair bit more customisation).
If you leave alone the menu button, to move out of Opera, you can apparently click or longclick each of the four directions on the remote, and the play button in the middle, which effectively gives 10 free buttons.
What are the 10 most important functions? Could you survive with a 10-button keyboard? What would it be epecially good for?
And if you are curious, or keen on some of the accessibility features in Opera, or just can't go past the preferences of a new program without looking into it, you might have come across the feature released as an easter egg in one of the preview releases of Opera 9.
Or if you look into the keyboard shortcuts, you might find some odd ones for Mac, like RC_PLAY as a key.
Yes, you can use your remote control for browsing (or anything you can do in Opera, although text entry requires a fair bit more customisation).
If you leave alone the menu button, to move out of Opera, you can apparently click or longclick each of the four directions on the remote, and the play button in the middle, which effectively gives 10 free buttons.
What are the 10 most important functions? Could you survive with a 10-button keyboard? What would it be epecially good for?
The right key is key...
Sunday, 9. July 2006, 10:06:56
Microsoft recently announced some stuff about how they would handle accesskey and keyboard shortcuts in IE7 (so being opinionated in this fieldI commented 
- apparently before my good mate John Foliot).
What they choose to do is sometimes important. The fact that they aren't considering site-specific preferences except for "some future version, perhaps" only matters to their users - it is a convenience or accessibility functionality.
But their implementation of accesskey, which was also followed by Mozilla, causes problems for everyone. Because IE has such a large market share, things that cause sites to break in IE are not acceptable for many site designers. Making a page that causes the browser to behave in unpredicted ways and breaks the predicted functionality isn't helpful. So people are going to avoid using accesskeys that conflict with normal IE behaviour.
This is good of them, unless you are one of the people whose life would be made a lot easier by good shortcut navigation around websites. (On average people are not, like me their life will be unaffected or made just a little bit easier, but nobody who reads this blog is average, right?). Being an international product with various localisations means that a lot of the keyboard gets used up. For many years now, authors have been trying to find the keys that cause the least conflict with bad browser implementations, instead of suggesting something that is actually memorable.
(Of course authors making better use of the rel attribute to support very highly predictable navigation would be nice, too. The fact that not all browsers have good support for it isn't much of a reason not to use it, since unlike accesskey it doesn't do funny things even to browsers with poor or no implementation).
So I would love to believe that Microsoft are going to improve their implementation in IE7, and Mozilla their next version, to something that reduces the damage to the accessibility of the Web. (Yes, I do mean something like what Opera does for accesskey). It should not be difficult for them to move to the approach of having a pass-through key instead of just changing expected browser behaviour (without any warning, at the moment).
This implies changing the way part of the user interface works for people with disabilities. In general this isn't considered a brilliant idea. On the other hand the people who want to use accesskey are not getting any support, because authors avoid using it. At least some of those people would be heavy keyboard users in general, so having their browser functions vanish on them will be a frustration too. It will cause a few authors a little pain. Those who have been helpful enough to have implemented access keys and then realised that they needed to do more work to explain what is happening in IE and Mozilla/Firefox will have to change their text that says
- apparently before my good mate John Foliot).What they choose to do is sometimes important. The fact that they aren't considering site-specific preferences except for "some future version, perhaps" only matters to their users - it is a convenience or accessibility functionality.
But their implementation of accesskey, which was also followed by Mozilla, causes problems for everyone. Because IE has such a large market share, things that cause sites to break in IE are not acceptable for many site designers. Making a page that causes the browser to behave in unpredicted ways and breaks the predicted functionality isn't helpful. So people are going to avoid using accesskeys that conflict with normal IE behaviour.
This is good of them, unless you are one of the people whose life would be made a lot easier by good shortcut navigation around websites. (On average people are not, like me their life will be unaffected or made just a little bit easier, but nobody who reads this blog is average, right?
). Being an international product with various localisations means that a lot of the keyboard gets used up. For many years now, authors have been trying to find the keys that cause the least conflict with bad browser implementations, instead of suggesting something that is actually memorable.(Of course authors making better use of the rel attribute to support very highly predictable navigation would be nice, too. The fact that not all browsers have good support for it isn't much of a reason not to use it, since unlike accesskey it doesn't do funny things even to browsers with poor or no implementation).
So I would love to believe that Microsoft are going to improve their implementation in IE7, and Mozilla their next version, to something that reduces the damage to the accessibility of the Web. (Yes, I do mean something like what Opera does for accesskey). It should not be difficult for them to move to the approach of having a pass-through key instead of just changing expected browser behaviour (without any warning, at the moment).
This implies changing the way part of the user interface works for people with disabilities. In general this isn't considered a brilliant idea. On the other hand the people who want to use accesskey are not getting any support, because authors avoid using it. At least some of those people would be heavy keyboard users in general, so having their browser functions vanish on them will be a frustration too. It will cause a few authors a little pain. Those who have been helpful enough to have implemented access keys and then realised that they needed to do more work to explain what is happening in IE and Mozilla/Firefox will have to change their text that says
to take account of the fact that there are different implementations out there. It seems a relatively small price (if somewhat unfair) for a relatively big improvement.press alt+key to go to this link
Advancing...
Saturday, 3. June 2006, 01:22:29
We have been working on the accesskey implementation in Opera. Accesskeys are nice things for people who find it hard to drive the computer - for example people with various kinds of "motor disabilities". Parkinsons's disease, cerebral palsy, various types of paralysis, repetitive strain injuries, etc.
The way people use them in a web page is to declare an accesskey for a link or control. For example
is a bit of HTML that makes a link to my blog, and gives it the accesskey "c". Somehow, this is then supposed to help you get to that link extra quickly - instead of having to go through the entire list of links using q/a keys (or tab, and also have to stop at form controls and other stuff, if you use another browser), you can get straight there.
The problem is that Internet Explorer followed a "helpful" suggestion added in the W3C specification, to use "alt" plus the character as a way of getting there, and "cmd" (the squiggly thing also called apple) on macintosh. Netscape followed them, and Mozilla followed Netscape.
Any mac user will tell you that cmd-c is copy, on any mac application in any situation any time. Except (perhaps) on my page. Similarly, if I used the accesskey "f", anyone knows that on windows alt-f opens the file menu - one of the most basic functions of the Windows user interface.
Well, Opera solved that some years ago. Instead of having to guess whether standard shortcuts were being overridden, there is a key to trigger accesskey mode. You press it, and the next key is treated as the accesskey. By default it is shift-esc which is perhaps not the easiest one, but I remap it (preferences -> advanced -> keyboard shortcuts) to "." since I don't use that.
So now I just press ". c" to get to my page. But wait! How do I know?
Well, in all browsers except iCab, until recently, there is no way to find out. The site might mark the keys it uses, or might not.
So now we have a popup that tells you what the options are. Grab a weekly build, find a page which uses accesskeys (they are very common in UK pages such as the BBC) and press shift-escape (or whatever you configured it to).
And give us feedback. We realise that this isn't perfect yet, but I think it is now best-of-breed. (Sadly, that hasn't been a hard point to reach, which doesn't reflect well on any browser). There's more to be done on it, but a start is good.
I trust that my good friend John Foliot will have somethign to say about this by and by (he andd I have been discussing accesskeys for many years already), and maybe others. Many thanks to Petter and others for getting it going.
The way people use them in a web page is to declare an accesskey for a link or control. For example
<a href="http://my.opera.com/chaals" accesskey="c">My Blog</a>
is a bit of HTML that makes a link to my blog, and gives it the accesskey "c". Somehow, this is then supposed to help you get to that link extra quickly - instead of having to go through the entire list of links using q/a keys (or tab, and also have to stop at form controls and other stuff, if you use another browser), you can get straight there.
The problem is that Internet Explorer followed a "helpful" suggestion added in the W3C specification, to use "alt" plus the character as a way of getting there, and "cmd" (the squiggly thing also called apple) on macintosh. Netscape followed them, and Mozilla followed Netscape.
Any mac user will tell you that cmd-c is copy, on any mac application in any situation any time. Except (perhaps) on my page. Similarly, if I used the accesskey "f", anyone knows that on windows alt-f opens the file menu - one of the most basic functions of the Windows user interface.
Well, Opera solved that some years ago. Instead of having to guess whether standard shortcuts were being overridden, there is a key to trigger accesskey mode. You press it, and the next key is treated as the accesskey. By default it is shift-esc which is perhaps not the easiest one, but I remap it (preferences -> advanced -> keyboard shortcuts) to "." since I don't use that.
So now I just press ". c" to get to my page. But wait! How do I know?
Well, in all browsers except iCab, until recently, there is no way to find out. The site might mark the keys it uses, or might not.
So now we have a popup that tells you what the options are. Grab a weekly build, find a page which uses accesskeys (they are very common in UK pages such as the BBC) and press shift-escape (or whatever you configured it to).
And give us feedback. We realise that this isn't perfect yet, but I think it is now best-of-breed. (Sadly, that hasn't been a hard point to reach, which doesn't reflect well on any browser). There's more to be done on it, but a start is good.
I trust that my good friend John Foliot will have somethign to say about this by and by (he andd I have been discussing accesskeys for many years already), and maybe others. Many thanks to Petter and others for getting it going.
Balls dropped.
Wednesday, 14. December 2005, 00:21:46
SMIL 2.1 is a recommendation. In many ways this is good, but in one way it is terribly disappointing. I have carried out an ongoing discussion with John Foliot, in particular, through several years, about accesskey.
It is pretty clear that accesskey is broken. There has been a suggested fix going around for about 5 years - since even before SMIL 2.0 was published. It would have been nice, in one of the rare W3C specifications that has actually dealt with accesskey and touched the semantics (not like HTML, which hasn't changed in 7 years - and still people build tools that get it wrong!) to fix accesskey.
Nope.
Hopefully W3C will deal with the problem soon, with some new work (apparently they are not happy to go with the work done over the last few years). In the meantime, hang on folks. You'll be able to get to work productively in a couple more years, if you're lucky. Revising a specification after several years, W3C can make it work for mobile browser vendors, but can't actually come at fixing a simple accessibility problem.
This is partly my responsibility. Most of the time I am in WAI's Protocols and Formats group, who have the responsibility of making sure this doesn't happen. That group has done quite a lot of work on accesskey in particular. But when the SMIL 2.1 last call was out I was doing other things (looking for work, for example) and not in the group. It seems everyone blinked, and it seems they don't have the clout to actually make a difference if it is going to inconvenience anyone.
Meanwhile W3C convinced the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities Research Institute to write a testimonial about it claiming "everything is accessible". It is very hard to see what happens in practice, since for the only SMIL 2.1 player I could find has
For other formats you can use Opera - our accesskey implementation, in common with iCab, doesn't follow the "helpful suggestion" written so many years ago and responsible for so totally breaking the usability of accesskeys in Firefox/Mozilla and in Internet Explorer. I hope that developers copy the approach of one of us, rather than perpetuating the broken User Interface models of the latter two browsers in SMIL.
If you do, I suggest re-mapping the accesskey mode activation to a single key from the default of shift-escape. Go into Preferences, choose the Advanced tab, and Shortcuts. Select either default setup under keyboard shortcuts, or your current setup if you already use a modified set. Then the easiest thing to do is type "access" into the search box, which will bring up the option "Enter Accesskey mode | Leave Accesskey mode". (It's under applications, if you're exploring the huge range of options that are available). Pick your key, and away you go...
It is pretty clear that accesskey is broken. There has been a suggested fix going around for about 5 years - since even before SMIL 2.0 was published. It would have been nice, in one of the rare W3C specifications that has actually dealt with accesskey and touched the semantics (not like HTML, which hasn't changed in 7 years - and still people build tools that get it wrong!) to fix accesskey.
Nope.
Hopefully W3C will deal with the problem soon, with some new work (apparently they are not happy to go with the work done over the last few years). In the meantime, hang on folks. You'll be able to get to work productively in a couple more years, if you're lucky. Revising a specification after several years, W3C can make it work for mobile browser vendors, but can't actually come at fixing a simple accessibility problem.
This is partly my responsibility. Most of the time I am in WAI's Protocols and Formats group, who have the responsibility of making sure this doesn't happen. That group has done quite a lot of work on accesskey in particular. But when the SMIL 2.1 last call was out I was doing other things (looking for work, for example) and not in the group. It seems everyone blinked, and it seems they don't have the clout to actually make a difference if it is going to inconvenience anyone.
Meanwhile W3C convinced the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities Research Institute to write a testimonial about it claiming "everything is accessible". It is very hard to see what happens in practice, since for the only SMIL 2.1 player I could find has
Minimal user-level documentation is included in the player. It is similar for other SMIL 2 players - if anyone can find documentation of how accesskey works in a SMIL 2 player I would be very interested. In the meantime we simply hope that the goodwill everyone claims whenever accessibility is mentioned gets carried through into practical implementation. History isn't on our side
For other formats you can use Opera - our accesskey implementation, in common with iCab, doesn't follow the "helpful suggestion" written so many years ago and responsible for so totally breaking the usability of accesskeys in Firefox/Mozilla and in Internet Explorer. I hope that developers copy the approach of one of us, rather than perpetuating the broken User Interface models of the latter two browsers in SMIL.
If you do, I suggest re-mapping the accesskey mode activation to a single key from the default of shift-escape. Go into Preferences, choose the Advanced tab, and Shortcuts. Select either default setup under keyboard shortcuts, or your current setup if you already use a modified set. Then the easiest thing to do is type "access" into the search box, which will bring up the option "Enter Accesskey mode | Leave Accesskey mode". (It's under applications, if you're exploring the huge range of options that are available). Pick your key, and away you go...
OzeWAI...
Wednesday, 7. December 2005, 06:58:51
Melbourne is a long way from Oslo. It's warm here (except yesterday when there were storms and it rained a lot).
I'm here for the OzeWAI accessibility conference, where I am speaking (and speaking and speaking). It's one of my favourite conferences - reasonably small, but well known in Australia with good speakers and a lot of very straight talk. In other places people go on about screen reader accessibility, which is, I have to admit, my number one priority for accessibility improvements but a very large piece of work. Here, people have been pointing out to me that most accessibility is not about screen readers, and Opera is already better than the alternatives for most other things. (I know, but I sometimes forget to rest on our laurels and look for the improvements we could be making. It's nice to be reminded though).
I sit in a conference room with real windows - if my talk gets boring people just look at the ducks on the pond outside. I go out into the sun, and talk to people.
Unfortunately Ben Buchanan couldn't come from Queensland (and here I am all the way from Oslo), so his paper was a "telepresentation". A disembodied voice and some slides. And he's not here to chat to. Worse, for me, is that the University hosting the event has apparently blocked off the IRC ports, so we are unable to log the thing live to the Web as we did last year. Blogs or nothing, I'm afraid.
So we can't have what we had last year - a question coming from Ottawa to a presenter who came from Toronto. Sadly there are some other people who were very keen to take part, and questions from New Guinea would have been interesting. Maybe tomorrow they will be less uptight about it.
I'm here for the OzeWAI accessibility conference, where I am speaking (and speaking and speaking). It's one of my favourite conferences - reasonably small, but well known in Australia with good speakers and a lot of very straight talk. In other places people go on about screen reader accessibility, which is, I have to admit, my number one priority for accessibility improvements but a very large piece of work. Here, people have been pointing out to me that most accessibility is not about screen readers, and Opera is already better than the alternatives for most other things. (I know, but I sometimes forget to rest on our laurels and look for the improvements we could be making. It's nice to be reminded though).
I sit in a conference room with real windows - if my talk gets boring people just look at the ducks on the pond outside. I go out into the sun, and talk to people.
Unfortunately Ben Buchanan couldn't come from Queensland (and here I am all the way from Oslo), so his paper was a "telepresentation". A disembodied voice and some slides. And he's not here to chat to. Worse, for me, is that the University hosting the event has apparently blocked off the IRC ports, so we are unable to log the thing live to the Web as we did last year. Blogs or nothing, I'm afraid.
So we can't have what we had last year - a question coming from Ottawa to a presenter who came from Toronto. Sadly there are some other people who were very keen to take part, and questions from New Guinea would have been interesting. Maybe tomorrow they will be less uptight about it.
Estilo de accesibilidad - el mago realiza el sueño
Wednesday, 26. October 2005, 13:53:59
Uno de los grandes compromisos de hojas de estilo (CSS) fue ofrecer a los usuarios la possiblidad de adaptar sitios a sus necesidades. Il problema, en el mundo real, es que cada sitio tiene sus propias clases, reglas de estilo, modelo de aplicación y combinación, etc. Hasta ahora, entonces, no fue muy practica crear una hoja de estilo especializado y útil en general.
Ahora la nueva versión de Opera, nombrado Merlin y disponible cómo prevista tecnica (non está una versión final y a veces podría estar inestable), permite usuarios de definir estilos distintos para cada sitio. En esta versión no hay una interfaz para hacerlo - hay que editar los ficheros de configuración, pero no es demasiado dificil que gente normales no pueden hacerlo.
Copiando la explicación del Moose (en inglés), se hace así:
Hay que editar el fichero opera6.ini que se encuentra en la carpeta de preferencias. El nombre de este carpeta para tu configuración esta mostrado si mira opera:about en Opera. Se puede editarlo con cualquier editor de texto - bloc de notas, Word, etc. Nota bene que no puedes editar este fichero cuando Opera está abierto.
Hay que nombrar los sitios a los cuales quieres usar un sitio especifico. Agregar al fin del documento algo asi
(Nota que las preferencias de opera.com se aplicarán a www.opera.com, opera.com, snapshot.opera.com, my.opera.com, etc. He incluido snapshot.opera.com para agregar una otra hoja de estilos especificos a este servidor)
Despues, hay que definir las hojas para cada sitio. Se puede agregar una hoja en vez de lo que hay por defecto, o quitarla del sitio y usar solo tu propios estilos.
Como remplazar los estilos:
Que quiere decir eso? Miramos cada linea
Esta linea dice que en el modo normal de presentación para este servidor, Opera debe quitar los estilos del sitio. (Cambiando el 0 a 1 aplicará los estilos del sitio además de sus propios estilos).
Igualmente, este dice que Opera debe aplicar sus propios estilos para este sitio
Dice dónde está la hoja de estilos para este sitio. Mi ejemplo supone que tengo una carpeta donde puedo guardar la colección de hojas de estilos que voy a usar, pero se puede ponerla en cualquier carpeta.
Y, ¡tada! Los estilos Que he definido en esta hoja se aplicaran en vez de los originales, solo para este sitio. Todavia tengo que hacer el trabajo de crear esta hoja, usando una herramienta como Edipo o Amaya, o cómo hago mis hojas ya. Pero puedo al menos hacerlo solo para un sitio a la vez, aplicarla y no preocuparme si va a funcionar con todos los sitios del web.
(Los curiosos van a ver que se puede agregar otras preferencias para un sitio, copiando del fichero opera6.ini - voy a mirar este un otro día... :-)
NB Voy a editar este más tarde - ahora mismo tengo problemas para terminarlo
Ahora la nueva versión de Opera, nombrado Merlin y disponible cómo prevista tecnica (non está una versión final y a veces podría estar inestable), permite usuarios de definir estilos distintos para cada sitio. En esta versión no hay una interfaz para hacerlo - hay que editar los ficheros de configuración, pero no es demasiado dificil que gente normales no pueden hacerlo.
Copiando la explicación del Moose (en inglés), se hace así:
Hay que editar el fichero opera6.ini que se encuentra en la carpeta de preferencias. El nombre de este carpeta para tu configuración esta mostrado si mira opera:about en Opera. Se puede editarlo con cualquier editor de texto - bloc de notas, Word, etc. Nota bene que no puedes editar este fichero cuando Opera está abierto.
Hay que nombrar los sitios a los cuales quieres usar un sitio especifico. Agregar al fin del documento algo asi
[overrides] www.sidar.org opera.com snapshot.opera.com
(Nota que las preferencias de opera.com se aplicarán a www.opera.com, opera.com, snapshot.opera.com, my.opera.com, etc. He incluido snapshot.opera.com para agregar una otra hoja de estilos especificos a este servidor)
Despues, hay que definir las hojas para cada sitio. Se puede agregar una hoja en vez de lo que hay por defecto, o quitarla del sitio y usar solo tu propios estilos.
Como remplazar los estilos:
[opera.com] Author Display Mode|Author CSS=0 Author Display Mode|User CSS=1 User Prefs|Local CSS File=/Users/Chaals/Library/MisEstilos/opera.css
Que quiere decir eso? Miramos cada linea
Author Display Mode|Author CSS=[B]0[/B]
Esta linea dice que en el modo normal de presentación para este servidor, Opera debe quitar los estilos del sitio. (Cambiando el 0 a 1 aplicará los estilos del sitio además de sus propios estilos).
Author Display Mode|User CSS=[B]1[/B]
Igualmente, este dice que Opera debe aplicar sus propios estilos para este sitio
[B]User Prefs|Local CSS File=/Users/Chaals/Library/MisEstilos/opera.css[/B]
Dice dónde está la hoja de estilos para este sitio. Mi ejemplo supone que tengo una carpeta donde puedo guardar la colección de hojas de estilos que voy a usar, pero se puede ponerla en cualquier carpeta.
Y, ¡tada! Los estilos Que he definido en esta hoja se aplicaran en vez de los originales, solo para este sitio. Todavia tengo que hacer el trabajo de crear esta hoja, usando una herramienta como Edipo o Amaya, o cómo hago mis hojas ya. Pero puedo al menos hacerlo solo para un sitio a la vez, aplicarla y no preocuparme si va a funcionar con todos los sitios del web.
(Los curiosos van a ver que se puede agregar otras preferencias para un sitio, copiando del fichero opera6.ini - voy a mirar este un otro día... :-)
NB Voy a editar este más tarde - ahora mismo tengo problemas para terminarlo
Opera on mobile with screen reader
Saturday, 24. September 2005, 15:00:11
I have been wondering for a while about the world of accessibility and mobile systems. There are plenty of them around now that are powerful enough to support some kind of voice-based system, both for input and output. The first phone I had with voice commands was the top of the line in 2000. Now it's an outdated piece of history. And I wish its browser was too, but that is a matter for debate.
But there are people using Opera on their phone with a screen reader - the Spanish (or should I say Catalan?) company Code Factory makes a product called Mobile Speak, which apparently works OK with Opera. (Well, filling in forms is, I am told, a bit painful, but it's a bit painful on mobiles in general).
This is great news. There ought to be more of it. I haven't yet had time to test this setup myself, but I am hoping to do so in the next couple of weeks...
But there are people using Opera on their phone with a screen reader - the Spanish (or should I say Catalan?) company Code Factory makes a product called Mobile Speak, which apparently works OK with Opera. (Well, filling in forms is, I am told, a bit painful, but it's a bit painful on mobiles in general).
This is great news. There ought to be more of it. I haven't yet had time to test this setup myself, but I am hoping to do so in the next couple of weeks...
Accessibility, Dublin Core, and Spain
Wednesday, 14. September 2005, 14:48:57
Dublin Core concentrates on metadata - information you can use to find resources. It is the librarians approach to the web, and came about when the web was small enough that most people used hand-maintained lists of links (like bookmarks, published as web pages) to get around and find stuff.
So now they are talking about finding stuff and knowing about whether it is accessible.
To see the power of IRC at work, despite being behind the heaviest firewall I have ever come across there is a live record of the meeting - and if you are not stuck behind our firewall, you can join in with IRC.
It seems there are a lot of people working on this. It seems like years since I started to work in this area, and it turns out that it is... but at least there is progress. There are a lot of cool things that can be done now, and even demos are a lot more interesting that they used to be. When I escape the firewall I might find some more links.
So now they are talking about finding stuff and knowing about whether it is accessible.
To see the power of IRC at work, despite being behind the heaviest firewall I have ever come across there is a live record of the meeting - and if you are not stuck behind our firewall, you can join in with IRC.
It seems there are a lot of people working on this. It seems like years since I started to work in this area, and it turns out that it is... but at least there is progress. There are a lot of cool things that can be done now, and even demos are a lot more interesting that they used to be. When I escape the firewall I might find some more links.
Uncle!
Thursday, 25. August 2005, 17:22:38
Dan Connolly (one of the people at W3C I really respect a lot) uses that to mean "OK, it hurts now". Uncle Sam thinks that although their own laws are designed to prevent anti-competetitve behaviour, contracting a company to produce a government site that works on only one browser is fine.
What?? This is not a corporate advertisement, this is a government. And it is not 2001 with the majority browser increasing its apparent stranglehold and other browsers pretending to be IE just to be allowed into websites, but the time when other browsers (including those produced by good solid American companies) are gaining in market share.
I trust that there isn't any particular pressure from Microsoft involved, although someone must have done enough homework to know that this would be unpopular and better announced in midsummer holidays. Or is that just an odd coincidence?
What hope does this give me that the US government takes accessibility seriously in practice? Well, I just hope that their contracting procedures aren't always as bad as these obviously were. Although I wonder.
What really worries me though is that they say "we won't be able to fix it by the launch". OK, so there was a bad contract let. Mistakes happen, even in government. What I am waiting for is "and it will be fixed". The problem is going to be fixed, isn't it? After all, this is like solving accessibility problems. And in the US there are laws that allow for federal government employees to be sued, or contracts to be nullified if they don't get the accessibility stuff right.
What?? This is not a corporate advertisement, this is a government. And it is not 2001 with the majority browser increasing its apparent stranglehold and other browsers pretending to be IE just to be allowed into websites, but the time when other browsers (including those produced by good solid American companies) are gaining in market share.
I trust that there isn't any particular pressure from Microsoft involved, although someone must have done enough homework to know that this would be unpopular and better announced in midsummer holidays. Or is that just an odd coincidence?
What hope does this give me that the US government takes accessibility seriously in practice? Well, I just hope that their contracting procedures aren't always as bad as these obviously were. Although I wonder.
What really worries me though is that they say "we won't be able to fix it by the launch". OK, so there was a bad contract let. Mistakes happen, even in government. What I am waiting for is "and it will be fixed". The problem is going to be fixed, isn't it? After all, this is like solving accessibility problems. And in the US there are laws that allow for federal government employees to be sued, or contracts to be nullified if they don't get the accessibility stuff right.
The things we don't see
Sunday, 14. August 2005, 00:06:39
There are lots of things I miss. Last night there was, apparently, going to be a great meteor shower. Someone kindly told me. I looked out and saw clouds.
That is what happens to me most of the time when there is something cool in the sky I should look for. Unless I go with other people. I prefer to go with other people anyway, because they have more of a clue about what to look for.
The one stand-out exception was about 10 years ago (well, it was march 23 1996) when there was a comet. And it looked like comets are meant to look - standing in a little country town that is really a hamlet, looking at the sky, there was a thing with a tail. And when there is nothing particular to look at I have seen the sky and been amazed. I love it.
I still spend a bunch of time working on accessibility. And a link that came from an observant lot of italians Colour schemes for colour blind designers is odd. I get told from time to time I have a dreadful sense of colour. As far as I know that really means that I don't like the same things as whoever is telling me, altohugh it is true that I do like some things that are not terribly popular choices. I also don't distinguish colour as well as some although I am not actually colour-blind to any noticeable degree.
Getting a reverse perspective view like this is always cool. It made me think about how I learned about colours, and how I think about learning things and recognising things. I think it is a helpful article to read (although perhaps not for the reasons its author intended).
Plus I didn't see Oslo on a saturday night with Olli, because I am writing this, and need to sleep.
That is what happens to me most of the time when there is something cool in the sky I should look for. Unless I go with other people. I prefer to go with other people anyway, because they have more of a clue about what to look for.
The one stand-out exception was about 10 years ago (well, it was march 23 1996) when there was a comet. And it looked like comets are meant to look - standing in a little country town that is really a hamlet, looking at the sky, there was a thing with a tail. And when there is nothing particular to look at I have seen the sky and been amazed. I love it.
I still spend a bunch of time working on accessibility. And a link that came from an observant lot of italians Colour schemes for colour blind designers is odd. I get told from time to time I have a dreadful sense of colour. As far as I know that really means that I don't like the same things as whoever is telling me, altohugh it is true that I do like some things that are not terribly popular choices. I also don't distinguish colour as well as some although I am not actually colour-blind to any noticeable degree.
Getting a reverse perspective view like this is always cool. It made me think about how I learned about colours, and how I think about learning things and recognising things. I think it is a helpful article to read (although perhaps not for the reasons its author intended).
Plus I didn't see Oslo on a saturday night with Olli, because I am writing this, and need to sleep.
Blogging photos for my blind friends
Saturday, 11. June 2005, 13:23:59
I have a number of friends who happen to be blind (not after too many beers, just not able to see). I also have a moblog where I post photos <http://www.foaf-project.org/2004/media/author/chaals-mob/> of things that I found interesting. The photos come from my phone, and I post them with a few comments.
I would like to post a description of the photo, later, where the commentary doesn't make it clear what is going on. I would actually like to make it possible for other people to post a description of the photo too. And it should then get linked from the blog by a
At least it is now possible to follow longdesc links in Opera, thanks to the userJS script from Tarquin (that also makes a bunch of links for other things) <http://userjs.org/scripts/browser/enhancements/frameset-links>. There is more work to do, of course...
The moblog runs on WordPress, BTW. I wonder what Flickr does - they allow descriptions, but I don't know if they put in longdescs.
I would like to post a description of the photo, later, where the commentary doesn't make it clear what is going on. I would actually like to make it possible for other people to post a description of the photo too. And it should then get linked from the blog by a
longdesc attribute.At least it is now possible to follow longdesc links in Opera, thanks to the userJS script from Tarquin (that also makes a bunch of links for other things) <http://userjs.org/scripts/browser/enhancements/frameset-links>. There is more work to do, of course...
The moblog runs on WordPress, BTW. I wonder what Flickr does - they allow descriptions, but I don't know if they put in longdescs.
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