Then this weekend it hit me. There is no option to add alternate text for images in Microsoft Word 2008. What the hell? Do they expect that MAC people are all artsy-fartsy types who don’t care about making accessible technology and only care about making pretty pictures? I am teaching a course on Accessible Electronic & Information Technologies, and Microsoft is forcing me to revert back to my old, decrepit PC in order to make accessible Word documents.

Microsoft Word 2008: Good for Artsy-fartsy shit / bad for Accessible technology development

I cannot believe this negligent oversight that has occurred. Is technology moving backwards? Microsoft Office 2007 for PC has these accessibility options, but a year later they can’t get it right for another OS? I feel like they rushed the development of this software to push it out the door. I feel cheated. Not only is Microsoft cheating me and other accessible technology developers, but they are also cheating the disabled users utilize the inaccessible documents that are created by this substandard product.

E3 … Sausage Fest? (Image © Jens Jäpel)

I experienced the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles this year. Wading through geeks and LA Lakers fans on my walk to the convention center, I anticipated seeing what all this hype was about. In proper nerd fashion, the Ecto 1 Ghostbusters car greeted me at the door.

At first glance this expo was a total sausage fest—dudes everywhere. What else did I expect? This was a gaming convention. Pulsating electronic music radiated from the center stage where the dj’s took the spotlight and set the club-like mood for the event. The space was primarily split between white and black, good and evil, Nintendo and Sony PSP. I wandered the floor aimlessly, soaking everything in.

Then I found an advertisement targeted toward members of club X-chromosome: “Girlz PLAY Too!” The new handheld device, Sony PSP Go, will come in lavender for the ladies. (I have to say that I was impressed to see this color as opposed to predictable pink.) From that point on, my mission of the day was to document all things related to “girl gaming.”

From Hello Kitty DS bags to iCarly Wii-mote skins and gear, I was excited to see the increased target marketing toward girl gamers ages 4 and up. Not only will the little chicks be saved from boring navy blue or maroon game accessories, they will also gain the sense of inclusiveness in the gaming world.

When I was a girl, games did not interest me in the slightest. Games were for boys, or tomboys. I was never one to follow such typical, society-driven notions, but games in the 80’s were mostly violent war games, silly elf escapades or car racing. When my neighborhood guy friend and I would play Nintendo, I could fight in Mike Tyson punchout for a few rounds, but then I’d lose interest. I would never attain the motor skills or the thumb blisters that my male counterparts did. My tomgirl friend, however, would hit the arcade for hours, blowing every last dime she had while I shopped for cheap costume jewelry at the store across the mall hallway.

Now girly-girls have the opportunity to become excited about games, too. Fuzzy online pets like Webkins are all the rage these days with tweens. The Sony PSP Go has a new game called Petz Dog Family. This Webkinz-like game is portable and can provide entertainment to girls even when they’re offline. Another PSP Go game on display was the G-Force game, which looks like some good guinea pig action-fighting fun. The cute little critters wiggle around like they would in real, Rodentia life.

The iCarly game accessories by I-Concepts feature images of the characters on the popular Nickelodeon TV series. Carly is the teen star of her own web show, and tween girls idolize her and her friends. Girls are also drawn to the iCarly website where they evitably learn more about technology and how it relates to their world through the interfaces of games, blogs and other interactive utilities. To make the girls go crazy this fall, Nickelodeon has teamed with Activision to produce an iCarly video game for the DS and the Wii.

Many girl-gaming skeptics feel that these girly-accessories and games feed the stereotype of what it means to be feminine. I tend to disagree. Each girl explores life, trying on this hat or that, to find her own idea of what it means to be a female. Without these games that offer “girl content,” many girls would still be left behind in the analog world.

It is my hope that girls in gaming will lead to increase numbers of women in technology careers. If and when I return to E3 in the future, I trust that the attendees will include a higher number of women, disrupting the long history of male dominated computer culture.

Upon installing Flock, I eagerly logged into all of my choice social apps to see how they would integrate into the browser. Twitter transitioned smoothly; however, the Flock/Twitter sidebar does not display the most recent posts nor does it order the posts chronologically. I would prefer to see a mirror image to the Twitter site; the tweets are hideously out of date. One sweet thing that the Flock/Twitter sidebar DOES do is “post a link” from the page that you are visiting on the browser side. By selecting “post a link,” the link is automatically inserted into your next tweet–no copy/pasting links into Twitter posts anymore.

Flickr seems to integrate nicely. The left sidebar has handy tools to upload new photos, while a top bar, or media stream, appears with a filmstrip of photos when “my media” is selected. I could get used to this.

Overall, the Flock browser is a great idea, especially for socialites and shutterbugs. I’ll probably remain a Firefox luddite for now since its web developer add-ons are so difficult to pry away from my W3C /508 fingers.

Moreover, the cliqueless Google gadget promises communication with other social networks. In the same vein, Google is allowing open source development for additional social gadges by other developers. When will everyone else get a clue? It’s a mystery to me.

So Google, gimme the preview pass to use this bad boy on my campus department sites. It’s for the children. They will buy things from your Google advertisements in the future, I can almost guarantee it. It’s a win win. Really.

The first evening with the iPhone continued peacefully. I crocheted a wee little iPhone cozy to protect her from scratches, then tucked her in for a good night’s sleep. During my journey into the subconscious, I was still clinging to my iPhone. I dreamt about pushing a button to access FireFox. I was in heaven. FireFox on my iPhone. Happy dream phone time. Come on Apple, unleash the beast.

Much to our surprise, the young specimen is transforming into a tech goddess. Teaching computer classes and Adobe Flash goodness to wee little geeks. Who knew genes could be this strong? Ah, family.

By now most of us know that our websites and other campus technologies need to be accessible. A common question I hear is, “Is my website ADA or whatever?” The mystery of accessibility seems daunting at times, especially when we are flooded with the acronym soup that accompanies it (ADA, ATI, 508, VPAT, OMG).

There are a variety of tools that assist with “reading,” perceiving and using computers. Individuals with print impairments, such as those associated with vision or learning disabilities, commonly use screen readers that “read the screen aloud” to them. People with motor disabilities often use assistive technologies that enable them to access their computers without using a mouse or a keyboard. The importance of textual transcripts for lectures or videos becomes evident when considering computer users who are hearing impaired.

The place to start with accessible technology is to understand the need to integrate accessibility into everyday processes, such as creating Word documents, designing webpages or purchasing software. Building accessibility into a process is much more effective than reaching the end of a project and realizing, “It’s done. Oops, is it accessible?”

The Basics

The following list provides a few basics for designing accessible documents.

• Images and photos must have text-based descriptions to provide relevant visual information to the visually impaired. (For example, a photo of a campus scene may be described as, “Students sitting on the lawn on a sunny day.”)
• Hyperlinks should be written as actions that describe the link’s destination. Rather than using “Click Here,” use “Download the Request Form.”
• Videos and live audio must have text-based captions and/or transcripts. “Type what you hear.” Include narratives for silent portions of videos to provide relevant visual information, i.e., “Little Red Riding Hood walks through the forest gathering flowers.”

As you incorporate accessible design into your daily processes, it will become second nature. The public expectation for accessible technology will eventually be as commonplace as current presumptions that most buildings have ramps and elevators for wheelchair access. We are involved in a fascinating shift of paving the electronic ramps of the future.

Advanced principles for accessible design can be found at http://webaim.org/intro.

Keira Dooley is art director and webmaster for the Division of Student Services.

In 1997, static webpages were the coolest… with those seizure-provoking animated gifs and abundant, inaccessible “click here’s.” Ah those were the days, when a graphic designer off the street could fake it til she made it, learning HTML on the fly with an ingenious trade of a homemade enchilada dinner. (Check out my first website: Electronicohania Bookomineous)

Wait, maybe things haven’t really changed much. The modern webmaster can make a website in seconds. She can push a button, get Wordpress, toss a fancy logo up in the banner area, and “Whalaaa!” The mere thought of this easy web designing process pained me at first. “Those good for nothing web kids are going around making sites left and right! They’re gonna put me out of business!” Then I came to my senses.

The Way of the Web is simply evolving into a content outlet for multiple genres of computer users, allowing for rich, insightful possibilities of prose that escape the dungeons of unsocial techies that never let go of the server buttons. What a concept. Content. Wonderful, luscious, captivating, concise, clever, clear, organized, accessible, usable content.

IMHO, static pages are ready to sit on the same shelf as the Atari console and that old Radio Shack computer that my dad had. They will hold a special, nostalgic place in my heart. I’m looking forward to searching for a “How to make an HTML 4.0 webpage” manual on eBay in about 15 years. Ah the future deprecated memories.