More ARIA in the news
As I’m catching up with news after my return from Whistler, I have two suggested ARIA-related readings for you:
ARIA in Gmail #2: Enhancing the Chat experience
This post continues a series on the implementation of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) in Gmail.
Progress on automated testing for the accessibility module
Today, I checked in two changes that allow the unit tests we’ve developed for the accessibility module so far, to run on what we call a staging server. A staging server is a server that simulates production conditions, but isn’t the live thing just yet. It allows us to test new features in build, testing, web sites etc., in close-to-real-life conditions before finally pushing them to production.
ARIA in Gmail #1: Alerts
Google have recently started to put ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) into GMail. This means that ARIA is now getting a lot more exposure than it used to, with GMail being probably one of the most widely used web applications today. It’s great to see that the hard work Mozilla, IBM, the W3C and especially Aaron Leventhal put into this standard recommendation is getting this prominent placement so soon!
Some random thoughts
I’m currently attending the Mozilla 2008 summit in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. Among all the good sessions we’re having, there are a couple that I definitely want to blog more about over the course of the next few days, but wanted to share a few thoughts right now so we all kind of know what to expect:
WordPress 2.6 brings a lot of accessibility improvements!
I just upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.6.
Easy ARIA tip #3: aria-invalid and role "alert"
I know, I know, it’s been a while since I posted my last Easy ARIA tip. But I’m hoping that this one will find you all excited and willing to play with it some more!
Two new ARIA related resources
There are two new ARIA resources that recently entered the web which I’d like to point you to if you’re interested:
Impressions from SightCity 2008 in Frankfurt, Germany
From May 7 to May 9, I attended the SightCity conference and exhibition of assistive technologies for the blind and visually impaired. It is the biggest one in the German speaking world, and one of the biggest venues of this kind in Europe.
Impressions from a German Web 2.0 accessibility conference
Last week on Tuesday, I attended a German web 2.0 accessibility conference titled Einfach für Alle – Konzepte und Zukunftsbilder für ein Barrierefreies Internet, loosely translated “Simply for all – Concepts and Visions for an accessible internet”. The conference was organized by the Aktion Mensch initiative Einfach für alle. I was invited to participate as an expert on Web 2.0 technologies in a workshop titled “web applications – The software inside the browser”.