Ben's Blog

A new site I designed for National Publishers recently went live.

Melissa wrote some of the words while I looked after the visual design, HTML/CSS, and a customised content management system that allows the client to make updates to the websites themselves.

Working at Lemonade I wrote the HTML and CSS for the Blue Corset Co website.

As I write this Full Code Press is taking place in Sydney. The Woman of Words is participating for the Australian team as copywriter/editor.

You can check out the progresss on Flickr and YouTube.

WIPA is an organisation that brings Australian Web professionals together to exchange ideas, participate in debate, advance education and promote ethical practice.

A List Apart is conducting a survey on the Web Design industry. The results should be interesting.

If you are a Website Designer and have a few spare minutes it would be worth filling in the survey.

Accessibility is now commonplace. Designers, developers, business owners and even advertisers are now seeing the business benefits of accessible websites.

Eyes used to glaze over when we mentioned accessibility. Now those same eyes are passionately telling us all about it. Accessibility is now as important as interaction, branding and aesthetics and fortunately today we can have them all.

Now I am going to contradict myself. Sort of.

Imagine you have a web standards compliant website. It has pleasing aesthetics, semantic markup and good usability and accessibility. Users will enjoy this website and so will search engines.

Now say you want to use Flash on part of your website. Many of us know that Flash and accessibility are like oil and water. However when Flash is used in the correct context it is a brilliant tool for enhancing a website’s usefulness and capacity to communicate but it royally ruins your accessibility rating.

At this point you have three options:

1. Proceed with your idea and don’t worry if it is not accessible.
2. Proceed with your idea and make your best effort to provide an accessible alternative.
3. Bin your idea because every byte of your website has to be accessible.

I like the sound of point two.

If due to accessibility obligations you choose not to use the technology that best suits your content, isn’t that an accessibility problem in itself? By denying users the most appropriate delivery of content aren’t we denying them of the best user experience possible?

Remember not for a moment am I saying we should exclude certain users. That would be lazy, foolish and inherently against Tim’s notion of the Web.

Rather than following wonky guidelines to the letter in an effort to include everyone equally, we need to push forward where we can but at the same time never leave anyone completely behind.

For example. A sophisticated graph is nothing more than a table of data, or an interactive map from Point A to Point B is nothing more than an ordered list of directions.

So what’s stopping us? We can have our cake and eat it too. Sort of.

I would like to clarify that I am not limiting my comments to Flash. PDFs or JavaScript that doesn’t degrade gracefully are just as problematic.

I want to emphasise that I am an accessibility advocate. I understand and support the WAI and believe that accessibility is truly at the heart of any well designed website but so are a lot of other things.

Apple knows more about “clean” design than anybody, right? So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have abandoned?

www.greenmyapple.org

I refer to myself as a designer but day in day out I find myself doing less of what most people would consider design. Nowadays most of the design I do is with lead pencils and scrap pieces of A4 or even with a word processor.

“But isn’t design about presentation?”

It sure is! But its also much more than that. For instance, when someone designs a toaster they don’t just consider how it will look on your bench top. They have to:

• Ensure it can withstand large amounts of heat without melting.
• Make sure it does not pop up too fast and throw your toasty friends onto the floor. Butter side down of course!
• Think about how the toaster can be cleaned easily and safely.
• Meet design and safety standards in whichever country the toaster will be sold in.
• Be able to source the materials and manufacture them at a reasonable price.

The above points are problems that need solutions and therefore design at a pure level. Most of this happens before Photoshop is opened.

So next time someone tells you they are a Designer or are studying Design what they actually do might surprise you.

Last weekend myself and around 4,000,000 other Victorians who are eligible to vote made our way to 100s of polling stations around the state. We were deciding who should rule.

We waited patiently in line and dodged the stares of the party faithful handing out how to vote cards. Our names were ticked off, we numbered our ballot papers 1 to 5 and popped them in the ballot box. A man was standing there to make sure I did it correctly. We then left to carry on with the rest of the day.

The question I have is why can’t I do this online? I have no problem with voting. I understand how important every vote is, however I have more important things to do than wait in line on a Saturday afternoon… Like watching the cricket or playing with the cat. More important than waiting in line anyway.

Voting online would be so easy.

• I could do it whenever I want (within a given time-frame of say 5 days)
• My vote could go straight into the tally system meaning no manual counting of ballot papers
• Results would be evident in real time
• Authentication would not be a problem. There is essentially no authentication when you vote in the flesh. They don’t actually ask you to prove your identity. At least online you would need to know your name and address. I never get asked to both when I vote
• Absentee voting would be so much easier
• We would save a huge amount of paper. This is good for the environment and our hip pocket
• We would save a lot of labour, which is also good for our hip pocket.

I can pay my bills, apply for a home-load, buy airline tickets and purchase just about anything else under the sun online so why is casting a vote any different? I don’t know.