Web Standards, Accessibility and Other Stuff

My family shops at Target, you know, the huge American retail store. I really like that store (especially when there’s a Taco Bell or Starbucks inside). But I think their corporate image, at least for me, is in a serious decline. This is mostly due to a couple of lawsuits going on against the company.

In the world wide web industry, we should all be familiar with the NFB vs. Target lawsuit—the biggest case regarding web accessibility in the United States, thus far. Target is actually fighting to keep its web site away from users with disabilities, and technology limitations. This is like a store closing its doors to anyone with a visual, hearing, or motor impairment. How naive and shameful!

In the second lawsuit, the American tennis great (retired) Andre Agassi is seeking an injunction against Target for using his name without permission. Apparently Target is putting Agassi’s name on sandals without permission when they’ve already been asked to stop. How silly.

I had high expectations when I went to see the new movie Beowulf last weekend, and man, I was not disappointed. It was awesome! I saw it in IMAX 3D which made it even more incredible. Although there were a couple major changes to the original plot of the epic Beowulf poem, I think it was for the better.

Factoids:

• Beowulf is an old English epic poem thought to have been composed sometime in the middle ages. The poem tells the story of Beowulf and his battles against three different adversaries.
• The only surviving manuscript of Beowulf is the work of two, rather than one, scribes who transcribed the poem from another earlier manuscript and it now resides in the British Library.
• The truly epic poem Beowulf has survived through the centuries and is the only surviving example of Anglo Saxon heroic poetry.
• Despite being a mainly Scandinavian story with most of the storyline taking part in Scandinavia rather than England it has risen to become a national English epic.
• The poem consists of no less than 3,183 lines and the events described in the poem take place during the 5th or 6th Century.

I read numerous RSS feeds, mostly related to front-end web development. But there are a few that I read that are not tech-related…

• Most People Are DJs - music and entertainment podcast
• Blaugh - comic of the blogosphere
• Word of the Day - from Dictionary.com
• I don’t like you in that way - celebrity dirt
• My photos on Flickr!

By the way, I use NetVibes, an awesome personalized “home page” which can not only read and organize RSS feeds, but also blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, and game widgets!

I performed a web site “tune-up” on my web company’s site, CheckEngine USA. It’s been almost two years since I launched the company and the web site. Because the site already implemented web standards, it took a short amount of time to do the work. What do you think?

Did you ever have an email address that you posted on a web site “stolen” from a damn spamming company, then have tons of spam sent to that address? Doesn’t that suck?!

If you have, then you’ve probably either removed the email link or tried protecting it with some method of tricking these “spambots”.

I just posted an article called Email Spambot Buster.  It describes a great way of safely displaying an email address on a web site. It is accessible, uses progressive enhancement, and adds a couple neat bonuses.

Did you know that James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader from Star Wars, graduated from the University of Michigan? (My alma mater.) Awesome, go blue! Among 200 other films, television shows, and theater productions, the famous actor was in such “classics” as Conan the Barbarian and Coming to America!