The web as I want it!

Responsive web site design

Just a few days before the turn of the year and I was bombarded in my social media and feed reader streams with articles about the things to wait in technology for the next year. Well… this year.

I will concentrate on a few of them that focus on trends to expect for 2013 in web design and I will give a sample of the articles I’ve seen. The next web presented 10 web design trends you can expect to see in 2013 in their article. Mashable, also presented a number of trends you should keep an eye on. The smashing hub presented 6 design trend expected fro 2013. I won’t continue with the list but as you can see from the small sample there is a common and usually number one trend in all articles.  Yes… if you are thinking responsive web design you are correct!

Crowdsourcing for accessibility.

This year’s blog action day is dedicated to the power of WE. Given this bolg’s focus on accessibility I can see many ways that we can help for accessibility. Sometimes even without knowing about it. The story of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA that follows is just an example of such a case.

CAPTCHA which is an abbreviation for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart is something that most of us have come across in our web browsing. It’s a picture with a set of words presented in a distorted way that aims to tell humans from computers apart. It is usually found in cases where developers want to avoid spamming.

However, as successful as CAPTCHAs might be in avoiding spamming in various cases they are also very successful in preventing people with disabilities to comment, respond, and use whatever feature is protected by a CAPTCHA. How could a blind person see and understand what is written in an image which doesn’t have and alternative text? How could a persons with dyslexia and other print disabilities use them?

In the meantime… (#4)

While waiting for the next monday post I’d like to turn your attention to a couple of interesting sources/articles that I’ve recently discovered.

The first is an article in ReadWriteWeb which explains how the Boomers generation is going to play a significant role in new technologies and their adoption in the future since in the US alone it is predicted to reach over 50% of the population until 2030. One might think… “and what this story tells us about accessibility?”. Well at first sight you might not realize that the buying power of that population will force markets to think about them more seriously.

In the meantime…

While waiting for the new weekly post on Monday I’d like to turn your attention to a survey that in my opinion tells some of the story of web accessibility especially for blind and visually impaired people.

I am talking about the WebAIM: Screen reader user survey. This is the forth time that webAIM conducts the survey and it includes also some comparisons with results from previous years. I don’t want to spoil the fun of going through it but I’ll just give you a hint.

What do you think is the item that flashes first in the list of most difficult and frustrating items on web pages?

Sadly enough, as the authors mote, the list hasn’t changed much in the last 2.5 years they are cunducting the survey.

I wonder, will it remain the same in the next 3 years too?