The Blind Leading the Blind


In the world of internet building, one of the biggest issues you end up dealing with is web accessibility, an aspect of web standards and design that deals with the necessity of developing web content that can be clearly understood by those with dissabilities. Example: Images used for navigation (links) that aren't properly labelled (with a tag of text for when the image isn't shown) mean that a blind person is unable to get where they're going within your site, and text that is too rigidly sized cannot be made bigger for the hard of seeing.
Thing is, the whole concept of designing whole chunks of code for the disabled is that they always seem more like a concept than a reality, like they are just these ghosts that the W3(a standards consortium) uses to scare us into behaving properly. But the other day I met a blind guy in my Presocratics class who's JOB is going from website to website (public/government sites only) and evaluating their usability with a screenreader (software that reads the text out loud a la Stephen Hawking).


He said that a lot of them were awful. And this was only sites that are REQUIRED to comply to accessibility standards, let alone the whole internet.


Obviously most people reading this are not web designers, but anyone who is should definitely take a look at that page and try to be as accomodating as possible to those less web-fortunate when you're coding. It seems that the handicapped have even more to gain from electronic media than the sighted/well do (as newspapers don't come in brail in the morning), so why not give them the best chance possible?
posted by Jer Clarke at 17:58

artbusting


Most people have heard of addbusting, or culture jamming. The idea that the best way to fight fire is with fire, and that culturally we must re-appropriate the images that swarm around us for our own uses. Advertising and billboards become, in the eyes of the Adbuster, material for composing a new dialog with those around them, a way to convey ideas that would normally attract no attention at all (hint: people will actually look at something more if there is a stupid logo they have been sold on it, even if they'd rather not).


Good idea right? So good, apparently, that the advertisers themselves have decided to get in on the act, using the visual splendor of public art to draw eyes towards their repetitious and numbing billboards (Click Picture at right for larger view)


This was one of the finest and most prominent pieces of semi-spontaneous urban art in Montreal. It made excellent use of the space, both physically and psychially provided it, and generally spruced up a neighboorhood that was lacking in such colorful creativity. Now it's just a big eye-grabbing backdrop for a demi-food hocking corporation.


Seriously though, is anyone else craving a bacon salad?
posted by Jer Clarke at 08:51