As the web becomes increasingly social, distributed, and search driven, the paths that users take to find content grow ever more varied, and that, according to Luke Wroblewski, has important implications for web page design and usability.

Wroblewski has been involved with interface design since he was Senior Interface Designer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) back in the days of the Mosaic browser when the website had 5 pages. He is currently Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! and previously was Lead Interface Designer of eBay Inc.’s platform team. He has authored two books, Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability (Wiley, 2002) and Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (Rosenfeld, 2008), a book on best practices for designing the forms that enable everything from online shopping to joining social networks. I’m gonna read the full, are you?

Thanks to the publishing power of Jadu’s Web Content Management System for Government, Manchester City Council has been able to provide advanced Web 2.0 features and enhanced public services to the community, such as advanced Google Maps, social book-marking of content and dynamic A-Z services.

In the local government category, Manchester comes ahead of the other favourites Camden, Glasgow, Hounslow and Blackburn. Winners in other categories include the BBC, Amazon, Google and Tesco.

Matt Walton, head of online channel development at BT, said: “With the BT Online Excellence Awards, we’ve given consumers the opportunity to recognise the websites they regularly use – whether that’s for shopping, entertaining the kids or getting information from their local authority.

“That’s where they’re different: we weren’t interested in the technical aspects of the sites – just why users like them. As we suspected, the range of products or information available was the most important factor, followed by how easy it was to use.”

Leader of Manchester City Council Councillor Richard Leese said:”Our website combines a good mix of news and information with a range of services that people can access and order online. We use our website as one of the vital channels to make contact with and to hear from our communities, so we are delighted to receive this award.

“However we don’t want to stand still; we want to carry on improving so please do log on to let us know your views.”

“manchester.gov.uk is a milestone in Local Government websites. The website provides a great service to the people of Manchester – and to be recognised alongside Google, Amazon and the BBC for excellence is one of the highest accolades for Manchester and Jadu.” – Suraj Kika, CEO, Jadu

Lancashire County Council’s Children’s Services website – whatnow.co.uk also received fourth place in the ‘Best Kids Website’ category, just behind other winners including the BBC and Disney.

For more details about the BT Online Excellence Awards and the results, go to www.bt.com/onlineexcellence

W3C Interaction Domain technologies enable millions of people every day to browse the Web and to author Web content. Industry uses these technologies for purposes such as distributing information within an organization and creating new business opportunities.

“Combining the various XML markups and Web APIs developed by W3C into an integrated system is the next big challenge. We are already seeing the fruits of this work on both desktop and mobile platforms – and the future is even more exciting” Chris Lilley, Interaction Domain Leader

As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the initial direct contact with clients during the discovery meeting is likely the most important moment in the life of a project. While most of my previous reference in this regard has been toward the establishment of designer competence and development of fellowship with the client, there is another vital aspect to this initial meeting: the specific questions asked.

It’s all about discovery.

The winning design, submitted by The Alzheimer’s Society, is called ‘memories are made of this’ and comes in two parts. The first is a customisable screensaver. The user will be able to upload pictures, text and video to create a personalised scrapbook on a computer. The second part is a social networking element, which will provide an easy to use way for people with dementia to talk with each other. Full story from the BBC.

ワンクリックアワード

There are thousands of companies, blogs, government bodies and other organisations trying to make their news and content accessible as a text-based RSS feed. Podcasting and “Pod radio” are technologies where the RSS feed is enriched with a link (called an enclosure) to an mp3 file. This is widely used by radio stations, national and international commercial and non-commercial broadcasting companies, on line news papers, and so on.

Better Connected is failing to accomplish anything other than paint a gloomy picture of play and upset Local Authority rulers and those of us really making an effort. When does it get positive? Dan Champion is in a similar position to me and the Web Access Blog makes him an example and issues a kind of apology. 466 failures to comply is frankly depressing. But then, it isn’t accurate is it, which is frankly useless.

Well, The Pickards may have an answer.

“Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye.
Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess,
Boy, you been a naughty girl you let your knickers down.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus”

- I Am The Walrus, 1967, Lennon-McCartney

In Andy Clarke’s article ‘Creating Inspired Design Part 1: I Am The Walrus‘, he talks about merging ideas and inspiration in different and unexpected ways to push design for the web.

The man is mad. Which is why his voice is so valuble. Bloody good stuff.

What does this year hold for content technologies? On the whole, we expect to see more incremental changes, rather than epochal shifts.

Despite all the industry mergers, new product versions, and ceaseless march of acronyms, the content technology industry does not in fact move very fast.

The “digital divide” refers to the fact that certain parts of the population have substantially better opportunities to benefit from the new economy than other parts of the population. Most commentators view this in purely economic terms. However, two other types of divide will have much greater impact in the years to come.

Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King.

I worked a few years ago now for a large company designing and building web sites as though on a production line. Falling into the trap of clock-in – work – clock-out, leaving your interest in the pigeon-hole you work in with your passions faltering or completely doused by the powers is all to easy and in the end demoralising.

Applying Andy’s habits could well break you out. Either out the company altogether or more importantly out the box to make a real change to the giant you work for. Love what you do and never stop learning. Karma maintains if you show your work love…

As interesting finding out who the grand winner will be, the short-list of five is way more interesting. In alphabetical order:

• Drupal
• e107
• Joomla!
• Plone
• Xoops

The Judges will be choosing from the five Content Management Systems that received the most nominations, during the nomination stage. They will be selecting their top three based on a number of factors including performance, usability, accessibility, ease of configuration and customization, scalability and security.

I hope we get to see their score cards, knowing who scored highest in terms of accessibility will be of great interest.

This site is an experiment to see how we can make digg news easily available to mobile web browsers. You can read the news on a Blackberry, Treo, or cell phone on the train, in the line at the grocery, or in a boring meeting.

Simple is better. Thanks TechCrunch.

SOURCE Royal National Institute of the Blind

A landmark ruling in the States for web accessibility as www.target.com is successfully sued by the National Federation of the Blind under the American Disabilities Act (ADA).

The court has ruled that “clicks” as well as “bricks”, are covered by the US Americans Disability Act (ADA) and E- commerce is now a “place of public accommodation”.

The full new release reads:

PR Newswire, Thursday, September 07, 2006

Legal Precedent Set for Web Accessibility

By SOURCE National Federation of the Blind

A federal district court judge ruled yesterday that a retailer may be sued if its website is inaccessible to the blind. The ruling was issued in a case brought by the National Federation of the Blind against Target Corp. (Northern District of California Case No. C 06-01802 MHP) The suit charges that Target’s website (www.target.com) is inaccessible to the blind, and therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the California Disabled Persons Act.

Target asked the court to dismiss the action by arguing that no law requires Target to make its website accessible. The Court denied Target’s motion to dismiss and held that the federal and state civil rights laws do apply to a website such as target.com.

The suit, NFB v. Target, was filed as a class action on behalf of all blind Americans who are being denied access to target.com. The named plaintiffs are the NFB, the NFB of California, and a blind college student, Bruce “BJ” Sexton.

The plaintiffs are represented by Disability Rights Advocates (www.dralegal.org), a Berkeley-based non-profit law firm that specializes in high-impact cases on behalf of people with disabilities; Brown, Goldstein & Levy (www.browngold.com), a leading civil rights law firm in Baltimore, Maryland; and Schneider & Wallace (www.schneiderwallace.com), a national plaintiff’s class action and civil rights law firm based in San Francisco, CA.

The court held: “the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination in the enjoyment of goods, services, facilities or privileges, is that whatever goods or services the place provides, it cannot discriminate on the basis of disability in providing enjoyment of those goods and services.” The court thus rejected Target’s argument that only its physical store locations were covered by the civil rights laws, ruling instead that all services provided by Target, including its Web site, must be accessible to persons with disabilities.

“This ruling is a great victory for blind people throughout the country,” said NFB President Dr. Marc Maurer. “We are pleased that the court recognized that the blind are entitled to equal access to retail websites.”

Dr. Maurer explained that blind persons access websites by using keyboards in conjunction with screen-reading software, which vocalizes visual information on a computer screen.

Target’s website contains significant access barriers that prevent blind customers from browsing among and purchasing products online, as well as from finding important corporate information such as employment opportunities, investor news, and company policies.

The plaintiffs charge that target.com fails to meet the minimum standard of web accessibility. It lacks compliant alt-text, an invisible code embedded beneath graphic images that allows screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of the image to a blind computer user. It also contains inaccessible image maps and other graphical features, preventing blind users from navigating and making use of all of the functions of the website. And because the website requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction, blind Target customers are unable to make purchases on target.com independently.

The plaintiffs originally filed the complaint in Alameda superior court on February 7, 2006. The case was removed to federal district court and assigned to Judge Marilyn Hall Patel. Target responded to the suit by filing a motion to dismiss the case, which argued in part that no civil
rights laws apply to the Internet.

“We tried to convince Target that it should do the right thing and make its website accessible through negotiations,” said Dr. Maurer. “It is unfortunate that Target took the position that it does not have to take the rights of the blind into account. The ruling in this case puts Target and other companies on notice that the blind cannot be treated like second class citizens on the Internet or in any other sphere.”

Explaining the ramification of the ruling, Mazen M. Basrawi, Equal Justice Works Fellow at Disability Rights Advocates, noted that: “the court clarified that the law requires that any place of public accommodation is required to ensure that it does not discriminate when it uses the internet as a means to enhance the services it offers at a physical location.”

“I hope that I can soon shop online at Target.com just like anyone else,” said UC Berkeley student BJ Sexton, who is a named plaintiff in the lawsuit. “I believe that millions of blind people like me can use the Internet just as easily as do the sighted, if websites are accessible.”

“Imagine a computer that never crashes, or gets infected by a virus. Imagine a computer onto which you never have to install any application.

Imagine a computer that follows you wherever you go, be it at school, at work, abroad, or back home. This computer does not exist today, but it will in the future, and this future might be much closer than you think.”

IT|Redux provides an introduction to the concept of Office 2.0.

John Allsopp, the author who gave us “A Dao of Web Design“, has written “The Big Picture on Microformats” which gives us a snapshot of what’s happening with microformats today, and challenges us all to move them closer to the front of our minds.

“Innovative publishers are publishing microformats, while innovative developers have embraced microformats to help build new types of online services. These innovators have taken the plunge, demonstrating the practical value and the promise of microformats right now.” – John Allsopp

I just hope I read it.

Our goal is to help people locate, remix and republish open and copyleft images. We aren’t just about ‘free stock photos’ for designers, but also about helping educators, bloggers and digital artists find photos they can use without fear of “the man”.

Now stock.xchng is good and until now my main source but…

We (Yotophoto) index various sources of free imagery on the web including Flickr, Wikipedia, Stock.Xchng, Morguefile, Pixelperfect Digital and OpenPhoto.

Go try Yotophoto. It rocks.

Read Harnessing Collective Innovation with Web 2.0