It’s a Scottish tradition to tidy the home before New Year comes in.
At the end of last year, I decided to follow this tradition on my blog. Come Hogmanay, otherwise known as Auld Year’s Nicht in Scotland, I’d tidied up newmiddle-earth.blogspot.com.- I brought all my post-labels up to date and created new ones that were relevant to topics covered in each post.
- I updated the alt attributes on each image tag and removed the link-to-image that’s automatically added when it's uploaded into Blogger. Some months ago, I started taking these measures with all new postings.
I’d learnt that this provision was courtesy to the visually impaired who may choose to use a speaking browser - otherwise known as a screen reader (incidentally, I also removed Odiogo last year for I found it did not provide a significant advantage).
- I checked links on all posts dated after 1 June 2008 to ensure that they were still active and relevant. There were some webs that had actually changed (their content was no longer relevant).
I found alternatives for the few that were in this group. There were others that simply didn’t work any more. I either found alternative sites to link to or I removed the offending links.
I’m used to using a link-checker on my work web at TCS. Incidentally, the entire TCS site is down at the time I write this post and has been since before the New Year. Consequently, none of the links on several of my resources posts work at the moment. Sooner or later someone will rectify this at TCS and all will come right – I hope.No apparent luxury:I do not have the luxury of a link-checker for my site in Blogger. I use the ‘check links’ facility in DreamWeaver on my development web site at work, but I can’t run my blog site through it. I’ve searched Google several times over the months and not found any quick link-checkers for blog sites. Latterly, I began to wonder how other bloggers checked the links in their archived posts.I have 131 posts dated 2008 on my blog. Most have at least one link to another site. It may be to a blog site or a web page. In a few more months, I’m going to have a sizable lot of posts to look after, and a corresponding set of links to maintain.It’s dead Jim:There is nothing I find more disappointing, when following a link on someone’s post that looks like an interesting lead, than getting the dreaded ERROR 404 or other such ‘Web-site Not Found’ notice.Web links have a half-life. They don’t necessarily last forever. Some break altogether, which means the unfortunate reader goes nowhere on click. It could be that the linked site doesn’t exist anymore, or that it’s been relocated, with no provision for redirection. It could also be that the site has gone down, and that the fault may be rectified in the near future. I’ve found it pays to wait a bit before revising a dead link if it’s to a site that I can trust. There’s life Jim, but not as we know it:Sometimes the content on a site changes. As a result, the site may no longer be relevant to the context of the link in my post. While this rarely happens with links to blog posts, it is not an uncommon problem where links to web pages are used.
The need for vigilance in this regard is paramount when web links are used in elearning modules. Though the performance of the links on my blog is not as critical as this, it can be regarded by visitors as a reflection of my blog.What is good practice?When I find that links are faulty on my blog posts or web pages, I fix them by finding alternative relevant sites or remove the offending links in courtesy to my readers. Am I being too fastidious in bringing old posts up to date? Does it really matter if old links don’t work anymore?How do you check for broken links on your blog posts?
Several discussions in recent months have prompted me to think of ways to assist the visually impaired to access blogs and websites. This topic can spark intense emotions in some people, usually the sighted. It is very much open to misinterpretation of intentions, so please be patient with me as you read this post. I am just a learner.
Odiogo - a useful application?Only recently, I installed Odiogo by way of a trial. This is part of my intention to find ways of making access to the Net easier for those potential readers who are visually impaired. Many such people, who are web active, obtain access to web and blog sites through the use of assistive technologies.The quality of the audio presented by Odiogo is reasonable and may well be better than some downloadable screen-readers. Comments are not picked up, however, and in this respect the facility falls well short of being useful for any reader who wishes to participate in discussion. This is a biggie as far as I’m concerned.I am still unsure of how useful Odiogo could be to the visually impaired. I’d appreciate your help if you are familiar with the use of this technology, particularly if you have experience of its use by the visually impaired.
Middle-earth blogspot’s a bit different:You may have noticed a few things different around my blog recently. For instance, I no longer use links in my posts that directly open the linked site in a new tab or window – I’m still amending a few odd links in earlier posts. Opening a new window can be confusing for the visually impaired who follow text on a post with a screen reader. Another is that related-post links will be found at the bottom of my posts from now on.Here are some other things I’ve learnt so far about blog posts and screen readers:Images:It’s possible for a screen reader to describe the content of an image in a blog or web page. This can be useful, especially of the image is referred to in the text. Information about the image can provide some relevance to what’s read in the text and has the potential to be helpful.But this depends entirely on the text contained in the so-called alt attribute in the html code associated with the image. Without this, the image has an invisible attribute. Such text should describe the image appropriately and explicitly for it to be of any use to the reader.The alt attribute of an image used in a post is accessible through the html of the post. It is found in the image tag and can have the form shown here:
src="The image address on the site." alt="The explicit info about the image."
Click here for more:A link should have a link-label that’s relevant to what is linked to, so that the reader understands what to expect. The common ‘click here’ and ‘more ’ link-labels do not convey anything useful and can actually be confusing to the person trying to interpret what they’re looking at.I guess a similar rule applies to link-labels as to image alt attributes. There is also the advantage that a well-labeled link or image is picked up more readily as useful content by search engines and can be an asset to the blogger.Blogroll position:
I didn’t realise that the position of the blogroll was so problematic. Apparently blogrolls located to the left of the page cause problems. Blogrolls should be located on the right of the page.There are other parameters that can affect post readability for the visually impaired. Good summaries of those can be found at the American Foundation for the Blind web-site. Among the useful information there, is a page on How to Make Your Blog Accessible to Blind Readers and another on Improving Your Web Site’s Accessibility.If you have any information on Odiogo - good or less so - that might be of use to others, please add a comment under this post. As well, if you have any tips you may have on adjusting a blog so that it improves access to the visually impaired, put them in a comment here. I’d really appreciate that.
photo by Mike Wood.
The inspector walked past, checking tickets as he went. But the man sitting beside me was still holding up his ticket. It clicked with me that this lap-topper was blind.
“He’s checked your ticket,” I said. He smiled and nodded without looking up. Steven was congenitally blind. His job involved working with the Foundation for the Blind in Wellington. The odd lap-top, with its strange toothed keyboard, was in fact a Braille computer.
Blind to the technology:
Here was I, an elearning teacher. But I hadn’t given much thought to how the blind might access the technology that was so much my bread and butter.
I thought Steven had been typing a letter. He told me he could use his lap-top for that. In fact, he had been reading a novel. We swapped email addresses when I spoke of a free speaking web-reader that a colleague of mine had found on the Net that same week. It must have been among the first of its type - an early version of WeMedia Talking Browser.
Steven was excitedly interested. At that time, the web reading technology he used at work was so expensive; he could not afford to purchase it for his own use at home.
A useful link:
We kept in touch by email. Steven was careful to let me know that the link I flicked him was useful. He’d found that installation was easy, and getting to know the idiosyncrasies of the software wasn’t too difficult. WeMedia was a helpful tool for reading the Net.
Some weeks later we met again on the same bus route. While we chatted, I asked which novel he had been reading that morning. “I’m recalibrating my computer map today”, he explained. I hadn’t noticed that clipped to his shoulder, next the window, was a small device, the size of a bulky mobile phone.
“According to my GPS receiver, we should be at the Riddiford Street intersection”, he said with a smile. And we were. He had been synchronising his map by checking it against the GPS signal.
Steven explained how his computer map had saved the day only a few weeks before. He and his wife had been travelling by car up north. They'd got lost. Within a few minutes, Steven switched on his lap-top and found precisely where they were, using his map and GPS receiver.
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