One of the things we focus on at Koodoz is making our sites accessible. We try to bring all our sites to a minimum standard that will make it easy for users with disabilities to access our sites.

Previously, I’ve had some of the sites that I’ve done, tested for accessibility in focus groups. Unfortunately, they were always held by third parties who were not able to technically interpret test subjects’ concerns in a way that was really helpful for us. I’d get reports with things like “User couldn’t make their way to page X”. No reasons, no detail. Nevertheless, I’d read a lot of theory regarding what to do and how to do it, and always tried to implement most of it.

Recently, however, an awesome friend from my master’s course, who is visually-impaired, needed help building a website, so I offered to help her. It was a win-win situation: she would learn to hand-code some good (x)HTML and I would get an awesome, first-hand assessment of my accessibility skills. Here’s what I learned.

It’s JAWS, stupid!

I’m a GNU/Linux person, so I tend to forget that 95% of people still use the old Windows. Turns out that blind users are no exception. Apparently Job Access With Speech, better known as JAWS, is the standard screen reader. Sure, there’s Orca and the built-in OS X screen reader VoiceOver but the fact remains that most visually-impaired users will use JAWS. So do the Adaptive Technology Rooms at Monash University. It’d be nice to see them change, but from what I can tell, it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon: not only does JAWS seem to be much more powerful (haven’t tested the other ones, but it’s what my friend and her pals say) but apparently they become used to the program’s voice which makes people hesitant to switching. Turns out we’re all resistant to change!

So, if you can, get yourself a copy of JAWS or painstakingly go through their documentation. Just know that if you support it, you’ll be OK. However, be warned that …

You may be wasting too much time where you don’t need to

Yes, you heard me! Remember all those neat <acronym>s and <abbr>s? Remember the scope attribute for tables? Remember the alternative content for standards-compliant flash? Well, JAWS doesn’t. It couldn’t care less about them. It goes right through them as if they weren’t there.

Now I’m not saying you should completely dump these things. Just be aware that if you’re doing it, so that your visually-impaired visitors feel more at home, you may be wasting your time. If you really want to make your content accessible, mention your acronyms and abbreviations inside the text at least once, make your data tables as simple as possible and provide descriptions for your non-essential flash pieces outside the object tag.

Things that really matter

OK, so the <acronym>s are not that important. There are some things, though, that you should really focus on:

Adding the old “Skip Navigation” link and keeping menus simple

Us human beings are impatient. We want stuff and we want it now! Visually-impaired users are no exception. Imagine having to go through a large menu each and every time you visit a page, when what you really want to do is get straight to the content. It can be pretty repetitive and boring. Always provide a “Skip Navigation” link at the top of your menus. You can hide it with CSS if you want, but I’ve found that keeping it visible can actually be pretty cool — and helpful. Take a look at The Web Standards Project for an awesome example of a visible “Skip Navigation” option.

Also, use <ul>s and <li>s for your menus. You can manipulate them later in any way you want, but it will make them simple and clear enough for the screen reader to interpret them correctly and read through them quickly.

Alternative descriptions for images and flash

How many times have you added empty alt attributes to your images just to trick the validator? Admit it, you’re guilty!

Now, in all seriousness, you need to be super careful with this. “A girl” is not an acceptable description for an image. It’s too vague. Remember that you’re trying to depict the content of your image to someone who can’t see it!. Vision Australia has really good examples of how images should be described. Here’s one:

Girl in front of a bowling lane. The lane has shiny polished floor, rails up and a coloured board above the two pins standing up.

See? That didn’t take too much time, did it? Same goes for flash elements. Just remember to do it outside the <object> tag.

Kosher forms

Exploit all of HTMLs form elements and do it correctly. By this, I mean use <label>s and properly link them to their inputs. Logically group stuff with <fieldset>s, naming those groups with <legend>s and make good use of tabindexes.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll probably be doing a second installment to discuss some other things I learned from my friend, including CAPTCHAS and things specific to low-vision users. In the meantime, be sure to check out the w3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation act, these guidelines from the University of Wisconsin and to validate your site with the Cynthia accessibility report

By the way. My friend can now hand-code quality, standards-compliant (x)HTML code. She learned in just two sessions!

Image courtesy of Jason Pearce

LOTE Kidz is a program developed to teach children from 0-6 years of age, a secondary language through music and immersion. Currently LOTE Kidz teaches Greek to babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers and is planning to offer other immersive language programs, including Vietnamese, Spanish and Chinese.

To help give their branding a polish, LOTE Kidz called upon us to develop a logo that was professional, yet fun and friendly – something that would appeal to both parents and children.

Three cheers to us, for being voted Site of the Day and nominated for Site of the Week at The CSS Awards website, a site that features some of the best CSS websites in the world from the top designers, agencies and bloggers working today.

Since launching the new site, Koodoz Design has been featured in some of the industry’s most renowned and popular CSS and Web Design galleries and blogs, including Smashing Magazine, Noupe, Abduzeedo, Design Shack and CSS Mania to name a few – which, for us, is a massive nod of recognition from fellow web design professionals around the world.

We would be super chuffed if we won the award for Site of the Week as it would automatically make us a contender for Site of the Month, which would be fantastic!

So if you like our site, show us your appreciation and support by voting for our website and a big thanks to everyone who has voted so far!

It’s getting awfully close to Christmas now… only 57 days if I’m not mistaken. Which means you have approximately 50 days before it becomes socially unacceptable to send your Christmas cards to clients, friends and loved ones.

With that seed now firmly planted, you’re probably starting to freak out about what kind of cards to send out this year. Should you go with the glossy, foil stamped, glitter encrusted Santa Clause motif? Or perhaps the super-witty, comical kind that, you know, makes everyone laugh (Ho, ho, ho!)? Hmm, so many choices. So little time. What on earth will you do??

Well you could go down the ‘my-unimaginative-personality-requires-equally-uninspiring-christmas-cards’ route, which will, undoubtedly, get the same reaction from it’s receivers as last years cards. Or, if you want to be just like the cool kids, you could buy yourself some tremendously creative, environmentally friendly, screen printed Christmas cards that are hand-made by my good friends Tim and Tanya Ruxton – owners of We Are Messengers, creators of tantalizingly tasty typography and purveyors of quality stationery.

We are makers of handcrafted greeting cards and other stationery goods. All of our products are individually screen printed and environmentally friendly. All of our products feature a unique message that is designed to impact others in a good way. We care about making a difference to the world we live in and we hope you do too.

Hook yourself up this Noël with some killer Chrissy cards and be the envy of all your unimaginative friends and family. And if you get in quick (before the 30th of October, 2009), you could win one of two ‘Messenger Value Packs’ valued at $35! For more info on how to enter, head over to the We Are Messengers website or meet the duo at the Finders Keepers Market in Brisbane and buy them in person.

I just have to tell the world about these amazing posters I bought a couple of days ago. I found them via one of my fav haunts for cool stuff.

After doing an extensive amount of travel through the US of A over the years, I’ve always had a soft spot for some of their well known cities. So when I saw these very cool screenprints that illustrate the main suburbs of metropolitan America in type, I just had to get me some.

To brighten up the empty walls of our office, I bought myself three posters from Ork, one of the city that never sleeps – New York City – which has been screen printed with silver ink (two hits) on black 30% recycled paper by Wausau Paper (Eclipse Black). Another of Boston – a gorgeous city – which, naturally, came printed with white ink on green 100% recycled paper by French Paper Co.. And my third choice and favourite city of them all – San Francisco – which, fittingly, came beautifully printed in dark grey ink on a golden yellow 30% recycled stock by Wausau Paper which, in my eyes, perfectly represents the city (Think golden gate. Think gold rush. Think 49ers).

Since receiving them in the post (super quick delivery, too) I’ve had them professionally framed within a contemporary black frame and lots of ivory coloured matt board surrounding the print and they now hang proudly on my once blank-walls, looking very kick-ass!

There are a stack of other major US cities to chose from (14 in total), in a variety of stocks and colours on the Ork Posters website. Regrettably, they don’t have any other cities from around the world, which is a bit of a shame, but hopefully the popularity of these designs will increase the demand for other places of interest. I would definitely pay good money for one of Melbourne and it’s inner city suburbs… in fact, if anyone at Ork reads this, I hereby offer my professional design services and knowledge of Melbourne to collaborate with you guys!

If you like typography and have a thing for Americana – you should definitely treat yourself to some of these unique prints!

My long quest to find a good text editor is over (at least for the Mac). Panic’s Coda has been the subject of much buzz lately, and lemme tell ya, it deserves all of it … and then some more!

Seriously, this is the best text editor currently available for Mac. This comes from someone who’s tried everything: from everything the world of F/OSS has to offer to many of the proprietary solutions. I had been stuck with Dreamweaver for over a year now and I hated it, but I kept it because it was the lesser of all evils. Then I started hearing about Textmate and how wonderful it was. I tried it. No Dice … at least not for me.

Finally, a couple of months ago, I was watching a video from Tom Rogers on something about Drupal (BTW, Tom, you f***ing rock!) and noticed on his screencast that he was using an interesting editor. A quick google search and there it was: Coda.

What makes Coda different?

God is in the details, and that’s what the damn thing is full of: details. From the smooth animations to the work placed on making the user interface seamless, it is just a pleasure to use.

Coda has tons of features, which you can check out on their website, so I’ll just focus on the ones that I personally find most valuable.

The Sites tab

Sure, sure, many editors let you keep track of individual sites, but Coda is the only one that will show them to you as if they were stuck to a board with scotch tape! Real-world graphic analogies at their best. Sites integrate with your development and production server and let you publish with a single click.

The Find/Replace tool

I thought Dreamweaver had the best tool for finding/replacing. I was wrong. Coda not only makes it nicer by using firefox-like un-intrusive bars, it also has a ridiculously simple little way of working relatively complex regular expression replaces.

The Clips window

I understand Textmate has something similar called bundles which I didn’t get to try. It just lets you keep and recycle bits of code so you don’t have to repetitively copy and paste the stuff you usually use, like doctypes, functions and little hacks.

SVN integration

I haven’t had time to thoroughly test this feature. I’m still committing/updating etc. with a third party client. But I know that once I sit down and get to it, it will save me an incredible amount of time.

The Terminal … yeah, baby!

It’s amazing: if you go to their website, the people that make Coda actually downplay this feature: “OK, it’s not very sexy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite” they say. I strongly disagree. Have you seen the crappy terminal built in with OS X? Coming from the GNU/Linux world, I need my terminal and I need it now. It makes my life incredibly easier. A note for the people at Panic: your average Starbucks-sippin’ clueless newbie web designer might think otherwise, but the terminal is a priceless tool. Thanks for integrating it and, for god’s sake, be proud of it!

For the record, I am in no way affiliated with the people who make Coda. It’s just that, when you come across something good, you might as well let others know. Would love to hear other people’s opinions on Coda and other text editors for OS X.

GMI Water offer full maintenance and installation services to the water treatment industry including filter, softener, ultra violet light reverse osmosis systems and more. With summer quickly approaching and an exceeding amount of pool related enquiries, GMI requested our help to develop an eCommerce solution for their existing website.

Focusing on creating an online store that would tie-in seamlessly with the aesthetics of their existing CMS based website, the new online store includes a secure credit card payment system as well as an administrative area, allowing GMI's staff to monitor and maintain their inventory.

Luuuving this little ditty by Mumford & Sons at the moment, and I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one who thinks so. Currently on Triple J, their debut single Little Lion Man is getting bucket loads of airtime and BBC Radio 1’s, DJ Zane Lowe recently dubbed the single as the “Hottest Record in the World”. If you haven’t heard the song, check it out here.

This truly exciting, yet humble quartet from London have created an amazingly refreshing and energetic brand of folk – BBC placing them within the Top 15 bands as a Sound of 2009.

Their style of music combines elements of hillbilly folk with it’s twangy banjo (courtesy of the ever-energetic, Winston Marshall) crossed with the gusto of an old Irish pub band. Lead singer, Marcus Mumford’s humble vocals are coarse, yet rich and warm and, in my opinion, very reminiscent of Dave Matthews. In fact, I might go as far as to say that Mumford & Sons may well be England’s answer to DMB.

This one’s definitely gonna get a floggin’ on iTunes.

‘Ave a geez at the lads performing “The Cave”, live in Bristol – an amazing performance with an equally enthusiastic crowd:

Track List for Sign No More:

1. Sigh No More
2. The Cave
3. Winter Winds
4. Roll Away Your Stone
5. White Blank Page
6. I Gave You All
7. Little Lion Man
8. Timshel
9. Thistle & Weeds
10. Awake My Soul
11. Dust Bowl Dance
12. After The Storm

To find out more about Mumford & Sons, visit their official website or become their ‘friend’ and listen to some of their tracks on their MySpace page.

Buildwell Constructions are a Sydney based construction company offering services such as project management, carpentry, renovations, extensions, remedial and maintenance.

When Buildwell asked us to develop a brand for their new business, they wanted a logo that was vibrant and had lots of impact! Something that would stand out in Sydney's busy landscape. Loosely based around the stylised letters of the business; ‘B’ for Build and ‘W’ for Well, we created an abstract symbol that promotes innovation and encapsulates many of the construction industry's fundamental ideologies - such as growth, structure and of course, building.

Based in Melbourne, Concrete Resurfacing Systems (CRS) provide a specialised concrete service to the Industrial, Commercial and Residential Construction industries.

Offering a modern and contemporary look, CRS's new logo represents the business as a young and energetic company. A stylised combination of the company’s initials, combined with a 3-dimensional perspective represents the side of a concrete slab, evoking a sense of strength and structure. It's four linear arrows represent the main areas of their expertise which include Concrete Polishing, Protective & Decorative Coatings, Surface Preparation and Cutting & Drilling, whilst also promoting the evolution of 'old to new' concrete resurfacing.