Category Archives: Life

WCAG2 will be squashed by the developer community

Joe Clark, respected Web Accessibility guru, author of Building Accessible Websites, is criticising the draft version of the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which has been under development for over 5 years now.

Clark doesn’t just criticise the content of the new guidelines, but the manner in which they have been delivered to the world and how valuable stakeholders haven’t been listened to or even consulted.

What does this mean? A lot of the work of WCAG1 — the things that actually work — seems to be being undone and losing a lot of it’s punch. And instead, most of what WCAG2 is proposing Joe claims to be unachievable — and he’d know.

I could start explaining, but you’re better off reading what Joe Clark had to say his A List Apart article.

The WAI committee didn’t give much time for interested parties to provide comments — only until 31st May 2006. You better read this now and provide your feedback to the group while you still can.

UPDATE: Corrected some mistakes — thanks Joe Clark for dropping by and correcting me 😉

Accessibility Coding Internet Life Politics Web Design 3 comments

I, Course Co-ordinator

Natcoll have hired me full time to cover for my boss as he goes on leave for three months. So I’m now Acting Course Co-ordinator.

My first big task as CC was to sign all the diplomas which were only just made available to sign the day I assumed the role.

This was a big deal for me. The diploma document is a symbol of proficiency in a skill; a talisman representative of knowledge and ability, if you will. Identifying myself with these student’s time was kinda scary but in an exciting way. It felt important, and I didn’t feel like I should be the one signing them: I wasn’t the course co-ordinator while they were studying. But seeing as the regular CC was on leave, it fell to me. Proudly, I rose to the occasion.

My existing signature isn’t particularly appealing nor can I consistantly reproduce it, so I spent like a good 15 minutes re-creating and practicing my signature. I like it much better than my old chicken scrawl splat of a signature I had.

And so, armed with a sufficently better signature, I signed the diplomas for the students graduating this Friday. Congratulations to all of them. There are a lot of classes there that had finished before I began at Natcoll, and there are classes there I had a lot to do with, especially last year’s 07s who finished earlier this year.

Events Life Work 1 comment

What Humans are Capable Of

From O’Reilly Radar (Ya, Reilly.)

Beau Vrolyk just sent me the following email: “Once in a while someone takes something really simple and makes it absolutely extraordinary. This is a video of someone doing exactly this…. simply amazing… You’ll find this well worth the four minutes of your life it will take to watch it.” Beau titled his email “A zen master???? Dancer??? You decide.”

I totally agree. Wow. As Tim O’Reilly said: “It makes you realize just how much more humans are capable of than most of us display.”. Heart touching stuff. An opus.

At the very least, this makes all those street performers look like noobs.

Update: Jason Garfield does a Chris Bliss diss. With 5.

Yeah, Garfield’s routine is definitely a more technically-impressive display. But as we know in the design industry: bells and whistles a well designed piece do not make. Bliss shows simplicity and imperfection in his routine, and it emotes better because of it.

That said, the last 5 seconds of the video (after the end of the song) is amazing.

Creativity Life 2 comments

Do the Famine!

The 40 Hour Famine is on this weekend, so I’m gonna join with my youth group and do the whole 40 hours without food and without technology. No eating, internet, phone, ipod, or psp. I might watch a movie, or read a book or three. And I might take some photos with my digital camera for proof.

And hey, you can help! I need people to sponsor me to make it all worthwhile. This year’s famine is about stopping child labour. For every $300 raised through the famine, World Vision will help a family in India to start a business so they can support themselves without needing their children to work in bonded labour.

And I’ve discovered that you can even sponsor me online! World Vision have set up a system that lets Faminers register their famine books online and get people to sponsor them online! It’s pretty neat.

So you can go pledge your sponsorship of me here:

https://secure.famine.org.nz/glutnix/

Even if you only give NZD$2, that little part will go towards helping children from more than twelve countries worldwide. $10 will provide a family of five with a health checkup and basic medical supplies in India. $150 will provide seeds for one Tanzania primary school so they can provide daily meals for their students for a year!

It all adds up! Sponsor me and help change the world!

Christianity Events Life New Zealand Outside 1 comment

Today at work, we were visited by someone from The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand‘s Adult Education and Training department. Apparently, I can become a qualified teacher and get a “National Certificate in Adult Education and Training” through a correspondence course, and Natcoll will pay for it. Woot! And it turns out I can cross credit some of my unit standards from my Electronic Multimedia course I finished in 2000. 😀

I’m actually pretty excited about learning more about teaching. I read this article yesterday which quoted Raph Koster’s definition of fun:

Fun is learning in a safe-environment.

The reverse “learning in a safe-environment is fun” isn’t always true, but taking risks to practice something new and exciting and not having to pay huge consequences is fun.

Not to mention getting paid to get a qualification — that’s pretty sweet.

Learning Life Work Comments are closed