Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH), a long-time client of 76design, ranked first in Laval’s University’s Directory of Evidence-Based Information Websites.

To see the entire list:

1. http://machaon.fmed.ulaval.ca/medecine/repertoire/repertoire.asp
2. Click “English”
3. Click “Complete List” on the left.

The main goal of the list was to offer a medical website directory which would include a rating based on objective and validated criteria.

Speaker: Niqui Merret

Contrary to popular belief, making a Flash movie accessible to a wider selection of users does not require cartwheels and back flips. A few basic usability and accessibility considerations can take your movie to the next level and reach a wider audience. The most basic step of embedding a SWF into a page incorrectly could cause a screen-reader to hang.

This session will take a cause and effect look at accessibility covering a selection of common problems and possible solutions. Niqui will cover visual, audio, mobility and cognitive disabilities and demonstrate how Flash can help or hinder access.

Notes:

Any information provided along a timeline should include synchronized text based description such as captions accompanying a video. For exmaple, weebls toons have captions.

Accessibility in the real world: no technology can be 100% accessible to all users. Level accesibility is directly proportional to level of effort put in.

Barriers to accessibility: technology (flash, browser, screen reader), developer (interface designer, programmers, copyrighters). Content developers cause barriers by not being aware of accessibility considerations.

Technology – Flash player interfaces with screen readers and keyboard well. Focus (big yellow box around object) is clear to user and focus is made available and is fed through to assistive technology.

Standards and guidelines? Current documentation is difficult to comprehend and digest. The key is to understand the user – its not a case of understanding rules and guides.

Simple tests. Take away the mouse and attempt to follow similar paths.

Simple disability categories. Visual (vision, colour blindness, etc). Audio (lack or partial). Motor (hands and holding). Cognitive (understanding).

Screen readers. Needs to gain access and report back to assistive technology. Not fully integrated with OS and sometimes unreliable – they are stuck in the middle of a chain of information.

Tips for flash: set the name of buttons; specify the reading order; avoid using wmode(!); and, test with screen reader and Microsoft Active Accessibility 2.0 Software Development Kit Tools. Tab index (found on accessibility panel in flash) is very useful in providing proper experience in flash – note this only applies to dynamic text fields. Flash also provides ability to program shortcuts for elements.

Tip: put tab index right on mockups.

As compared to AJAX, flash accessibility can send screen updates to the screen reader. HTML pages are treated as linear and do not send updates to the screen reader.

Microsoft Active Accessibility Tools allow deveoper to view the screen reader output in realtime.

On windows, OS contrast adjustment does not affect flash movies. On Mac, adjusting contrast settings affects the colours on the screen. Another possibility is to provide accessibility controls that allows the user to adjust the contrast – the flash object in turn adjusts the colour scheme in the movie.

Font size controls in browser do not affect flash movies. However, a particular approach (see Text-Resize Detection), is to listen to when a user adjusts the font size n the browser, and using javascript, pass that information back into the flash movie.

The creators of SWFObject and UFO have are working on SWFfix.

Keep in mind: Progressive enhancement != accessibility.

Also see: Adobe DevNet

Speaker: Craign Swan from CRASH!MEDIA

In recent years Flash has broadened as an Interactive tool offering more than just a platform for animations, websites, games and RIA’s, but a whole new world of Interactive possibilities. Engaging Installations. Alternative Interfaces. Calm Computing. Physical Prototyping. Interactive Environments. Making things and Exploring the User as the Interface.

Craig has been a regular speaker at FITC over the years. He never fails to impress – this year was the best by far. Craig’s presentation covers a lot of ground, and this post doesn’t do it justice, however, here are some notes I scribbled down:

• Flash has an ambient awareness – microphone and camera capabilities provide flash with an awareness of what is happening in its environment. Although, this control has been around for a little while by now, a new suite of tools has increased possibilities. Sophistication is limitless. Many new ideas and possibilities with new tools such as bitmap toolkit and new video tools.
• Interaction with camera enables new interfaces including gesture capturing and more interactive user-interfacing. Use color tracking and mapping objects to colour. Technically, poll the screen for the presence of a colour and perform various procedures depending on location and intensity (or any variable) of colour.
• Input devices. [unfortunately, my notes get more sparse as his presentation goes on] IPAC device, a simple input controller, allows developers to piece together their own interfaces. You can use any type of sensor to generate the simulation of a keypress and in turn capture that event within Flash. PhidgetRFID is an easy to use and easy to integrate RFID reader. Make board, tilio board, controller board allow the designer/developer to create alternate output. Monome 8″x8″ controller is a input/output device that is a 10×10 grid of LEDs that double as an input device. Craig was using this as a video mixing board. MIDI controller with a number of knobs provides a wide range of real time control. Craig was using this to interact with a live video feed in realtime controlling various aspects of colour and timing. Connect to WII controller through bluetooth (max msp).

For examples of Craig’s work, go to the CRASH!MEDIA site and click on “Labs”.   A lot of it is in there. Enjoy.

Speakers: Anthony Eden and Scott Weeks from Snepo

Flash is the ideal technology for public facing user interfaces but few flash developers have had the chance to cut their teeth building complex kiosk applications. Come on a journey to the land of hardware peripherals, exotic software integration and regression testing. The possibilities are endless for flash if you know which tools to use and what lies on the outer extremities of the flash universe.

Presentation description

A few points from the presentation with respect o building interactive systems:

• Touch screen technologies (haptic devices) include: Point-of sales systems, kiosks, iPhone, check in system, etc
• Attract user -> engage user -> educate user-> call to action
• User is constantly aware of where they are in their process (location, state, etc) - important because user may come into appliaction at any time during the process. Users very frequently end part way through an application – set an appropriate timeout.
• Rule of thumb: “fat fingers” – move navigation to bottom of screen – navigation must be obvious - just press: dragging and scrolling is not intuitive and release event is not intuitive either
• Accessibility: plan for limited vision so use big thick fonts; plan for color blindness so use high contrast colours. Be aware of mechanics of using the device.

What worked well:

• Transaction services and xml for storage: provides high service level and is relatively easy to develop.
• JSFL: automation scripting for flash helped to strealine production
• Logging ever single piece of interaction. You are able to track entry and exit points – this provides evidence of points of confusion and where users become frustrated and give up.
• Testing: especially brute force testing – putting the system through any imaginable situation. Example: hire a few computer science interns.
• Remote monitoring: transaction server on kiosk would send heartbeat back to server. Central server would expect hearbeat and can repsond by performing diagnostic and basic support such as restart, reset, clear memory, etc.
• Experimentation!

What didn’t work very well:

• Computationally complex procedures may cause kiosk to slow down and possibly become unresponsive.
• Dying computers and enclosures: ensure mechanical robustness of kiosk.
• Screen calibration: potentially a big issue. Callibration can creep from true state.
• Updating was cumbersome: especially as it pertained to physically loading onto machine.

Upsides:

• Environment: you know your and can define your environment – no browsers or campatibility issues.
• Economics: there is money to be made.

I’ve been using the target=”_blank” attribute in my «a» tags since before my first Tea Party fansite ever graced the hallowed pages of Geocities. Fast forward to what will soon be 2007 and we now have the ability to have multiple tabs instead of a bunch of floating windows all over your desktop. So when will we be able to tell HTML links to open in a new tab as opposed to a new window?

This “innovation” (the kind of innovation where you wonder why it wasn’t that way the whole time) has finally been adopted by the big M (only four years later, I might add), so we can officially call it a “standard”. Now it’s time to ask ourselves: When will HTML catch up to current browser technology?

There are still uses for the “new window” link, so I wouldn’t want to eliminate it entirely. I think it should be up to the designer/programmer to decide which link is appropriate; either link in the current window, open a new tab or open a new window. It would be one more level of functionality that could be used to better serve the website’s needs.

There are a TON of uses for this “tab link” idea. For on-line orders, you could have your regular shopping tunnel in the current window, but Terms and Conditions could be viewed in a separate tab, as opposed to having a whole new window pop up, possibly confusing the user.

Someone needs to give our old pal Tim a call and ask him when we can have a link with target=”_tab” in it!

Shaun Inman, web development guru and exceedingly smart guy, has launched the 9th version of his personal site this week. What makes this particular redesign noteworthy is the new dimension he’s added to an otherwise no-frills blog: each post and comment is associated with the moment in time that it was created and, as in the natural world, it “decays” (i.e. fades in colour) as time passes. Posts a year old are noticeably lighter than posts written last week. I think it’s a real innovative twist on the typical notion of a blog and something that is perfectly suited to what Shaun writes about – technology and the web. It’s pretty much a given that something written two years ago is probably out of date and becoming irrelevant, so why not make that immediately apparent in the design when a visitor stumbles onto an old post on your site via a direct link on Google?

Shaun’s always been on the cutting edge and I think he’s clearly demonstrated he’s a step ahead once again. I’m certain that this low-level, almost subconscious approach to navigation – something that Boxes and Arrows’ Ross Howard recently dubbed ambient signifiers – will become more and more prevalent on the web. Especially in the social media landscape. However the key to its success, I believe, is the adherence to a universal standard or set of best practices when it comes to how we as designers communicate to users on this level. For example, if one site darkens its colour palette slightly when you’re logged in and another lightens theirs slightly, the inconsistency will muddle the message and users will be forced to fall back on design cues that force them to think – icons and text – rather than feel their way along.