Bruce Lawson’s personal site

When I was in Bangkok, I bought a lovely Hello Kitty alarm clock that sings to me in what I assume is probably Chinese (or Japanese).

Anyone know what it’s singing, and what it says when I press the button to stop it?

So farewell then, Joe Clark.
“Approved persons may meet me”.
That was your catchphrase.

Joe is retiring from Web Accessibility, but his WCAG Samurai errata notes are a fitting epitaph. I think they’re an excellent summation of best-practice accessibility, and will serve as canonical guidance until WCAG 2 comes on stream (assuming it ends up fit for purpose). The whole document is a model of clarity; it bans and requires; it doesn’t wuss about ignoring PDF but sensibly bans useless PDFs that should be HTML; it makes the user agent responsible for accessibility as well as the author. Best of all, it requires semantic HTML, while simultaneously treating web authors like grown-ups.

Continue reading On the WCAG Samurai errata

Jim O’Donnell points out that the National Archive have done a web site about Victorian prisons, with some blind/partially sighted students, which looks very nice and has sleek code.

Meanwhile, Anne van Kesteren has written a very useful guide that’s an overview of the differences between HTML4 and HTML5.

The Korean film, A Tale of Two Sisters is deliciously creepy, beautifully filmed and elegantly acted. (Isn’t Korean a lovely-sounding language?)

Pat Lauke points out that Jeremy Keith fell into the cheesetrap at @media. If only he’d known about the Tim Berners-Lee Quote-o-matic! quote generator.

There are some people who say that worrying about web standards and accessibility is an indication of much too much time on my hands. I wish. Anyway, people who collect old Teasmades, they’re the ones with too much time … Man, I love England and its eccentrics.

I was shocked to find my James, my six year old, typing “Thomas” into the Youtube search engine and getting user-filmed Thomas snuff movies. Will no-one think of the children?!?!

And, I don’t want to bring this up, but me and your friends have been a bit concerned about you lately. Ask yourself: are you popular?

Friday joke

Some researchers in Paris have discovered that the Hunchback of Notre Dame wasn’t a real hunchback. He was merely a quasi-modo.

A minor operation for the lovely Mrs Lawson prevented me from attending. What did I miss? Which groovy new techniques were showcased, and which achingly gorgeous new websites were unveiled? Did the microformatters mention accessibility? Who snogged who?

Tell all.