background preloader

Web Accessibility for Designers

Web Accessibility for Designers
The focus of web accessibility is often on web development – the things that happen in HTML, CSS, or JavaScript after a site has been designed visually. Optimal accessibility should start much earlier, as part of the visual design process. We have created an infographic that highlights a few important principles of accessible design. Text Version Plan Heading Structure Early Ensure all content and design fits into a logical heading structure. Consider Reading Order The reading order should be the same as the visual order. Provide Good Contrast Be especially careful with light shades of gray, orange, and yellow. Use True Text Whenever Possible True text enlarges better, loads faster, and is easier to translate. Watch the Use of CAPS All caps can be difficult to read and can be read incorrectly by screen readers. Use Adequate Font Size Font size can vary based on the font chosen, but 10 point is usually a minimum. Remember Line Length Don't make it too long or too short. Design Link Focus Indicators

How To Remove Vocals From Music Tracks Using Audacity Ever get a sudden, inexplicably irresistible desire for karaoke? Maybe you like the music of a song but can’t stand the lead singer? Here’s how to use remove the vocals from most music tracks in a few simple steps. How It Works Vocals are normally placed in the “center channel.” Stereo tracks have two channels, but not all of the instruments are balanced evenly. On the whole, however this process works really well if you start with good quality audio. Removing the Center Channel Fire up Audacity and load your song of choice. The first thing we need to do is break the song’s two channels into two separate tracks. Next, pick a channel (it doesn’t matter which) and double click to select the entire track. Go to Effect > Invert. If you hit play, you’ll notice the song sounds a little funny. That’s it! Yatri Trivedi is a monk-like geek.

Wikify Your Course: Designing and Implementing a Wiki for Your Learning Environment (EDUCAUSE Quarterly Key Takeaways Wikis help engage students in their learning while providing social interaction with their peers in the learning process. A wiki assignment should enable students to work at the conceptual level of understanding on authentic projects where they can solve problems, discover relationships, discern patterns, and develop a deep understanding of content. Getting Started Numerous companies offer wikis, many of them free of ads, at low or no cost to the individual educator. Privacy, which is particularly important in academic settings. It might help to visit wiki sites similar to the one being contemplated from each of the providers under consideration. At the institutional level, there are several options for setting up wikis for faculty including free and open-source software, institutional subscriptions to hosted software, and wikis embedded in the institution's LMS. With a wiki platform selected, the next step is setting it up. Designing Wikis for Learning Long-Term Designs

10 Great Ways to Create Library Videos | Course Planning - Teaching Tips All courses should contain course objectives, a textbook or reading materials, a well-articulated course syllabus, a course schedule, and lesson units or modules that are offered in digestible content chunks. This is a flow chart depicting a one-page syllabus as a flow chart. Students have found it very helpful to have the visual version (syllabus at-a-glance version). It can be created as a word document or using Inspriation.com software. Permission to adapt with acknowledgment to the authors: Dr. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it . Course Objectives The online course objectives should be clearly identified in the beginning of the course. Bloom's Taxonomy provides effective verbs for designing these course objectives, such as the assessment of knowledge, comprehension, application, and analysis to support online teaching strategies. Adult Learning Activities - Textbook Course Syllabus Course Schedule

T'Lipsum - Yorkshire Lorem Ipsum Generator WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool Hack an IKEA Kitchen Timer for Cheap Panning Time-Lapse Photography - How-To Geek ETC The results from this clever hack have to be seen to be believed–and can be in this great video compilation. Read on to see how a $6 egg timer can become a fantastic panning time lapse engine. The setup is dead simple. Take a cheap IKEA timer, drill a hole in the top and screw in a bolt, attach your camera via the tripod mount point to the timer, then crank the timer up and turn on the time-lapse function on your camera. As the timer slowly winds down, the camera slowly turns, snapping pictures all the while. For more information hit up the link below. How to Make a Cheap and Easy IKEA Time Lapse Panning Unit [via IKEA Hacker] Jason Fitzpatrick is warranty-voiding DIYer and all around geek.

One week to launch of EdMediaShare Older | Newer By Steve Hull on Monday 26 September 2011 We've a busy week ahead getting EdMediaShare ready for its launch on Monday, 3 October. There's last minute usability surveys to carry out, final editing of the interface, as well as introductory videos to complete. To help make finding useful online video easier, EdMediaShare will use learning design categories devised for the JISC-funded Dial-e Framework. Join the party! At midday on Monday, 3 October, you can join us at our online EdMediaShare launch party via Blackboard Collaborate. Get sharing If you would like to share the online videos you use to support your teaching, learning and research before the launch please send us your recommendations using our sharing form. 1. Commenting is not available in this channel entry.

500 year old music books accessible to all | JISC RSC YH Exchange News Fragile treasures of 16th century music are now freely available online, thanks to a partnership between Royal Holloway, University of London, the British Library and JISC. The Early Music Online project has digitised more than 300 books of the world’s earliest printed music from holdings at the British Library. Some of the books date back as far as the 1500s and due to their fragile nature would not be freely available to researchers, but thanks to this digitization project musicians from around the world can now source the original music free of charge using the Early Music Online website. Paola Marchionni, programme manager at JISC, said: “The value of this new resource isn’t just in putting the music online – it’s allowing researchers to find the music at their convenience from different access points, such as the project’s website, library catalogues and music databases. Access the music online at Tags: digitisation , JISC

Using YouTube: From Consumption To Production Want to get the most out of YouTube? This Youtube guide is for you. This guide goes over everything you need to know about YouTube, whether you’re an enthusiast or a budding director. This guide deals with both sides of the YouTube coin, teaching you everything you need to know to find quality videos and to upload you’re own. §1 – Introduction §2 – The YouTube Interface §3 – Other Ways To Watch §4 – Uploading and Editing §5 – Ads and Analytics §6 – Conclusion 1. 1.1 A Brief History of YouTube If you’re an Internet-savvy geek it may be difficult to remember a time when YouTube didn’t exist. The site opened in 2005, and the first video was uploaded on April 23rd. As a result the site garnered a lot of attention from other, larger companies. Today, YouTube receives over three billion (yes, with a “b”) page views daily. Yet all of this change hasn’t altered the basic reason for YouTube’s existence – sharing video. 1.2 Content Consumption vs. 2. 2.1 Registering Your Account 2.2 Get With The Channel

play.google #1 New York Times Bestseller Over 10 million copies sold In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear.

3 Online Camera Simulators It’s like a chicken and egg quandary. What do I do? Should I buy an expensive Digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera first and hit the ground running, or do I learn the basics of photography before I plonk down the serious cash. Photography is an expensive hobby in some parts of the world, including mine because a good DSLR camera does not come cheap. It’s quite a steep jump in terms of cost and skills from ordinary point-and-shot cameras. Learning the basics of photography makes sense, because it helps not only in photography but also in understanding the type of camera one eventually buys. The SLR Camera Simulator (CameraSim) The SLR Camera Simulator is probably the best online camera simulator of them all. The DSLR Camera Simulator is a virtual camera where you can twiddle around with the different settings and combos. CameraSim is also available for purchase on iTunes. Camera Simulator The depth of focus is very difficult to replicate in virtual apps like these. SimCam

Start your daily photo journal today!

Related: