This week is a busy week with a few events on thanks to Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) that is on the 21st of May this year.
Believe it or not – GAAD is now a worldwide event that encourages people to take timeout to learn, engage and discuss issues in relation to accessibility and people with different disabilities. The focus is on accessibility within the digital medium such as web, software, mobile etc. You don't have to be an guru expert in this area to participate as it is all about awareness.
If you are interested in the history of GAAD then it all started with a single blog post written by a Los Angeles based web developer by Joe Devon back in 2011. Joe set the challenge that “Accessibility know-how needs to go mainstream with developers”. You can read the original blog post here: CHALLENGE: Accessibility know-how needs to go mainstream with developers. NOW”.
mysqltalk.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/challenge-accessibility-know-how-needs-to-go-mainstream-with-developers-now
It so happened that through Twitter an accessibility professional Jennison Asuncion from Toronoto discovered Joe’s blog post by accident and they joined forces leveraging on their own networks to realize the event.
From there onwards GAAD has been celebrated each year. Checkout www.globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org to see the list of events that you are invited to attend. I’ll definitely be attending to the A11Y Bytes session in Melbourne on the 20th of May. Who knows what new things we would learn this time round?? See you there!
Innovation that simplifies the Web with Preferences, Control & Personalisation: The World Wide Web — Your Way! Seamlessly Access & Interact with any Website to Personalise your Entire Web Experience.
Monday, 18 May 2015
Thursday, 30 April 2015
One Week After Google's Mobile Armageddon
It’s been
over a week since the Google mobile friendliness has been introduced as part of
their ranking system. What this means is that whether your website is mobile
friendly or not will now be factored into their algorithm ranking. This is a
major change particularly as people are searching more frequently from mobile
phones.
Web pages
that are deemed mobile-friendly will have a higher perceived ranking by Google
than those that are not. In case you have missed it – Google said the
mobile-friendly signal would take effect beginning on April 21. Which means it
has been in effect for just over a week.
This change
isn’t overall a bad thing and makes your website more accessible. Many people
with severe vision impairments actually prefer to use iPad and if your content
shows up nicely on the iPad then that is great. The screen size of an iPad is more
suited as some have "tunnel vision" and for others it enables them to hold the screen more closely to their eye to see content. Both benefits which cannot be easily achieved on a desktop screen.
Checking for Mobile Friendliness
The most
important point is that the approval isn’t on a website basis but rather on a
page-by-page basis which is checked in real time. This means you need to ensure
that every page on your website satisfies the page mobile friendliness test.
You can
test it by entering the full page URL at:
What happens if you Failed the Test?
If your
website had failed the test then simply follow the instructions and feedback
provided by Google.
Initially
Hueyify website failed the Google mobile-friendly test. We actually had checked the Hueyify
website on several different mobile devices of varying screen sizes and all
were readable. Hueyify website was already using responsiveness and didn’t
think there would be an issue. Clearly we were misguided and wrong.
However, it
seems that Google didn’t accept our viewport widths (we were using fixed widths
that degraded gracefully depending on the varying device screen dimensions). It
took us a while to track down exactly what the error was since the Google hint feedback
was vague and unhelpful.
Make sure you are using viewport tag and use the width=“device-width”. The moment you alter the width you will get an error from Google that in our opinion wasn’t technically correct. However, we can waste more time arguing about this point as opposed to just rectifying the error in a way that is suited for Google.
Make sure you are using viewport tag and use the width=“device-width”. The moment you alter the width you will get an error from Google that in our opinion wasn’t technically correct. However, we can waste more time arguing about this point as opposed to just rectifying the error in a way that is suited for Google.
Additionally,
we couldn’t determine what dimensions was Google using as part of the
mobile-friendly testing. After some trial and error it seems that Google is
testing the mobile based on the early versions of the iPhone screen dimensions.
This means if your content fits nicely on about 320px then you will be fine and pass the test.
Obviously, 320px is very narrow so you would need to make sure your website
displays nicely on larger screens.
Take care
that you can not simply just scale your desktop website version to simply just
fit onto the mobile screen as this would mean the content for the most part is
illegible due to too small fonts. Tapping is also impossible due to all the
elements being spaced too closely together. Google can spot this when your
scale factor is unreasonable and will report this back to you as an error.
Does this mean I need to maintain several versions of websites?
This is not
necessary at all. The whole point of making your website responsive was so that
you only needed one set of HTML and control the responsiveness through CSS3 or
JScripting. For the most part if you follow the responsive design website then
the changes required to pass the Google mobile test in our opinion is probably
minimal.
If you are stuck as to what all this means then visit:
If you are stuck as to what all this means then visit:
You can
find a whole wealth of information on website and responsiveness at the
following links:
Saturday, 25 April 2015
The next evolution of the Internet
Internet has changed the way we live. Technology truly has the power to
change lives. At Hueyify we are striving towards our vision on how we
see the next era of the Internet and the Web.
It is impossible for us to sit still and calmly share with you what we are working on and our goals for the future of the Internet. Sometimes pictures help and at other times a video may do more. I'd say this is probably the time to say when a video is a must.
We have actually broken down the future in the Internet into several major steps and in each there is one core concept / idea that we are striving for. This is our first step. You may question why don't we just jump into the final vision? And that is a good question. However, from our prospective it is better to deliver once key concept at a time and evolve towards each key core concept / idea. In other-words we believe in evolution process of the Internet will be far more valuable than just jumping straight into the deep end.
It is hard to believe our beginnings started from humble beginnings in simply wanting to help others. The more deeper into the project we go and closer to our goal the more clearer our "why" we are doing this and the difference we can make.
It is impossible for us to sit still and calmly share with you what we are working on and our goals for the future of the Internet. Sometimes pictures help and at other times a video may do more. I'd say this is probably the time to say when a video is a must.
We have actually broken down the future in the Internet into several major steps and in each there is one core concept / idea that we are striving for. This is our first step. You may question why don't we just jump into the final vision? And that is a good question. However, from our prospective it is better to deliver once key concept at a time and evolve towards each key core concept / idea. In other-words we believe in evolution process of the Internet will be far more valuable than just jumping straight into the deep end.
It is hard to believe our beginnings started from humble beginnings in simply wanting to help others. The more deeper into the project we go and closer to our goal the more clearer our "why" we are doing this and the difference we can make.
Monday, 13 April 2015
Simplicity - It's truly Complicated. Hueyify and Hillary Clinton...
You could be forgiven in thinking that Hillary Clinton and Hueyify has something in common? Hopefully you didn't say politics as we have nothing to do with USA politics. Hooray to you if you said perhaps our "H" shaped logo.
There has been big buzz in the media buzz on Hillary Clinton's logo and it's simplicity. If the truth be told - simplicity is truly complicated. There is nothing simple about simplicity.
As a clever man once said:
“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”—Albert Einstein
The Hueyify logo was made deliberately simple! From the colours, design and dots on each leg... all done for a surprisingly simple reason.
There has been big buzz in the media buzz on Hillary Clinton's logo and it's simplicity. If the truth be told - simplicity is truly complicated. There is nothing simple about simplicity.
As a clever man once said:
“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”—Albert Einstein
The Hueyify logo was made deliberately simple! From the colours, design and dots on each leg... all done for a surprisingly simple reason.
 |
| Hillary Clinton's Logo |
 |
| Hueyify's Logo |
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Local News about Hueyify - Published in the Leader Community Newspaper
It seems we got published into the local news paper. I didn't think it would appear into the newspaper for a few more weeks yet. However, my daughter Elleleen came and told me her friend had PM-ed her telling her she already read the story in her newspaper. We haven't received our copy yet but that didn't stop us from reading it online.
Link: Leader Community Newspaper. A screenshot of the article is as follows:
Link: Leader Community Newspaper. A screenshot of the article is as follows:
Saturday, 7 March 2015
Technology Changing Lives - Living the Moment
Technology truly has the power to change lives. We live in a world of constant awesomeness that it is easy to forget what technology can do and appreciate the moment.
Sometimes, just sometimes like today I have the privilege to experience the difference that it makes. I took my daughter out to the Cinemas and we went to see the film "Paper Planes". Being legally deaf means I always struggle at the Cinemas especially if there is a lot of talking in the film. Despite this I am an avid movie goer. It is not uncommon that I need to have a detailed conversation follow up after the film to try to fully understand why certain things happened to fully get the plot of the story. Often I would follow up with watching on DVD with subtitles and be surprised how little I had understood in the original screening of the show. Today's movie session had the "CC" (Closed Caption) so I thought I would give it a try.
The CaptiView (Closed Caption Viewing System) looks like the following below. For me I had position it that it was relatively minimal in having to read the screen and refocusing the film on the screen behind it. Meaning you could almost visually view the caption screen and the screen both at the same time (i.e. a bit of multitasking required which was minimal if you ask me). After a few minutes it becomes second nature and adapted to the new way of obtaining information.
This no doubt forms the very reason why I set out to become an Engineer and work in the IT Industry. This reenforces my "why" I chose my profession. Yet it is the rare moments like this that gets me inspired and excited when I'm on the receiving side and experience the benefits from the technology. No doubt this was the same reason why I founded and formed Hueyify to make a difference to people's lives when browsing the Internet.
Ironically the storyline of the film "Paper Planes" reenforces the point about living dreams and doing something something that you wouldn't have thought was possible. Perfect storyline to go with "living the moment".
I guess from Hoyts point of view - this may not be well received by those who use it. When I researched I had found an article dating back to 2013 to nearly two years ago and it appears that the CC solution is more of a "nightmare than an access solution". I cannot comment but for me the experience was entirely different. It seems that there is a call for OC (Open Captions) in which is how I watch DVD or TV at home otherwise without it I don't bother watching it at all.
I am excited about the next film I would see and most definitely I would be doing this again.
Sometimes, just sometimes like today I have the privilege to experience the difference that it makes. I took my daughter out to the Cinemas and we went to see the film "Paper Planes". Being legally deaf means I always struggle at the Cinemas especially if there is a lot of talking in the film. Despite this I am an avid movie goer. It is not uncommon that I need to have a detailed conversation follow up after the film to try to fully understand why certain things happened to fully get the plot of the story. Often I would follow up with watching on DVD with subtitles and be surprised how little I had understood in the original screening of the show. Today's movie session had the "CC" (Closed Caption) so I thought I would give it a try.
The CaptiView (Closed Caption Viewing System) looks like the following below. For me I had position it that it was relatively minimal in having to read the screen and refocusing the film on the screen behind it. Meaning you could almost visually view the caption screen and the screen both at the same time (i.e. a bit of multitasking required which was minimal if you ask me). After a few minutes it becomes second nature and adapted to the new way of obtaining information.
This no doubt forms the very reason why I set out to become an Engineer and work in the IT Industry. This reenforces my "why" I chose my profession. Yet it is the rare moments like this that gets me inspired and excited when I'm on the receiving side and experience the benefits from the technology. No doubt this was the same reason why I founded and formed Hueyify to make a difference to people's lives when browsing the Internet.
Ironically the storyline of the film "Paper Planes" reenforces the point about living dreams and doing something something that you wouldn't have thought was possible. Perfect storyline to go with "living the moment".
I guess from Hoyts point of view - this may not be well received by those who use it. When I researched I had found an article dating back to 2013 to nearly two years ago and it appears that the CC solution is more of a "nightmare than an access solution". I cannot comment but for me the experience was entirely different. It seems that there is a call for OC (Open Captions) in which is how I watch DVD or TV at home otherwise without it I don't bother watching it at all.
I am excited about the next film I would see and most definitely I would be doing this again.
Sunday, 1 March 2015
Hueyify and People with Low Dexterity (Bad Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy)
Recently I received an email from a worker at a USA University asking us to tackle issues for those people who have Low Dexterity (i.e. Bad Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Cerebral Palsy) and making Web Browsing easier for this category of people.
I must say what was involved from this request was researching and following through reading various information on this topic. There is so much content to go through and absorb but clearly there is a place for Hueyify to assist as one of the features Hueyify offers is to provide different means of interaction with the Web. Obviously in this instance the interaction must be formed in what works well for those with Low Dexterity. I can foresee further challenges when addressing those with multiple set of disabilities along with Low Dexterity.
I confess that it had never occurred to me that Web Browsing was challenging for those with Low Dexterity and am happy that this was conveyed to us. I must say I am excited at the opportunity and undertaking extra challenge to make a difference.
I must say what was involved from this request was researching and following through reading various information on this topic. There is so much content to go through and absorb but clearly there is a place for Hueyify to assist as one of the features Hueyify offers is to provide different means of interaction with the Web. Obviously in this instance the interaction must be formed in what works well for those with Low Dexterity. I can foresee further challenges when addressing those with multiple set of disabilities along with Low Dexterity.
I confess that it had never occurred to me that Web Browsing was challenging for those with Low Dexterity and am happy that this was conveyed to us. I must say I am excited at the opportunity and undertaking extra challenge to make a difference.
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