Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

Caldwell, Ben, Michael Cooper, Loretta Guarino Reid and Gregg Vanderheiden. W3C (2008). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

A Personal Reflection on the WCAG 2.0 Publication

Let's work together as a community to make WCAG 2.0 a unifying force for web accessibility. There are so many websites and exciting new web applications being created today with accessibility barriers that make it difficult or impossible for some people with disabilities to use them. Let's change that, with WCAG 2.0.

Henry, Shawn Lawton. W3C (2008). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Mark of Success

It is just seven years since specifications were developed to allow XML data to be exchanged over the internet. Simon Bisson looks at the development of the lingua franca of the connected world.

Bisson, Simon. Guardian Unlimited, The (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>Standards

WCAG 2.0 Checklist

A simple checklist that presents the principles and techniques of WCAG 2.0 in a user-friendly, understandable format. The language has been significantly changed and simplified from the official WCAG 2.0 specification to make it more easily tested and verified for web pages.

WebAIM (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Ten Things You Should Know About WCAG 2.0

With the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines being made a Candidate Recommendation on 30th April 2008, many companies are starting to prepare for the arrival of the new Accessibility Guideline. What exactly is different though? User Vision's Mark Palmer takes you through some key things you should know about the document commonly known as WCAG 2.0.

Palmer, Mark. User Vision (2008). Articles>Accessibility>Standards

Getting Standards to Emerge, or, How to Build a Recipe Book While Everyone's Busy Cooking

The UK Local e-Government Standards Body was established late in 2003, and tasked with compiling an XML based data standards catalogue for use by UK Local Authorities. This is to be achieved by mapping existing standards, identifying gaps to be filled, advising and supporting local Councils, their partners and suppliers on the interpretation and adoption of standards, and establishing processes for developing new standards as required. However, UK Local Authorities have been developing e-services for several years already, so this new effort has to take place in a context where many projects are already under way, using a variety of business models, and with diverse approaches to XML interoperability design. An additional factor is the traditional tension between central and local government, which has led to patchy and inconsistent adoption of the national UK e-Government Interoperability framework. This paper is an account of the methodology developed by CSW Group Ltd and the LeGSB to tackle this situation.

Harvey, Anna and Ann Wrightson. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>Standards

Document Model Selection: Off-the-Shelf, Altered-to-Fit, or Bespoke?

Document Model selection is a key success factor in XML. Approaches include: adopting an existing model, modifying a model to meet your needs, and creating one to meet your needs. Advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed.

Usdin, B. Tommie. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Accommodating XML 1.1 in XML Schema 1.0

As published the W3C XML Schema specification references XML 1.0 explicitly, and incorporates by reference certain key definitions, in particular those of the 'Char', 'Name' and 'S' character classes. XML 1.1 changes the contents of these classes, so although nothing in the existing XML Schema specification specifically bars infosets produced by XML 1.1 conformant parsers, such infosets, if they exploit any of the relevant changes in XML 1.1, will not be accepted as valid by conformant XML Schema 1.0 processors.

Thompson, Henry S. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Document Models and XML Vocabulary Building for Business Users

Our work presents an experiment with a modeling tool that captures domain knowledge in a fashion natural to business users while producing formal models for use in IT processes. We demonstrate the use of this tool for designing XML Schemas.

Spraregen, Susan L. and Douglas Lovell. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Model Driven Architecture: Feasibility or Fallacy?

The high integration costs which exist today mean that we must automate interface maintenance and integration tasks or go insane, or worse, out of business. Ongoing pressure to reduce software development costs while increasing the quality and completeness of the work provide an opportunity for the use of model driven computing. MDA (Model Driven Architecture) is a technique for model based platform independent software specification based on the MOF (Meta-Object Facility) and XMI (XML Meta-data Interchange) standards from the OMG (Object Management Group). There are a number of tool vendors using XMI (especially UML (Unified Modeling Language) drawing tools) but common use and value seem to be slow to show themselves.

Soukup, Martin. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

DOM, SAX and Standards - Where Now?

It's been 7 years and three "levels" since the first W3C DOM activity. XML and the way it is used has changed vastly over that time. DOM itself has moved from an API to access and manipulate an in-memory tree with no concept of namespaces, to an end to end XML technology, where parsing, modification of the tree (with the ability to check for validity with a schema as you go) and serialization are all specified.

Reakes, Gareth, Alberto Massari, Lucian Holland and Neil Graham. IDEAlliance. Articles>Web Design>Standards>XML

XTche

This paper describes the design of a new language to formally specify constraints over Topic Maps. This language allows to express contextual conditions on classes of Topic Maps and the corresponding processing syntem. With XTche, a topic map designer defines a set of restrictions that enables to verify if a particular topic map is semantically valid. As the manual checking of large topic maps (frequent in real cases) is impossible, it is mandatory to provide an automatic validator.

Librelotto, Giovani Rubert, José Carlos Ramalho and Pedro Rangel Henriques. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Critique: Collaborative Reviewing of XML Documents

Critique is the first example of a new approach to contextual collaboration: Documentspaces. Documentspaces are places within a document in which teams can meet and work, synchronously or asynchronously, to create, review, and publish content.

Prescod, Paul. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Standards>XML

XML Overview

This presentation is a 90 minute session. It will cover many areas of XML and XML technologies. It has been constructed to provide the audience a broad understanding of XML and XML technologies in a short amount of time. The presentation is geared to ensure that new XML users can obtain the maximum benefit from other sessions presented at XML 2004. The attendees will gain an understanding of XML jargon and acronyms used in XML technologies, as well.

Harvey, Betty. IDEAlliance (2004). Presentations>Information Design>Standards>XML

Five Ways to Instantly Write Better CSS

Sure, anyone can write CSS. Even programs are doing it for you now. But is the CSS any good? Here are five tips to start improving yours.

Davis, Trevor. NETTUTS (2009). Articles>Web Design>CSS>Standards

Designing XML Formats: Versioning vs. Extensibilty

Designers of XML formats have to face the problem of how to design their formats to be extensible and yet be resilient to changes due revisions of the format. This presentation covers various techniques and considerations for versioning XML formats.

Obasanjo, Dare. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Syntax, Semantics and Standards: Model for a National Health Information Network

This presentation will describe the National Health Information Network activity and role of syntax and semantics in building an interoperable framework for healthcare information on a national level.

Alschuler, Liora. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Information Design>Standards>Semantic

On Language Creation

During the past twenty years, a huge number of custom languages - at least hundreds, perhaps a couple of thousand - have been attempted. Almost all have been miserable failures. That is to say, the vast majority have failed to achieve wide adoption, and those that were adopted have often failed to achieve their goals, whether of reducing costs, enriching applications, or both.

Bray, Tim. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>Standards

XML Document Formats

As world events and business opportunities collide, the requirements for interoperable document formats become increasingly evident. Mandating XML for systems is a first step, but real information can't be shared effectively without a common understanding on the semantics and usage of the markup. One solution is to use agreed-on custom schemas. Another is to cite well-standardized formats such as XHTML, or deploy more specific XML formats such as Microsoft Office XML or the OpenDocument Format. None of these latter formats were written with a particular semantic usage in mind. They are of more general applicability than custom-built schemas, can be used for human-readable documents, and can be built into specific tools.

Bullard, C. Len. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Providing Job-Based Policies and Procedures that Support Compliance Requirements

Organizations develop policies and procedures to support industry certification and compliance requirements. Unfortunately, companies often develop P&P information that is not helpful to all employees who must use the information. In fact, one study found that 40 percent of U.S. companies failed ISO certification because of problems with unclear or missing P&P documentation, resulting in wasted time, money, and effort.

Urgo, Raymond E. Policies and Procedures Authority, The (2008). Articles>Documentation>Standards>Policies and Procedures

Auditing and Enforcing Compliance with Policies and Procedures: Who Is Responsible?

Auditing and enforcing compliance with P&P content should not be the responsibility of a P&P group or included in the job description of a P&P practitioner. However, the charter or job description may state that P&P practitioners are responsible for supporting compliance efforts.

Urgo, Raymond E. Policies and Procedures Authority, The (2008). Articles>Documentation>Standards>Policies and Procedures

When Can I Use...

Compatibility tables for features in HTML5, CSS3, SVG and other upcoming web technologies in the most popular web browsers.

Deveria (2009). Reference>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

Daddy? Where Do Schemas Come From? Some Facts of Life for Schema Users

The rules for finding schema components when validating a document using W3C's XML Schema 1.0 are widely misunderstood. This presentation will the rules for constructing a schema and describe the reasoning behind the design.

Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>Standards

Lessons Learned: Development from Initial Planning to Successful Implementation

From initial data modeling, to technical XML Schema design and critical programmatic realization, we have an actionable, real-world set of comprehensive recommendations that can help you formulate a successful XML implementation.

Utzinger, Melissa and Cheryl Connors. XML 2006 (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>Standards