Basic Facts and Resources You Need to Know Now About Web Accessibility

Last night I gave a presentation for an amazing group of web designers and developers in Portland, Oregon. I spoke about web accessibility, a long time passion of mine. My co-presenter was Winslow Parker from the Oregon Commission for the Blind who has been teaching screen reading and computer techniques to the blind. He’s also […]

Blog Challenge: Testing Your Blog’s Accessibility

I’ve talked a lot over the years about how important it is to design your website or blog to be accessible. There is a growing number of bloggers and blog readers who are reading your blog right now with a screen reader which reads your blog to them, or some other magnification or screen customization […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Accessibility and Usability

In “Usability Isn’t Expensive. It’s Practical. Usability is Useful.”, I explained the differences, and similarities between accessibility and usability: Accessibility is the development of a website or blog to be accessible to everyone. This means that the design must meet web standards and pass a range of validation tests in order to be compliant with […]

Website Accessibility is Now Getting Serious in the USA

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect. Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web As a long time advocate of website accessibility and meeting web standards for accessibility, I was amused by the San Fransisco Chronicle News story about […]

Accessibility: For Everyone, Including the Colorblind

I know that you all may think that it’s my mantra, but accessibility is a critical factor to take into consideration when designing a web page. With more than 25% of Internet users disabled in some way, you need to know that 1 in 4 visitors may be viewing your website or blog with limited […]

Accessibility Wins SEO Plus Plus

As a long time fan of accessibility in website design, A List Apart’s Andy Hagan’s article, “High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization” is a splendid look at how the fight for the right for accessible web pages actually helps your SEO and search engine page rank. I have been a search engine optimizer for […]

Accessibility Doesn’t Have to Be Boring

Eyes Apart: Living with strabismus, a blog by Lois, who suffers with Strabismus which causes one or both eyes to not point in the same direction at the same time. She has written a lovely article about my main site, Taking Your Camera on the Road, highlighting the fact that producing a website that meets […]

Blog Exercises: Are You Setting an Example for Others?

A milestone in personal rights seemed to have been achieved recently when US basketball player, Jason Collins declared publicly he was gay, hopefully setting an example for others that it is now “safe” to come out of the closet. The news in and around his announcement has me thinking about heroes, mentors, and risk-takers, those […]

Blog Exercises: What Are Your Reference Articles

What are the articles that drive people to your site? What are the posts that help people understand and benefit most from what you publish on your site? What articles represent you as an authority on the subject? These are your reference articles. We all have them, the articles that explain who we are, what […]

Blog Exercises: How to Add Headings to Your Post Articles

I’ve mentioned using headings in your post articles throughout these Blog Exercises. Let’s look closer at these HTML tags that help you structure and increase the readability of your blog posts. Headings are HTML tags used to set the section or subsection titles within your blog posts. They divide your content into sections, but they […]

Blog Exercises: Preview Posts

Do you preview a post before publishing? If not, consider adding this extra step to the publishing process. Why? I’m human. So are you. We mess things up. No matter how careful you are, you will make mistakes. That’s life. By double checking what your post will look like before you release it to the […]

Blog Exercises: Speed Blogging with CoLT

I’d like to introduce you to the work horse I use for speed blogging. It’s a web browser add-on for Firefox called CoLT. It stands for Copy Link Text. I will be offering a variety of web browser tips and tools to make blogging faster and easier throughout these Blog Exercises, and of all of […]

Creating Footnotes in WordPress

Among the many techniques students and clients request in my WordPress and blogging workshops and classes1, requests for creating footnotes in WordPress are rare, but they do happen. There are very distinctive differences between traditional writing and web publishing styles.2 Footnotes have been replaced by links to cite a reference or resource to support the […]

Happy Holidays and Onward!

We survived the Mayan Calendar. We’ve survived planets lining up. We’ve survived attacks on our person, our community, our faith, and our country. Just another year. As we charge forward this coming year, here are some things to look forward to here on Lorelle on WordPress and on my other sites, and many things to […]

Check Out the New Media Manager in WordPress

WordPress.com users were greeted with a new Media Manager over the weekend. This is the new media uploader coming in WordPress 3.5 when it releases December 5, 2012. For most of us, this is a long-awaited, dream come true. The clunky WordPress Image Uploader is gone, replaced with one more visual and easy-to-use. The announcement […]