Home > Web Services > Resources > You are here Industry news

Industry news

21 March 2008

What's New in IE 8?

A comprehensive guide on what's new in IE8 - although preliminary and subject to change. One notable difference is the alt attribute is no longer displayed as the image tooltip when the browser is running in IE8 mode. Instead, the target of the longDesc attribute is used as the tooltip if present, otherwise, the title is displayed. The alt attribute is still used as the active accessibility name and the title attribute is used as the fallback name only if alt is not present.

IBM Rational Policy Tester Accessibility Edition solution Launched

From 1st February 2008 we were no longer able to use Watchfire WebXact and Bobby Online products. However, IBM have announced that they will continue to invest in accessibility and as such have launched the IBM Rational Policy Tester Accessibility Edition solution. This enterprise platform leverages the Bobby technology alongside a next-generation scan engine, providing the accessibility community with technology that allows users to scan, test, remediate and understand compliance with current accessibility legislation. Watchfire is working closely with the IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center to continue to evolve this product line to meet this growing market demand. It's available to purchase for £1,082 ex VAT which includes a 12 month maintenance contract.

Call to Review Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines

Updated drafts of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Techniques documents have been released. WAI encourages you to review the updated ATAG 2.0 documents and submit comments on any issues that you think could present a barrier to future adoption and implementation of ATAG 2.0. Please send comments by 14th April 2008 to the comment list, which is publicly archived.

WebAim Release WAVE Toolbar

The WAVE Firefox toolbar provides a mechanism for running WAVE reports directly within Firefox. Because the toolbar reports runs entirely within the web browser, no information is sent to the WAVE server. This ensures 100% private and secure accessibility reporting. The toolbar can check intranet, password-protected, dynamically generated or sensitive web pages. Also, because the WAVE toolbar evaluates the rendered version of your page, locally displayed styles and dynamically-generated content from scripts or AJAX can be evaluated.

Falling Accessibility Standards of Council Websites

Despite rising awareness in the web development community of issues relating to access by people with disabilities, it appears that in one vital sector at least, things may be going backwards. The 10th annual 'Better connected' review of every UK council website from the local government Society of IT Management (Socitm), published this month, has revealed an alarming picture of falling standards. The number of local authority websites achieving the most basic standard of accessibility - Level 'A' of the World Wide Web consortium's web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 1.0) - has fallen dramatically this year to just 37 out of 468. This compares with 64 achieving level A the previous year and 62 the year before that.

AccessWorld News - March Edition

Surfing into the future: an introduction to Web 2.0 and Exploring methods of accessing virtual worlds amongst other interesting bits and pieces in AccessWorld's latest newsletter.

Back to the Industry news home page.

For more information:

Email accessibility@AbilityNet.org.uk
Phone 0800 269545

Go to Top.