Google Docs will never become the dominant word processor unless…

You guessed it, they make their interface accessible. If you are not able to use a mouse or see the screen, you are basically out of luck when it comes to Google Docs. The best you can do is read what others have wrote, and even that is a bit awkward.

Granted, it will not be easy for Google to substantially alter this situation with current popular techniques, but it should be made a lot simpler with the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) standard being worked on by the The World Wide Web Consortium.

For those who are not aware, ARIA is a proposed standard which, among other things, seeks to bridge the gap in communication between the screen reader and dynamic web applications. It allows you to tell a screenreader user, for example, that a particular element on the page is a drop-down menu, add enhanced keyboard functionality, and draw the users attention to elements that change. It is a very promising standard which is already seeing some support in the latest versions of screen readers, and a few of the very recently released browsers.

But getting back to Google, I believe that inaccessibility will very likely hold them back in the market. It is true that the vast majority of users don’t even know what accessibility is, and if they do, they probably don’t pay it much attention. So how could it substantially effect them in the market? There seems to be a growing trend within a few companies, but more within government, to discourage the usage of inaccessible products when accessible alternatives exist. I believe that at least some of the efforts being put forth by companies to make their products more accessible can be directly attributed to these regulations and policies. Of course, I don’t wish to imply that it’s entirely a business decision, as I am sure many companies do it because they care. However, having a little market pressure never hurts.

Right now, Microsoft Office works great with any screenreader worth speaking of, and if you’re the person responsible for deciding what software your organization will use and you have a mandate to consider accessibility in your decision, MS Office has a big advantage that might be difficult to overcome.

Nevertheless, because of the afore mentioned market pressure, and because of Google’s promising history of making virtually all of their other web applications accessible, I am quite optimistic that I too will soon have the opportunity to use Google Docs.

posted by cannona on Friday, May 30, 2008

Little known facts about breaking your kneecap

Last August, my wife provided material for a post on little known facts about breaking your ankle. As implied in my recent post, where my 9-year old observed that his brother now lives on the couch, my older son has provided us with additional bone-breaking insights:

• If you tell a doctor your son has probably broken his kneecap, they will nod indulgently, say, “That’s actually very difficult to do…” , examine the x-ray, and then say incredulously, “Well I’ll be…”
• You can break your kneecap without actually landing on it or even whacking it against something. It is enough to simply kick out really hard with the other leg in such a way that your whole body twists in just the wrong direction, wrenching your supporting leg’s patella from the front (where it belongs), to the side (where it does not).
• A dislocated patella can then snap back into place with such force that it actually breaks the bone into three or more pieces, most of them remaining on the wrong side of your leg from where they belong.
• You can get a lot of sympathy from 14 year old girls from telling a story like this.
• If you really really really want to miss a high adventure camp in June, breaking your kneecap in May will do the trick. You might even get cookies from your devoted Scout leader in the bargain!
• Ditto for final exams. (But they’ll be back… and without cookies.)
• You can sleepwalk with a broken kneecap and not realize it until you are sitting in a chair 10 feet from where you started, in excruciating pain.
• If your dad is asleep when you sleepwalk on your broken kneecap, he might not awake until you have been yelling for a good while. (You may think it’s been an hour, but probably not. Still…)
• The previous trick is a really good way to get extra ice cream, video game time, or whatever else you desire from your guilt-ridden father.
• After such an incident, a young man may still turn down codeine in favor of ibuprofin, because he “doesn’t like the way it makes him feel,” this spite of an anxious father’s urging. (I have many fears, but my son giving in to peer pressure on drugs is not one of them.)

Matthew is scheduled for surgery on Friday, so I will probably be missing Cameron and company’s all-day training on visual design. (Have we mentioned before the incredible internal training opportunities we’ve had, especially recently? One of the best things about working here.) I am really bummed about missing this, but what can you do? Father First (especially if you don’t hear your son screaming in pain in the middle of the night and you still need to earn back some points!)

posted by ted on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 · 0 comments