ryan behrman

A few months ago I came across this signboard in Bank Station. I took a photo of it as an example of poor signage (in web parlance that would translate to poor information architecture, poor usability and poor accessibility) and I put the photo up on flickr.com. I didn’t know what the missing sign on the left was meant to be, but I knew I wasn’t happy with the “down stairwell” sign on the right (it’s ambiguous to say the least). As web developers we spend so much time making our sites as usable as possible, so why is the physical world so unusable? After all, it’s a lot older than the web!

Well it’s taken them a few months but the guys at London Underground have taken note and have done something about it as the following picture shows..

But I still would get rid of the “down stairwell” sign and leave just the “keep left” sign. Or even better, I’d stick a “no entry” sign on the right, and a vertical arrow on the left.

Perhaps the recent surge in interest surrounding web usability, user-centered design, and the user experience with regards to web applications is forcing web design best practice to converge to the point where such obvious errors are immediately apparent. Whilst web design is improving, there is still a long way to go and we can’t feel smug just yet, but I can’t help thinking that in its brief history we can learn a lot from web design and translate some of that best practice into the physical world.
Hopefully there will be a third picture in the series in the not-too-distant future.

My last blog post was in March, a whole 5 months ago. That post was written on the spur of the moment as I felt compelled to write about the shocking accessibility of such a high profile website. So why the long hiatus since then?

Lifehacker had a great post about how Jerry Seinfeld motivates himself. This, along with Margaret Mason’s book and inspiration from Tom Hughes-Croucher, got me thinking about blogging daily and not breaking the chain. You see my blog’s been going through an identity crisis - is it a work-related blog and if so can I write about non-work related stuff from time to time? Nobody cares what I had for lunch, but if writing about it keeps me writing then will you indulge me? And speaking of indulgences, lunch dessert today was Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey ice cream

Today I stumbled upon the Government’s Accessibility page for the British Citizenship Test. I’m fortunate enough to be an EU citizen and not in need of British citizenship in order to live and work in Britain. But if I did need to prepare for the test then it seems:

• I’d probably need to use Windows operating system and Internet Explorer:
  

  You may experience difficulty viewing the ‘Prepare for the test’ section of this website if you use other browsers or operating systems.

• Ironically I would have difficulty reading the Accessibility page if I had a visual disability and needed to use a screen reader. The page is sorely in need of h2 and h3 tags, and even visually there is no distinction between level 2 and level 3 headings.
• Instructions are provided for Netscape Navigator(!) and ‘Macintosh users’, but the significantly large group of Firefox users on a PC are unaccounted for. Not to mention a host of other browsers..

So there you have it. An inaccessible accessibilty page. Now isn’t that ironic.

Another ironic website is accessability.org which gets lost in its myriad of nested tables, an image-infested splash page, and unquoted attribute values…

I look forward to the day when the battle for accessible websites and web standards is truly won. Until then I’ll breathe a sigh of relief that I already know (and don’t need to be tested on anyway) where Geordie, Cockney and Scouse dialects are spoken.

Today’s PHP conference was a mixed bag.

Cal Evans’ mashup of UPS and Google Maps (for you geeks, UPS in this context is United Parcel Service not Uninterruptible Power Supply) was practical but contained a bit too much code in my opinion for a single hour-long presentation.

Of notable mention was Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP, who, slightly flustered by the dropped wireless connectivity, presented his talk on ‘Fast and Rich Web Apps with PHP 5′, ending off with some tips on porting from PHP 4 to PHP 5. Q & A ended with a sneak peak into the upcoming PHP 6 server-wide support for Unicode, which will help facilitate internationalisation, and make PHP more attractive to corporates and multi-nationals.

All in all a mixed bag of presentations, and as usual the pre- and post- conference events are where most of the real stuff happens (as in finding out what people are actually doing with PHP and beyond).

Well done PHP London Group for putting on a well run, affordable event. See you next year.

I’ve just removed the Twitter badge from my blog. I’ve had Twitter’s Javascript badge in the sidebar, keeping an update on what I’ve been doing. It’s been hanging for hours today, causing my page to stop loading when it gets to the Twitter script. Sure there are ways I can prevent the script from hanging but what’s the point if all you end up with is no data being returned because Twitter isn’t responding to requests?

I really like Twitter and will continue to use it through the web interface, but I’m taking it off my blog until it’s able to stand up to the kind of weight that’s being pushed down on it.

The results were posted last week for Part A of the Distance Learning MBA at Warwick Business School . I completed 4 modules and have been admitted to Part B.

Barcamp is fantastic. I feel enriched in more ways than I could have imagined.
Amongst the many things I’ve learned these past 2 days:

• Accessibility can be enhanced by javascript (by speaker and audience consensus)
• Open Source, Incremental Backup on Windows is possible
• There is such a thing as a free lunch - as long as you participate!

My new year’s resolution is to go to more geek meetups and conferences. So here are the upcoming events I’m signed up to.

It’s taken a while but I’m really excited about starting my new blog. Thanks to Sadish Bala for providing the Wordpress Misty Look theme. Please leave a comment to say hello.