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Geek Culture / Dev Diary Discussion

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Torrey
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Posted: 6th Oct 2004 14:40 Edited at: 6th Oct 2004 14:46
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I was taking a peek at the dev diaries again, and found this interesting:

From Lee Bamber's Diary (Oct 5th 2004):
Quote: "02:02 More AI I think. Going to add the ultimate baddy dodge trick and then upload a new test game for all to play"


Does anyone know where he uploads this? And is it possible for guys like me to play? It would be a lot of fun to help them work out bugs and issues as they develop new games and products.

Is Mike Johnson all about the programming work he does? It's rare to find any diary updates from him.

From Richard Davey's Diary (Oct 4th 2004):
Quote: "More importantly, it will comply with accessability laws here in the UK regarding access to our web site."


What laws does the UK have about accessability when it comes to web sites?
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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 6th Oct 2004 16:56 Edited at: 6th Oct 2004 18:07
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Quote: "Does anyone know where he uploads this?"

No idea

Quote: "And is it possible for guys like me to play?"

Nope

Quote: "It would be a lot of fun to help them work out bugs and issues as they develop new games and products"

Thats what the betas are for...

Quote: "Is Mike Johnson all about the programming work he does? It's rare to find any diary updates from him"

They have been shirking their diary responsabilities of late...

Quote: "What laws does the UK have about accessability when it comes to web sites?"

Basically, it must be easily viewed by those who have impaired vision, hearing and what-not... It could be viewed as being similiar to the fact that all business must now provide disability access...


Come to the UK Convention on the 23rd & 24th of October
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BatVink
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Posted: 6th Oct 2004 17:12
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Quote: "What laws does the UK have about accessability when it comes to web sites?"


Higher contrast for visibility, good ALT text for images, and navigation without a mouse are the 3 biggies.

BatVink
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Richard Davey
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Posted: 6th Oct 2004 19:59
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Quote: "Does anyone know where he uploads this?"


Sorry, they are on an internal file server here. Not yet for public consumption.

Re: web site changes, take a look here:

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml

I am quite terrible at updating my diary unless I'm working on something cool Mike seems to have stopped and needs to be prodded into diary mode again, but Lee soldiers on and always updates his diary regardless.

Cheers,

Rich

"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde
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MikeyP
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 02:44
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Quote: "Basically, it must be easily viewed by those who have impaired vision, hearing and what-not... It could be viewed as being similiar to the fact that all business must now provide disability access..."


..So sites now have to do the above? Is there a punishment for not doing this? [If there is I didnt think they could do that, as websites are your property...]
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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 02:56
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Quote: "Is there a punishment for not doing this?"

Yes, you can be sued - see the link that Rich gave.


UK Convention : 23/24th of October. Be there or be an UNE DODGY PLONKEN
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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 06:19
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Quote: "So what's new recently - well we have upgrade 5.7 finished and it will be released this week."
From mike's diary. I wonder if it will fix the debug and step through modes?

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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 06:21
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Why not ask ?


UK Convention : 23/24th of October. Be there or be an UNE DODGY PLONKEN
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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 14:18
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I was hoping they might read this as I know they are busy and hate disturbing them with emails. If they do not read this and post ... I will wait and see

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RougeCat
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 14:42
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Well word is it is going to be fixed.
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Rob K
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 21:31
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Quote: "..So sites now have to do the above? Is there a punishment for not doing this?"


Theoretically yes, but in reality very few people who suffer from disablities that would impair their ability to use this website are likely to be even visiting this page.

For someone like eBay such design considerations make sense, however most UK based websites will probably ignore them completely.


BlueGUI:Windows UI Plugin - All the power of the windows interface in your DBPro games.
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Karlos
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Posted: 7th Oct 2004 21:40
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I'm currently building a commercial site for someone so I know the intricacies of the disability discrimination act.

The main organisation behind this is the RNIB (Royal National Institution for the Blind). Basically a web site has to be able to be read by alternate browsers such as ones that offer text to speech.

So I went onto their site. They will charge you an amount of money to look at your site, validate it and then you can use a logo if it passes.
These are also the same people that will take you to court if your site does not validate.

These are also the same people whose own website does not meet the requirements!!
They're missing quite a few alt tags.

Which is nice

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Lost in Thought
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 02:19
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No step through and debug is still broken in 5.7. Though it does work with smaller programs now like hello world.

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Rob K
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 02:49
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Quote: "So I went onto their site. They will charge you an amount of money to look at your site, validate it and then you can use a logo if it passes."


Seeing as a basic level of validation could be done by a machine, that seems a little unfair. I can understand charging for an physical evaluation of the site by a blind person though.


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Neofish
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 03:20
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Quote: "Yes, you can be sued"

yes but will they?

+ isnt it just possible to have a big fat link at the bottom of the page which makes everything BIG and also have alt text on everything

also doesnt FF have a link to a site that rates it....

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OSX Using Happy Dude
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 03:21
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Quote: "yes but will they?"

I'm sure the RNIB and others will be willing too, and probably disabled people will start doing that soon too.


UK Convention : 23/24th of October. Be there or be an UNE DODGY PLONKEN
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Richard Davey
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 03:25
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Quote: "yes but will they?"


It's part of the disability act that the government passed - the same sort of thing that ensures that certain shops have to have wheel-chair access, etc. Sure most web sites are in breach of it, and maybe they won't bother suing anyone, but that is almost a moot point - it's something we (the web building ones amoungst us) ought to be doing anyway as a matter of general practise, it hardly takes much effort.

Quote: "isnt it just possible to have a big fat link at the bottom of the page which makes everything BIG and also have alt text on everything"


It's more the ability for a screen reader to be able to understand your web site, not just a change in font size.

Cheers,

Rich

"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde
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Neofish
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 05:51
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read in which way....english or visual? - you click teh big link and it changes teh style sheet to make everything bigger and high contrast and alt will already be on everything...

i better do that soon

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Mentor
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 06:16
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I thought winderz had accesibility features built in (don`t tell me, coming from who they come from, I guess they don`t work ROFL), why don`t the peeps just set their screens to 320x240 or something, seems like nowdays everythings somebody elses fault and nobody wants to help themselves. just gripe and sue other people who are just trying to get on

Mentor.

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Neofish
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 06:20
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nah there are actual settings for it, high contrast etc, but i think it is only for windows, not sites....must check

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the_winch
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 06:29
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How is a style sheet of swithching to 320x240 going to help? If you are blind you can't see.

Or would you give a blind person a torch so they can go to the shops?

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Neofish
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 06:42
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not blind, hard of seeing, blind people dont usually use PCs, and if they do, its all brail

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Rob K
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 06:45
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The funny thing is, its amazing how useless most accessibility features are that come with the PC.

For community service last year (something we do in the sixth form at my school), I was teaching an elderly woman to use a PC. She was not greatly impaired, but even with all accessiblity features enabled, she found it very difficult to perform certain basic tasks. For example, the "mouse speed" option doesn't go anywhere near low enough. The magnifier is really quite cumbersome to use.


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Ilya
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 10:13
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DPD Acts are stupid. Blind people probably wouldn't use a computer anyway. Do they affect us USers?

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Karlos
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 19:33
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the contrast and font requirements are for partially sighted people. The well constructed html and alt tags and sensible link names are necessary where the person uses a text to speech browser.

My biggest problem is the old habit of using fixed width tables for layout - going to look into css for that kind of thing. It's going to be one big stylesheet. Hopefully I'll be able to compress it.

Anyone know if I should be using relative rather than fixed font sizes?

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Torrey
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Posted: 8th Oct 2004 19:46
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For some reason I'm laughing at the thought of a computer lab full of blind people approving websites. I would crack up for days if I asked them to validate my site, and they come back with an answer like "it looks good."

How would a blind person using windows 98 know they had a blue screen of death?
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Van B
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Posted: 9th Oct 2004 00:52
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Wow!, Lee's a SlipKnot fan! - would have never expected that, everyone knows KoRn's far better .


Van-B


Muhahahahaha.
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Torrey
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Posted: 9th Oct 2004 07:28
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I'm shocked those two groups can be popular in the UK! KoRn used to be really good when the group first started.
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Neofish
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Posted: 9th Oct 2004 07:38
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yes both are very popular (at least with my friends )

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