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Admin
I just recently became disabled, although not in a way that prevents me to use computer technology, and I can say that I was not the least bit offended by the OBVIOUS sarcasm of this article.
As a developer of software and websites, I know first-hand how little thought accessibility is given by software developers and management. It's not usually until a nice big lucrative government contract is looming that companies scramble to make their software accessible in the most minimal way.
The article was pure sarcasm, and anyone claiming to be offended is trolling, stupid, or both.
Admin
Well, well... I have enjoyed watching you all fall over your self to prove just how wrong I am. I hasten to point out that I actually retracted my main argument. Guess it pays to read before you comment.
Either way... I'm calling Godwin's Law on this one.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Admin
I once saw a site where every single link was a separate Java applet. With function of "rollover" (change background image under the text).
Admin
You're a touchy jerk giving a bad name to all disabled people. captcha: stinky.
Admin
Sorry, but I just need to reply here. I don't mean any disrespect, but, uhm, different doesn't mean anything negative. It's actually a more respectful way of saying you've got something going than saying you're disabled (obviously you're not, because then you wouldn't be able to do anything, right?). And how can you be not different from when you are disabled and I am not? In my country, the literal translation of a disabled person is "invalid" or "less valid"...
Don't know about you, but I'd be offended by that for sure ;)
Admin
Admin
Ok, to all you web n00bs, here's how it's done:
<a href="Accessibility
Popup and regular link rolled into one. Accessibility and the proper way to do it - "javascript:" is a relic from before the days of event handlers.
Admin
(And I managed to mess that one up, of course :P)
Admin
Please engage brain before commencing typing in future.
Admin
"People call us colored? When I get up in the morning I'm brown. When I get mad, I'm brown. When I get sick, I'm brown. When I die I'll still be brown. You others though, when you get up in the morning you are pink. When you get mad your are red. When you get sick you are green. When you die you will be gray. You are the colored people!"
Admin
Admin
You sir, do not understand the joke. The portion you quote was obviously a tongue in cheek reference to how most people treat website design.
Yes, this is a sadly common and prevalent view. That doesn't mean the author is unaware or supportive of it. You are to up tight. My wife (who has a neuro-muscular motor impairment) and one of my best friends (who is blind, and the best sysadmin I know) laugh at people who get this up tight about accessibility.
This site is for poking fun of how badly the intent of the architects can get mangled when people with interest in perverting the tech (usually for money, one way or another) get their hands on it.
This site is not your pulpit for fixing how people view accessible design.
Your comments are the equivalent of walking into a church, and yelling at people that they need to read the bible and follow god harder.
Admin
Crap, the post I was quoting originally didn't make it. Bastards. Fixed.
Admin
I once saw a site where they did all their hyper links in Bar style :)
I once worked at a place where the head of our IT department had a site full of links like that. When I criticized it and asked why he didn't use plain HTML links that simply 'always work', his answer was "because at the time the site was built it was a better solution". The real reason, of course, was that he copy-pasted the links from somewhere else because he couldn't write code worth sh*t himself. His management skills were also nonexistent. Except for how he manged to compensated for his lack of competence by ass licking.
Admin
YOU ARE ALL DISABLED. There is also no title attribute on the link, so screen readers are out. The Javascript is secondary.
Admin
Agreed. If one really wants popups with specific window sizes/properties, then I think this:
Blah
is the best solution. The downside is that it uses a name, so other links will open in the same window. I'm sure the JS syntax is incorrect, I never use JS. :-)
Admin
You should be afraid of voicing your opinion because it makes you look like an idiot.
Admin
Admin
Over 100 comments and no one seems to understand standards.
You can then use JS to make that link popup. But you need the damn title, and the href, otherwise a link it is not.
Every time I have seen accessibility discussed on mainstream sites this is the kind of bullshit I have seen.
If you are disabled, the internet can be a very useful tool, why unnecessarily make it more difficult for all of us to use? Accessibility is for everyone.
Admin
Are there colourless people? I've never seen one or heard of any, except in sci-fi's featuring "invisible man".
All real people have skin colour. White is itself a proper colour, too!
Admin
These make the 1996 German spelling reform ridiculous in keeping the "ß" in Germany and Austria. The Swiss can live without it. So, why can't "we"?
Admin
Admin
Indeed, I hate those who complain that these words are offensive. These complainers are usually sufferers of inferiority complex, IMHO. They want to attract attention, which they need and lack. They feel they're ignored. So, they invent something to complain about. "Disabled" is a normal word. They invent a new, pejorative interpretation to it, so that they can complain (at the expense of crippling our language). Then, they impose this interpretation on others to raise attention.
The same thing goes for words like "man" (for mankind) and "he" (when being non-specific on gender and hence may refer a person of any sex). The feminists want to raise attention. So, they invented something to complain: "man" is to be interpreted as only referring to male homo sapiens. So, "Man is not born evil" now becomes a sexist statement, as it doesn't talk about women! And "Everyone should try his best" is considered sexist, too, because the new interpretation excludes female homo sapiens. You now have to say, clumsily, "Everyone should try his/her best". Some people are now using "they" singularly instead of "he/she" to make it less clumsy, but this cause confusion between singular and plural 3rd person pronouns. That's language pollution! The root cause boils down to the feminists who invented something to complain about.
So, minorities, please stop inventing something to complain about. Most of the time, I've found that it's not the majority discriminating against you. Rather, it is you yourselves who are discriminating against yourselves. And you wrongly assume that the majority are discriminating against yourselves like you do. That's inferiority complex.
Admin
But some people -- usually those suffering from inferiority complex -- invented a new interpretation of it, making it negative, thus forcing you to use other words. As a result, some people invented "differently-abled". "different" is neutral. "abled" is even positive. So, this term should be OK? No. Noah here has just demonstrated what I said: he invented a new, pejorative interpretation of this term (or even of "different") to complain about. He finds "being different" offensive, too, doesn't he? (I don't. I'm not handicapped, but I'm proud to say I'm different from you all. I'm unique in this world. [/b]I am who I am.[/b] My DNA is unique and hence different from you all. Why is being different such a bad thing? I can't understand.)
The same thing happens in German, too. Originally, "die Mitarbeiter" is a plural form for "colleagues", which can include both male and female colleagues. There is another word "die Mitarbeiterinnen" which refers female colleagues only. (There is no specific form to refer to male colleagues only. So, indeed, the male sex is discriminated!) But at some point in history, the feminists invented a new interpretation, which has been unfortunately accepted by the main stream: "die Mitarbeiter" should not be gender-neutral; rather, it refers to male colleagues only. So, nowadays, in official letters, people are forced to write "die Mitarbeiter/Mitarbeiterinnen" instead of the more concise "die Mitarbeiter". Some people find that clumsy and shorten it to "die Mitarbeiter/innen". But the "/" doesn't look good within a word. So, some advocate writing "die MitarbeiterInnen" instead. But, this still doesn't solve one problem: how are you going to pronounce this? Doesn't it sound like "die Mitarbeiterinnen"?
A series of problems arise from this new (mis-)interpretation of the originally gender-neutral word "die Mitarbeiter". And the root cause boils down to some feminists, having nothing better to do to kill time, invented something just to complain about. Sigh... an originally valid, concise and non-discriminating expression "die Mitarbeiter" is ruined and replaced by something clumsy. Sigh...
Admin
I remember way back from my university time (late80-ties/early 90-ties) a lot of people using the form "MitarbeiterInnen" as a shorthand for the above (in really official documents, too). And this is not mentioned in the "Duden" (at least the last time I looked) - more is the wonder (almost all universities/colleges in Germany are government-"owned" and run like government organizations).
So the feminist lobby at my university forced the adoption of unapproved languages changes into official documents. If you do not know Germany you can not imagine the significance of something like this actually happening.
(Problably german readers only:) I leave it up to you to guess the name of the univeristy involved.
Admin
[quote user=cklam]2.) You guys talk about labeling and segregrating groups of people through use of language. Obviously, it is correct to label certain groups of people like for example "men" and "women" - if we did not do that then there would not these handy places convienent places labelled "gents" and "ladies" in public places. Other labels are of course offensive - the most offensive example I can think of comes right from my people's history: "Juedische Untermenschen" and "Arier" - I think you all can understand that even without understanding german - the mindset behind that one caused the death of more than six millions jews and countless other persons back in world war 2. The point I am trying to make now is that labeling people is what we humans do - it is part of basic human nature. We do it all the time and the behaviour as such has not significantly throughout human history - in this point we are all still savage.[/quote]
Hmm. In principle, I agree with everything you said. My inner nitpicker, though, has this to say:
Labeling is what we humans do. It is otherwise customarily known as language. Labeling a certain type of animal with a sound "cat" (and its graphical equivalent) allows us to talk about our feline friends with other fans of that rather unique species. Talking about labeling itself would be difficult without the label "labeling" that we attach to the process I am now discussing. Etc, etc... So labeling itself is surely not bad - or particularly "savage".
The important thing here is the difference between the intrinsically offensive labels ("Juedische Untermenschen"), which explicitly qualify something as having low quality, and extrinsic ones, that start out as innocuously descriptive and factual expressions and receive its "offensive meaning" by misinterpretation by overly sensitive people. Real offense vs. perceived offense.
I am not American, and I was always quite shocked by the high linguistic tension over there. Once in a convention held in a venue that had a "Black Room" - and we were told by an American that it was simply unacceptable! But the room was indeed painted black (and contrasted with White Room and Grey Room), and we had no idea what else we would call it...
The savage thing is, by my understanding, almost never the labels themselves - but the atrocious actions humans can, for some reason, be inspired to by them.
Admin
Well, any attempt to transliterate Russian so that the english speaking people would pronounce anything even remotely related to the original is bound to fail. You can't consistently transliterate to a language with no pronunciation rules. Or rather with several sets of coliding rulesets and thousands of exceptions from any of those.
You can fairly easily transliterate Russian so that Czechs will read it almost exactly right (after you tell them to read "y" and "i" differently - no need to explain how and if you use one additional accentated character all czechs know from Slovak). With English all bets are off.
OTOH, when it comes to grammar English is nice, simple and logical. Czech is ... erm ... complex. (I will sing, you will sing, he will sing, we will sing, you will sing, they will sing vs. ja budu zpivat, ty budes zpivat, on bude zpivat, my budeme zpivat, vy budete zpivat, oni budou zpivat or ja zazpivam, ty zazpivas, on zazpiva, my zazpivame, vy zazpivate, oni zazpivaji. And the meaning is a wee bit different and some verbs only use the first style, while others only the second and there are tens of different prefixes that sometimes signify future and sometimes don't and sometimes it even depends on context whether it's future or ability or ... It's a mess.)
BTW, why do think there should be "cc"?
Admin
How come this doesn't surprise me. The HTML standars are full of WTFs. "If it works, ban it" seems to be the moto.
Admin
Or you can set the target via JavaScript and have the best of both. Or you can write a return value for custom popup function. You can do this any number of ways in strict XHTML.
PS. The captcha on this comment isn't accessible, either. WTF?