Note from the article that "Mr Maguire was previously successful in forcing SOCOG to print its original ticket order book in braille.". While not excusing IBM's web developers for ignoring accessibility (about which more below), it seems that SOCOG also has some responsibility.
How many highly-visible organizations have to get dinged for failing to provide accessibility before they all learn the lesson?
Back to IBM, a brief look at the source for the site in question leaves the impression of severe gimmickry and glitter. Frames and JavaScript (to force you to use frames) abound! Perhaps if they had taken a more straightforward implementation strategy, maintaining the site wouldn't be so difficule?
Incidentally, anybody know who "Millward Brown Interactive" is? Their copyright is in some of the JavaScript.
To keep this in perpective, keep in mind that
print media (those of decent quality, that is)
typically run in the 1200-2200 dpi range (on
the original film from the imagesetter, at least).
Therefore, I strongly endorse the notion that we
are now to the point where increases in screen
resolution can be used to improve the quality of
text display, rather than just making the old
crufty 7x5 dot patterns illegibly small.
Remember, 9pt type should be 1/8" between baselines, NOT 9 pixels. (Obapologies for the
American ruler and the implicit MICROS~1 bashing;-)
Notice how often these types of analyses measure "market share" in terms of dollar volume. This creates a built-in bias against Linux, FreeBSD, etc. "If you're inexpensive -- let alone free -- you must not count for much..."
I understand the feeling. (Sometimes it gets worse if I force myself to do something "official", such as study some aspect of the language / environment / problem domain, because I keep getting reminded of the blockage on the problem I haven't solved.)
In addition to the suggestions posted by the original author, I've found a couple of other approaches helpful:
Keep multiple projects going - so that when I stall out on one, I turn to another to get a little something done and get my momentum back up
Go off on a tangent - and read something that isn't specific to the task at the core of my frustration, but is connected to my professional interests. Examples include:
Anything by Edsger W. Dijkstra
Anything by Donald Knuth
Anything by Christopher Alexander
Back issues (the older the better;-) of Byte, Dr. Dobbs', etc.
Go to the library. (This one is self-torture. I usually get so frustrated at being unable to find what I'm looking for that I go back to my project for stress relief!)
I recall a story from a couple of years ago about an American university which had a satellite campus in France. Since the satellite campus' web site was part of the parent university's site, the French PTB got in an uproar over the "violation" of a requirement regarding how much of a "French" web site could be in a language other than French.
This sort of reaction makes me wonder... If someone participated in an auction of Nazi relics via telephone, would the French government take legal action against its own telephone service?
If someone is annoying you with obscene phone calls (or telemarketing calls!), do you go after the manufacturer of your phone, the phone companies (local or long distance, if you even know where the call is coming from...), or do you blame the moron who's actually doing the harrassment?
I ran across this idea over 30 years ago. Some guys at IBM were working on simulating traffic flow thru city streets and came to the conclusion that the best description of the available data had the same mathematical form as that of fluid flow in pipes. From that key observation, many interesting analogies followed directly: standing waves, shock waves, the congestion resulting from an abrupt narrowing (lane closure or step down to a smaller diameter pipe), etc.
Fascinating to contemplate how often a new discovery could be found by going back and looking at some of those outdated materials in the dusty old dead tree libraries!
A couple of years back there was a flurry of excitement about a couple of high-school kids who used some math software to come up with a "new" geometric construction for dividing a line into an arbitrary number of equal divisions. Their teacher had them present a paper at a math teaching conference, and they were even written up in the Wall St. Journal. Meanwhile, I found exactly the same bit of geometry in an old book on typography and book design, and a newer one (but older than their "discovery") on Fontographer. Seems this same construction had simply been a well-known tool in the printing and book layout field even though the math teachers had forgotten it.
All of this raises the question... In our rush to assume that anything not on line (and easily found by a search engine) is no longer relevant, how much real information are we in danger of losing? (And the problem itself isn't new -- remember the Venetian stained glass that nobody knows how to make any more?)
Slashdot Mirror
Note from the article that "Mr Maguire was previously successful in forcing SOCOG to print its original ticket order book in braille.". While not excusing IBM's web developers for ignoring accessibility (about which more below), it seems that SOCOG also has some responsibility.
How many highly-visible organizations have to get dinged for failing to provide accessibility before they all learn the lesson?
Back to IBM, a brief look at the source for the site in question leaves the impression of severe gimmickry and glitter. Frames and JavaScript (to force you to use frames) abound! Perhaps if they had taken a more straightforward implementation strategy, maintaining the site wouldn't be so difficule?
Incidentally, anybody know who "Millward Brown Interactive" is? Their copyright is in some of the JavaScript.
To keep this in perpective, keep in mind that print media (those of decent quality, that is) typically run in the 1200-2200 dpi range (on the original film from the imagesetter, at least). ;-)
Therefore, I strongly endorse the notion that we are now to the point where increases in screen resolution can be used to improve the quality of text display, rather than just making the old crufty 7x5 dot patterns illegibly small.
Remember, 9pt type should be 1/8" between baselines, NOT 9 pixels. (Obapologies for the American ruler and the implicit MICROS~1 bashing
Except for the $1k Nehru jackets and im-so-eurocool-designer-grey turtlenecks...
Notice how often these types of analyses measure "market share" in terms of dollar volume. This creates a built-in bias against Linux, FreeBSD, etc. "If you're inexpensive -- let alone free -- you must not count for much..."
Don't forget wearables and driveables.
I understand the feeling. (Sometimes it gets worse if I force myself to do something "official", such as study some aspect of the language / environment / problem domain, because I keep getting reminded of the blockage on the problem I haven't solved.)
In addition to the suggestions posted by the original author, I've found a couple of other approaches helpful:
Good luck!
Compu terWorld also covered this story, with a little different slant than Excite's coverage.
I recall a story from a couple of years ago about an American university which had a satellite campus in France. Since the satellite campus' web site was part of the parent university's site, the French PTB got in an uproar over the "violation" of a requirement regarding how much of a "French" web site could be in a language other than French.
This sort of reaction makes me wonder... If someone participated in an auction of Nazi relics via telephone, would the French government take legal action against its own telephone service?
If someone is annoying you with obscene phone calls (or telemarketing calls!), do you go after the manufacturer of your phone, the phone companies (local or long distance, if you even know where the call is coming from...), or do you blame the moron who's actually doing the harrassment?
I ran across this idea over 30 years ago. Some guys at IBM were working on simulating traffic flow thru city streets and came to the conclusion that the best description of the available data had the same mathematical form as that of fluid flow in pipes. From that key observation, many interesting analogies followed directly: standing waves, shock waves, the congestion resulting from an abrupt narrowing (lane closure or step down to a smaller diameter pipe), etc.
Fascinating to contemplate how often a new discovery could be found by going back and looking at some of those outdated materials in the dusty old dead tree libraries!
A couple of years back there was a flurry of excitement about a couple of high-school kids who used some math software to come up with a "new" geometric construction for dividing a line into an arbitrary number of equal divisions. Their teacher had them present a paper at a math teaching conference, and they were even written up in the Wall St. Journal. Meanwhile, I found exactly the same bit of geometry in an old book on typography and book design, and a newer one (but older than their "discovery") on Fontographer. Seems this same construction had simply been a well-known tool in the printing and book layout field even though the math teachers had forgotten it.
All of this raises the question... In our rush to assume that anything not on line (and easily found by a search engine) is no longer relevant, how much real information are we in danger of losing? (And the problem itself isn't new -- remember the Venetian stained glass that nobody knows how to make any more?)