I just checked it on Firefox and IE, and today its working on both. I can't remember which I used yesterday. siobhan
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Claude Almansi Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 9:02 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: Re: [DDN] blog: The Mystery of the Food Pyramid Champ-Blackwell, Siobhan wrote: > And the page doesn't even work today - i'm assuming its been overwhelmed with > users, but everytime i get on it, and try the interactive tools, it times > out. > siobhan Hi Siobhan, It works fine with firefox. What browser are you using? Andy,re: > Meanwhile, don't get me started on Web accessibilty for the disabled. I > ran an accessibility test on the homepage and the "Inside the Pyramid" > page, which describes the pyramid in greater detail. Both failed even > the most basic accessibility standards; in the case of the homepage, it > was because it didn't have alternative text descriptions for all the > images on the homepage.... May I take your "don't get me started" as a rhetorical device (aposiopesis)? On Tuesday, I finally had a chance to see the Virtual Learning Platform used in several distance training projects of a program I have translated for. The variant I saw is used in a Gender & IT project financed by the Swiss Office Fédéral de l'Egalité (Federal Office for Equal Chances). It is nice because it looks like a village square, with little Playmobile guys representing students and teachers. But it is so wide you have to scroll left and right continuously, and it is in Flash with no alternate text version. When I pointed out that Flash cuts off blind people, the leader of the Gender & IT project was puzzled: "How can a blind person use a computer to start with?" I was even more puzzled by her asking, but I explained. Now the real problem is that another variant of the same Flash platform is being beta-tested in 7 public middle schools of Ticino. Should the test lead to a recommendation of its generalisation to all middle schools, there is a strong chance that the accessibility issue won't get raised until it's too late. I just do translations and a few web searching jobs for them, whereas they have a big team of teaching and of tech experts, so what I say has no sway, per se. But I also spoke with one of the tech people there: he at least is aware that the problem is bound to come up, as accessibility of state web sites is made compulsory by the disabilty law that came into force on Jan. 1st, 2004 - though he is still wondering how to make the virtual platform accessible. I showed him the DDN site and he bookmarked it because he really liked the easy connection between community, blog and profile. And if the teaching experts want to stick to their visual metaphor (which might make sense at middle school), maybe they could go for something like http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/home/index.cfm , but with alt texts for all pics. ENT (Education with New Technologies) is one of the first e-learning sites Bonnie Bracey introduced me to, 5 years ago. The visual interface hasn't changed since: why should it, if it works? cheers -- Claude Almansi www.adisi.ch _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.