Re: [WSG] Re: University textbook or other resources?

2005-11-26 Thread Jon Tan

Laura Carlson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


I've been asked if there are useful university-focused
textbooks or other resources suitable for teaching
accessible web design.


Hi Laura, if you didn't know already, these are superb live resources in 
addition to books:


http://www.accessify.com/
http://www.accessifyforum.com
http://www.gawds.org/

Books don't debate best practice like more dynamic sources so I'd be careful 
how they were used by students. That's not to say they aren't extremely 
useful though. Perhaps the WCAG would be the place to start along with case 
studies to demonstrate practical technique - contrary to the myth its pretty 
easy to read (and even easier with a tutor explaining as you go) 
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/. There's also a working draft of the WCAG 2.0 
too: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/. Supplementing that with judicious samples 
from the sites listed to flesh out the practice of accessible design based 
around the WCAG etc would top it off nicely.


The RNIB has good resources on web practice:
http://www.rnib.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/code/public_rnib003460.hcsp
also a useful article on UK law:
http://www.thepickards.co.uk/Articles/The_DDA_and_IT.cfm

Jon Tan
www.gr0w.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: [WSG] Re: University textbook or other resources?

2005-11-26 Thread Alan Trick
Since your at a univeristy you might as well take the time to go over
the some of the more theoretical stuff. This is particlularly a good ida
if your talking to CS students who are more interested in that kind of
thing.

Probably one of most important things is Semantics. Paricularly the
separation of style and content, although semantics covers a lot more
too. Of course don't over do it (join the www-html list on w3.org for
examples :P) but I htink it will give the students a firm foundation for
a lot of the whys behind how things are done.

As far as server side languages like PHP, JSP, and the other
abominations - I think that probably belongs in another course. Mainly
because there is a lot of stuff that needs to be covered here
(particularly security issues). If the students haven't done at least
some programming you might find that either 1) it ends up becoming a
second Introduction to Programming 101 or 2) the students won't have a
clue as to what they're doing and will get more confused because there
is an extra layer they don't understand.

Alan Trick

On Sat, 2005-11-26 at 00:06 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 There are two magazines out of the UK that sometimes offer tutorials
 that you can use in the classrom. One is called WebDesigner and the
 other is called Practical Web Projects
 http://www.paragon.co.uk/wd/index.htm
 http://www.paragon.co.uk/pwp/index.htm
 
 If you want to teach web design from a standards perspective, there are
 three books listed in the right hand column of my blog at
 http://www.netmix.com/wordpress, along with other books that I singled
 out from Amazon that might be useful to you. One is Jeffrey Zeldman's
 Designing with Web Standards.
 
 I also recommend starting to look into Open Source products, like Typo3,
 Mambo and other Open Source Content Management systems.
 
 Web designers need to learn how to design around open source module
 macros.
 
 For example, Movable Type, Wordpress and other blog systems are all open
 source CMS tools. A web designer is going to need to think about how to
 create templates based on the functionality of these CMS systems. The
 ones I mentioned are php/mySql, but there are other that are Java, ASP
 and JSP as well.
 
 A good resource to get open source CMS tools is opensourcecms.com.
 
 I have yet to find a book that teaches you how to actually think about
 design, fontography and layout, then bring you into HTML production,
 then bring you along into database integration. Since all these methods
 are disparate from each other, but depend on each other, most books
 usually focus on how to's rather than to think creatively.
 
 Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but believe me, I've been looking.
 
 In the local Barnes  Noble, there have been many books published that
 you can find in the Graphic Design section, which showcase high end web
 design. That may also be a place to look as well.
 
 Tony Z.
 
 
 
 
 Laura Carlson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 11/26/2005, 01:04:35 AM:
   I've been asked if there are useful university-focused
   textbooks or other resources suitable for teaching
   accessible web design.
  
  As Lloyd and Matthew mentioned Joe Clark's Building Accessible 
  Websites, New Riders Publishing, 2002 is well worth considering.
  
  I have been using it for the web accessibility classes that I teach. 
  The Clark book does not assume the reader understands the basics of web 
  accessibility. I specifically chose it because of that and because it 
  goes beyond simply repeating the party line from the World Wide Web 
  Consortium (W3C) or Section 508. That is one of the purposes of the 
  classes - to not just read the specifications, but actively engage 
  them. Challenge, dissect, understand, and learn what makes the most 
  sense. Also Joe put the whole book online[1] so if students don't want 
  to purchase it for the class they don't have too.  However, the soft 
  cover version of the online book has screen shots and images. The 
  online version does not.
  
  The Web Design Reference [2] is a huge online mega-reference (over 
  3,000 links) of information and articles about web design and 
  development that you might find useful. It has a full section on books 
  [3] as well as online resources (accessibility, CSS, usability, web 
  standards, and many related topics are covered).
  
  You might also find the Web Design Update Newsletter [4] helpful. It is 
  a plain text email digest that typically goes out once a week as an 
  adjunct to the site.
  
  All the Best,
  Laura
  
  [1] http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/
  [2] http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
  [3] http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books#access
  [4] http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist
  
  ___
  Laura L. Carlson
  Information Technology Systems and Services
  University of Minnesota Duluth
  Duluth, MN  55812-3009
  http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/


Re: [WSG] Re: University textbook or other resources?

2005-11-26 Thread Hassan Schroeder
Alan Trick wrote:

 As far as server side languages like PHP, JSP, and the other
 abominations - I think that probably belongs in another course. 

Being far removed from higher education, I'd kind of skipped this
thread but that caught my eye; the originating comment:

For example, Movable Type, Wordpress and other blog systems are all open
source CMS tools. A web designer is going to need to think about how to
create templates based on the functionality of these CMS systems. The
ones I mentioned are php/mySql, but there are other that are Java, ASP
and JSP as well.

I think it would help non-programmers to evaluate CMS/framework
software if they were at least aware of the 'MVC' design pattern
(and the concept of Design Patterns in general, for that matter).

The Model-View-Controller pattern represents a separation of data,
presentation, and business logic in the overall system, as current
(X)HTML/CSS is intended to separate data and presentation at the
View level.

Finding a template system with code interwoven through the markup,
or worse yet *generating* markup (when you see something like e.g.
print 'pbgack!/b/p';), should tip the developer that it
will be extremely painful to make substantial changes.

OTOH, a template system like e.g. 'pb${exclamation}/b/p'
will be much more flexible. Some languages lend themselves to the
latter approach more than others, but that's OT for this forum. :-)

-- 
Hassan Schroeder - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Webtuitive Design ===  (+1) 408-938-0567   === http://webtuitive.com

  dream.  code.


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[WSG] Re: University textbook or other resources?

2005-11-25 Thread Laura Carlson

I've been asked if there are useful university-focused
textbooks or other resources suitable for teaching
accessible web design.


As Lloyd and Matthew mentioned Joe Clark's Building Accessible 
Websites, New Riders Publishing, 2002 is well worth considering.


I have been using it for the web accessibility classes that I teach. 
The Clark book does not assume the reader understands the basics of web 
accessibility. I specifically chose it because of that and because it 
goes beyond simply repeating the party line from the World Wide Web 
Consortium (W3C) or Section 508. That is one of the purposes of the 
classes - to not just read the specifications, but actively engage 
them. Challenge, dissect, understand, and learn what makes the most 
sense. Also Joe put the whole book online[1] so if students don't want 
to purchase it for the class they don't have too.  However, the soft 
cover version of the online book has screen shots and images. The 
online version does not.


The Web Design Reference [2] is a huge online mega-reference (over 
3,000 links) of information and articles about web design and 
development that you might find useful. It has a full section on books 
[3] as well as online resources (accessibility, CSS, usability, web 
standards, and many related topics are covered).


You might also find the Web Design Update Newsletter [4] helpful. It is 
a plain text email digest that typically goes out once a week as an 
adjunct to the site.


All the Best,
Laura

[1] http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/
[2] http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
[3] http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/books#access
[4] http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist

___
Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN  55812-3009
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/
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[WSG] Re: University textbook or other resources?

2005-11-23 Thread Virginia DeBolt
Title: Re: University textbook or other resources?



Hi everyone,
New member, first post, although youll find I mostly lurk. 

The two books by Knowbility partners arent exactly university focused textbooks, but are very good for training in accessibility.

http://www.knowbility.org/air-interactive/?content=resources

Virginia

ivanovitch wrote:

Folks

I've been asked if there are useful university-focused textbooks or
other resources suitable for teaching accessible web design.

So far 'Effective website development' (Darlington) and 'Principles of
web site design' (Skalr) have been proposed as possible options.

Thoughts?


--
Virginia DeBolt
Author: Integrated HTML and CSS: A Smarter, Faster Way to Learn
Blog: Web Teacher  Resources for Teaching Web Design: Book Reviews
http://www.webteacher.ws
--