I recently attended the HighEdWeb 2008 Conference in Springfield, MO. All of the presentations and both workshops I attended were excellent. The presenters gave many good tips and tools to use. The following are my short summaries on some presentations:
Creating a College Web Style Guide: Principles, Processes, and Prototypes
Jesse Racine, Web Designer and Developer for McHenry County College, entertainingly presented the importance of keeping things uniformed for your site. He explained the importance of creating a web style guide is to “improve quality of communications by being consistent.” Navigation will be more predictable this way making the site user-friendly. He also explained that having this guide will also save one their time and money.
Colors on the Web: Few Things, Great Results
Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel presented on the fascinating subject of color. I am interested in this subject because of my interest and background in painting. She explained the importance of color and how we physically and psychologically react. Martha is the Director of Technology at New Media Developers, Ltd. She is also a professor of digital design and games design courses at Brazil’s Universidade Anhembi Morumbi. Martha explained that people will notice the interface first and that the color shapes the page’s meaning. So, color is something you feel when looking at many different mediums. So, think about those who will be utilizing the website. What is the best combination of colors for expressing this message?
New Initiatives in Web Standards Education
Chris Mills, Developer Relations Manager for Opera Software ASA, talked about the issue of websites and absence of web standards. He bluntly explained that the lack of education and lack of interest contributes to this issue. He is determined that the easiest clients to work with are web developers who are concerned.
It is interesting how he handles this difficult arena. Again, he stated the importance of education and training material. The group delivers an up-to-date free course on web standards. This free course can be found at http://www.opera.com/wsc which I have previously visited. So, his plans are giving web standards more credibility and providing certification for those who complete the course.
Internet Evolution Through the Eyes of a Deaf User and Web Professional
Svetlana Kouznetsova, Web Designer and Developer for Lehman College, began her presentation announcing the high 97 percent of inaccessible websites. She described a different perspective on the frustration of inaccessibility. She explained how similar having a disability is to handling a stroller in public, like at an airport. One may feel frustrated when he or she is unable to understand the dialogue of a foreign film or you may even be frustrated because of your outdated technology that you are stuck using. To have an accessible website, one can maintain clean codes and follow accessibility guidelines while having a creative design. Many people believe their site will be plain and unattractive which is not true. The presenter showed a video without the sound and captions. As you can imagine, it was impossible to grasp what was happening. I can relate to this because it is impossible for me to watch a foreign film or even a Shakespeare film without the captions. She explains that it is important to include captions with videos as well as include the transcripts for podcasts.
Accessible Video Interface
Many universities are now presenting videos on their websites. It is important that these videos include captions and are manageable. Gabriel McGovern, Web Designer for Portland Community College, explained that one is able to create high quality Flash videos that have a consistent design and is easy to update. By building the right interface, you are able to make changes that will automatically update all of your videos.
He talked about creating the captions using a free application called Media Access Generator (provided by the National Center for Accessible Media). In addition, the creator will need to time the captions along with the video. You are able to determine what is important for buttons (mute, forward, pause, captions, etc.) and customize the buttons in Flash. You are also able to create a transcript page for accessibility so all you see is text. Another feature that allows accessibility is the xml file (smil.xml) which determines what size video to load for an individual machine. The video can be for download or streaming.
What conferences have you recently attended?
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