Improving online safety by investigating our digital footprint

     This morning I attended a webinar presented by the WLMA. This presentation was entitled Improving online safety by investigating our digital footprint, how to keep our kids safe online. Brent Howard and Conn McQuinn presented on this very interesting topic. The webinar addressed several issues such as:

• How to keep kids aware of what goes online
• Web 2.0
• Cyberbullying
• How to develop digital footprints
• School district responses to cyberbullying and sexting 

Web 2.0 topics:

• History is Web 1.0 is 1994 internet!
• information
• text based
• Example: WolframAlpha
•  Web 2.0 came into play in 2000
• Multimedia
• No coding information or server required - anyone can publish anytime, anywhere
• Connections and collaboration
• Sharing is caring
• Examples: Blogs, Wikipedia

 Social Networking / Digital Footprint:

• There's a site for everyone
• Connect with others 
• Collaborate/share information
•  As we engage in things like social networking, we are developing our digital footprint
• There is no undo
• 80% of Fortune 500 companies search through different social networking sites prior to hiring
• Keep  in mind how much you "live in a fishbowl" - everyone can watch
• Be sure to read the USER AGREEMENTS!- prior to agreeing - good information to know! 
• Think before you post - Great example - David After Dentist - YouTube
• Check out privacy settings - are you really private? 
• Be cautious 

What's in your digital profile?
Check out your digital profile by going on these sites:
- Spokeo
- Pipl

 Cyber-bullying:

• 24 / 7 / 365
• Happen to anyone / anytime
• In and out of school
• Choose what happens next - An information video about sexting and how it effects kids

How to Respond?

• Look at and review the policy and procedure
• Understand the policy, procedure, and practice
• Teen Cyberbullying investigated - Jude Tom Jacobs - What would you do book

Recommended Resources:

• WolframAlpha
• Tagxedo
• Posterous
•  Spokeo 
• Pipl

Session 2 at Accessibility Summit - Web Accessibility

The second session offered by Accessibility Summit 2011, was about website accessibility. The presenter was Jared W. Smith (@Jared_w_smith). Check out his site at webaim.org.

Here are the notes about this session:

- Accessibility is process that is continuous - always can do more
- If your site is accessible, your not being innovative or updating your site enough!
- Provide a good experience for your users and readers of your site
- Accessible site certification - http://webaim.org/services/certification/
- WCAG 2.0 - principles, guidelines (ex. keyboard accessible), success criteria
- compliance does not equal accessibility - use as a set of guidelines
- Your site can be fully compliant with the guideline, but can still be functionally inaccessible
- WCAG 2.0 - great guidelines for web accessibility - http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag

Rule 1 - Equivalent alternative text
- can’t measure equivalence with a formula or tool
- does not mean exactly equal, does mean about the same or similar text

Rule 2 - Bypass Blocks
- bypass blocks of content that are replicated on several or multiple web pages
- test this out by: navigate with keyboard or listen to it in a screen reader
- "Skip to main content" links are useful and helpful, because browsers have yet to provide better keyboard navigation for users or readers who are sighted
- use common sense when using a text and background (use sensible contrast with colors)


Solutions to help with web accessibility:
- Learn about AT
- Learn about individuals with disabilities who utilize the web
- Use but do not rely on automated tools - WAVE - http://wave.webaim.org/
- Focus on the user’s experience
- Plan for progress
- become an accessibility champion - advocate for accessibility
- use common sense and guidelines
- prioritize the failures or the needs of improvement - what has the most impact on the user?
- Web pages need to be readable and functional when text is re-sized to 200%
- Images of text - text is used to give information rather than images.
- Test your site with a screen reader to avoid “screen reader freak out”

Accessibility Summit 2011
Session 1 - Color for the Colorblind

I attended the Accessibility Summit 2011 at Penn State University. The first session was presented by David Berman (follow on Twitter @DavidBerman) He presented about colorblindness and designing interfaces and websites. To learn more about the Accessibility summit go here, or follow it on twitter #a11ysummit. Here are my notes on the presentation by David Berman:

- Colorblind = life or death (traffic lights example - new test lights - two rectangular stop lights and one round green light )
- Most colorblind can see colors. But what they see isn't the same as what the non-colorblind see (depends on type).
- 10% of men have a color deficiency.

- Accessibility is about individuals with disabilities and also about the digital divide
- digital haves and have not’s
- many people have their first Internet experience on a cell phone!

- 4 reasons why accessibility is important:
- large percentage of users
- large labor pool
- it's the right thing to do
- legality compliance

- History of AT - designing for extremes (eg. hearing aids) helps everyone (ie end up in the development of the radio)

- Innovation for disability solution for the census and revolutionizes all of us!

- Disabilities can be divided into 4 groups
- permanent - blind birth
- temporary - broken arm
- acquired - age, tbi
- societal - left handed

- Impaired senses:
- visual
- mobility
- hearing
- language/communication - learning language, access to language, literacy,
- cognitive
- social

- There is a solution for these impaired senses - AT!

- Read regular - type face created for individuals who have dyslexia

- Rotating a d to a b, changes the whole meaning of the letter d. What an incentive to design better typefaces

- email was created as AT for a hearing deficit - a tech to type messages back and forth - how cool

- Nouse - scans head movements and eye blinks! - in 2 years a part of the pad and tablet technologies!

- Ideal accessibility web site : everyone, anytime, any connection speed

- WCAG 2.0 conformity levels ranging from A to AAA- most sites are AA compliant. Also section 508 compliant - in order to ensure that your site is accessible for individuals who have disabilities.

- We need to plan for accessibility

- When creating a site look out for:
Don’t rely on one sense to relay information to readers
Avoid poor contrast effects and colors (background and text)
snook.ca - can remedy contrast effects and colors
first steps to accessible PDF’s
provide text to speech (voki, avatars) to read text aloud
provide text to be adapted - larger/smaller text modifications
color background and text modifications available
larger landing zone for website selections (click here)
Use larger landing/click zones for clickable links
davidberman.com/dogoodgooglebook - first 40 pages free!