Here is an HTML newsletter by Play.com in my Gmail inbox, as you can see the blank spaces are where images are going to be once I download or show the images. I generally trust Play.com’s leading messages or subject line, which in this case is ‘Sizzling Offers – All You Need For Summer!’, however I would also like to know what these ‘Sizzling Offers’ are! Where is my call to action?

On a website, this would be an accessibility fail and would break an important WCAG checkpoint (1.1.1 None-text Content).

Play.com Newsletter

The next e-newsletter is from Cloggs and Ticketmaster, who are also missing descriptive alt text for their images, however they have standard text in the body of the newsletter to support the images. This is pretty useful as the user has an indication as to what the newsletter is about and more importantly, what they are selling!

Cloggs Newsletter

Ticketmaster Newsletter

While I was writing this post, I had another newsletter come through, this time it was from Discount Vouchers and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have included standard text in the newsletter and have also added alt text on the images. Although some images were missing alt text, the prominent ones have them, such as ‘Travelodge Voucher’, which immediately indicates what the image is and it is also more likely to prompt a call to action.

Discount Vouchers Newsletter

So are designers becoming lazy to include alternative text on images in HTML newsletter or the importance is no longer there as text alternative newsletters are available? I would like to see more alt text in my newsletters, it helps me decide whether I want to download the images or not and whether or not to click on anything. Is that not the main purpose of an e-newsletter? Call to action.

Check out Webcredible’s article for more information about writing effect alt text for images.

So after many plots and consipiracies, what can we expect from season 10 of Smallville? I think the final episode of season 9 gave us some indication while Clark was dreaming about his destiny.

• Clark, as Superman will finally fly (we hope)
• He will have his famous red and blue suit
• Lex Luthor is so alive (that was too good to be true)
• Lois probably doesn’t remember that Clark is the Blur (Superman)

Before all of that though, Clark will need to be saved from blue kryptonite and Chloe needs to work out who attacked the Green Arrow as the red dots were certainly not the Kandorians, which have left the planet, yes including Zod (again we hope).

The show will most certainly be missed, especially for those like myself who have been eagerly watching it from their teen years and fallen in love with the green eyed super hero Tom Welling.

No official indication has been given as to when Season 10 of Smallville is to air, however we can probably assume it will be Autumn/Fall 2010.

I’m hoping this will encourage me to blog more and blog on the go!

• Dexter Season 5 26th September 2010
• Smallville Season 10 24th September 2010
• Glee Season 2 21st September 2010
• Fringe Season 3 23rd September
• Burn Notice Season 4 3rd June 2010

How important do you think these recommendations are?

I used to have 2 references on my CV and more recently started to add ‘Referees available upon request’ at the bottom as I filled up that space with more information about myself, however I have never been asked for a reference by my employer. I even asked a few past colleagues of mine to endorse me on LinkedIn in hope that it will add value to my CV, although I am not sure how much of an impact this has had.

As an employer or recruitment consultant, do you ask for referees or look at the candidate’s LinkedIn profile  or social media/online presence and pay special attention to the number of endorsements they have? How important is this for you when choosing the right candidate?

How many of you have found your recommendations/endorsements useful in finding that perfect job?

Comments are most welcome!

Firstly a huge well done to Accessible Twitter on winning the Web 2.0 ACCESS IT Award at a ceremony held at Microsoft London. I accepted the award on behalf of my Twitter friend Dennis Lembrée, I was very honoured when he asked me to also give a presentation at the award ceremony.

There was a great turn out and some wonderful presentations by Nikolaos Floratos (e-ISOTIS), Sarah Foxall and Matt Lambert (Microsoft) before the award ceremony began. Here are the categories and winners:

ACCESS-IT@Web2.0: project, product or service that advances accessibility on web 2.0. – Winner: Accessible Twitter
ACCESS-IT@Home: project, product or service that advances independent living for people with disabilities or elderly. – Winner: BBC iPlayer
ACCESS-IT @Work: project, product or service that facilitates persons with disability to work independently. – Winner: ECDL Hallas
ACCESS-IT@Learning: project, product or service that facilitates persons with disability or elderly to get educated in an affordable, accessible, usable and efficient manner. - Winner: RoboBraille

The presentation is available on SlideShare and I will post some pictures up of the wonderful glass cube award, there should be photos to follow on the Access IT website.

Thanks to Dennis Lembrée for a mention in the Webaxe podcast – A great podcast and blog on practical web design accessibility tips.

When I first heard about this project, 2 things sprung to mind:

1. Govenment related project – must be AA accessible
2. Educational project – must be AA accessible

So either way it was essential that Defence Dynamics was AA accessible and I had to make sure I had enough time to do all the XHTML and CSS and ensure accessibility was always in mind. I used the WAI website to ensure I ticked off the AA priority list and used the NVDA screen reader to ensure blind users can easily navigate around the website, along with an awesome colour blindness colour contrast tool called ‘Check My Colours‘.

Update: UK air date for Heroes Volume 4 – Redemption confirmed for end of this year or early 2010 on BBC. Not sure why there is a longer delay this time.

For myself and all those other fans out there who (sadly) download episodes of Lost, Heroes, Dexter, Smallvile, Fringe and Burn Notice. Here are the season premier air dates for this year!

• Lost Season 6 Air Dates- Not confirmed – scheduled for early 2010
  
• Fringe Season 2 Air Dates-  September 2009
• Smallville Season 9 Air Date - September 2009
  
• Heroes Volume 4 (Redemption) Air Date – September 2009
• Dexter Season 4 Air Date - 27th September 2009
• Burn Notice Season 3 Air Date – 4th June 2009

Couple of bits of news:

T-Bag of Prison Break (Robert Knepper) is going to joing the cast of Heroes – Should be interesting, could do with a new villian! Another addition to the Heroes cast is Star Wars British actor Ray Park, better known as Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace.

Claire is making a full-time series return to Lost, she didn’t appear (other than flash backs) in Season 5 – she will be back as a regular for the show’s final season. It was also recently announced that Elizabeth Mitchell is returning to the series in her role as Juliet Burke. It’s possible she will be appearing in flashbacks though!

John Lithgow from the NBC sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, will star in the next season of  Dexter, it has been announced. The actor will play Walter Simmons, a serial killer and nemesis to Michael C. Hall’s Dexter Morgan character.

Seems like it’s all happening in the fall. Should be greattt!

It makes perfect sense for web designers/front end devs to add some extra code in their markup to enable the end user to make that useful call on the go! 

<a rel=”phonenumber” href=”wtai://wp/mc;0845 0000 000″>0845 0000 000</a>
<a href=”wtai://wp/mc;08450000000″>0845 0000 000</a>
<a href=”wtai://wp/ap;08450000000;Name”>Add to Your Contacts</a>

I took the little downtime I had during this project to get my head around HTML 5 and it really wasnt too bad, taking full advantage of the new tags available:

• section:  A part or chapter in a book, a section in a chapter, or essentially anything that has its own heading in HTML 4
• header:  The page header shown on the page; not the same as the head element
• footer:  The page footer where the fine print goes; the signature in an e-mail message
• nav:  A collection of links to other pages
• article:  An independent entry in a blog, magazine, compendium, and so forth

The markup is so much more cleaner and easy to workout what belongs where, for example you don’t need to create a <div id=”nav”> tag for the navigation. I ran into some issues with IE (who doesn’t!) with enabling the new tags, but quickly found a work around via Snipplr.

Also consistently refered to Bruce Lawson’s articles on HTML 5 (which are excellent!) and the random Tweet here and there for great advice (@brucel) – Thanks for that Bruce!

I really enjoyed working with HTML 5 and looking forward to integrating ARIA with HTML 5 too and the consistent improvement for web accessibility.

A big thank you to HTML5 Gallery to listing Cockpit Arts on their website.