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UMBC’s giving office is very happy to welcome new Phonathon Coordinator Logan Wern. In this position, Logan manages the nearly 40 UMBC students whose job it is to chat up alumni and parents throughout the year. It’s an important job, but also fun, with Logan serving as a sort of motivator-in-chief for this lively office.
We sat down with Logan, who earned her master’s degree in higher education administration and student personnel from Kent State University, for a few minutes to learn a little more about who she is and what she brings to the table…er, telephone. 
Q: Tell us a little bit more about what your job entails.
A: Well, what I really do is manage the Call Center where students call alumni or parents of current or past students and ask them to give to the Annual Fund or more specific departmental funds. I’m really excited to be here…I like it already!
Q: Part of your job involves getting to know UMBC really well so you can help your students as they talk with alums and parents. So, what’s the coolest thing you’ve learned so far about UMBC?
A: Wow, a lot of things. But, I think the thing that most impresses me is what an innovative campus UMBC is. And that’s one of the things that attracted me to accepting this position, because it’s such a young campus — which to some could be seen as not having the traditions and structure — but it’s really more of a good thing when you’re trying to grow programs like the Annual Fund. I think it’s a really exciting place to be because it is so new and young.
Q: How would you describe the atmosphere of the Call Center when it’s filled with students chatting merrily on the phones?
A: Well, on a busy night it’s a really exciting place to be with all the students on the phones talking to alumni or talking to parents and making connections. And since I’ve been here, I’ve started a game with a sort of meter to see how much money we raise for UMBC each night, and it’s kind of based on the theme of “making it rain,” so it’s like “April Showers Bring May Flowers.” I have a little display on my wall and every time a student gets a pledge they fill out a rain drop and stick it on the wall. So, it’s starting to pour because the students are doing really well. The students kind of made fun of me for it at first, but I think it’s working!
Yesterday brought us the birthday of the postage stamp book. Created in 1900, these books came with 12 cent, 24 cent, and 48 cent stamps.
Although the mail is used less and less today with the popularity of email and iMessage, people are still fond of sending each other postcards, Christmas greetings, and ricin.
Yes, ricin. On Tuesday, an envelope containing the toxic poison was intercepted at the congressional mail center. It was addressed to Senator Roger Wicker (R) of Mississippi, a “low-profile senator in his second term.”
What exactly is ricin? It’s a protein found in castor oil plants and has surfaced occasionally as a dangerous chemical for the past forty years. According to CNN,
“as little as 500 micrograms — an amount the size of the head of a pin — can kill an adult.”
Lets take a look at some past incidences involving ricin:
No one is sure yet what prompted the poison plot, or who exactly did it. According to “authorities,” an individual who “writes lots of letters to lawmakers” is the best suspect, but the motive is up in the air. Why a small town Senator from a small, rural state?
As the latest USDemocrazy blog points out, some might hear of this “terrorist attack” and cry “Muslim.” It’s also interesting that this incident has already been labeled as a terrorist attack by the media.
But one news website, Deep South Progressive, raises an interesting question:
This afternoon, we learned that Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker (R) was sent an enveloped that contained ricin, a poison that could have been fatal. For the past week, Sen. Wicker has been on the receiving end of a relentless amount of hatred from conservatives and gun nuts across the nation, who have accused him of treason and tyranny for voting to allow debate on common sense background checks, and who have vowed to ensure payback. Do you think the letter had anything to do with his vote to allow debate on gun safety?
It’s true –Sen. Wicker was one of the 16 Republicans to end the gun control filibuster, stating
[I am] in accord with the NRA’s position. I have never voted for gun control and will not do so. This begins a debate to put the Senate on record about a basic constitutional freedom. [Allowing debate would give lawmakers] the opportunity to vote on measures to strengthen gun rights, such as an amendment to protect veterans from unfair restrictions when trying to purchase a firearm. [I] will filibuster passage of a final bill if it contains gun restrictions or a weapons ban.
Does it seem like there is a connection between Sen. Wicker’s political stance and the letter with ricin? Has the gun control turned into a fight leading to murder plots? Is this too far?
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I was having a chat with a friend of mine recently and somehow we got onto the subject of hidden messages in Apple icons. Admittedly it’s not something I’d thought too much about prior to this conversation and the only example I could recall was the “Here’s to the crazy ones…” quote on the TextEdit icon. However, a quick search online revealed that there is in fact quite a few.
This got me thinking, if Apple have hidden messages in their icons, how many other companies have followed suit?
My curiosity lead to doing a bit of research and sure enough I found some real gems. Below is a compilation of the best that I found.
The name of the app (Camera+) and the name of it’s creators (tap tap tap) is included on the lens. This has also been done on a lot of other camera app icons, but I still think it’s a nice touch.
The inscription on the side of the pencil features the name of the app (Syncspace) and the phrase “Made in Scotland” as that’s where the founder of Infinite Kind, the company that created the app, is based.
Another inscription-on-a-pencil here and this one features the message “Start creating awesome Apps”. It’s simple, but that is how the app is intended to be used.
Look closely at the text on the newspaper and you will see that it’s actually the quote from Apple’s “Here’s to the crazy ones” campaign.
One of my personal favourites. The coin features a quote from Bob Marley – “money can’t buy you life”. A subtle reminder that money isn’t everything, made even cooler by the fact that the icon is for a finance app.
Check out the passport and you’ll notice that the country of origin says Neverland, which of course is best known for being inhabited by characters such as Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys.
Take a closer look at the vinyl label and you’ll see the message “Bi3b3r Forever”. I got in touch with the founder of Turntable, Billy Chasen, to find out more and he told me that Bieber is actually embedded into a lot of Turntable’s stuff, you just have to look for it. As for the reason why, apparently it goes back to a story from they first started developing the product. Unfortunately, it’s not a story told to outsiders, so for now we can only speculate.
See the address in the bottom right hand corner? Type it into Google Maps and check out where it takes you – it’s what now appears to be an old Evernote office.
Have you spotted any hidden messages in app icons recently? Let us know in the comments below.
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http://gb.tc/programs/hacktheparks/
Park improvements can be an engine of change for Baltimore. Well-maintained city parks promote social health, improve neighborhood safety, and spur economic growth.
The power to make Baltimore's parks (and the city, as a whole) sustainable, livable and vibrant lies with us. So we are calling on the citizens of Baltimore to "hack" the city's parks. By hacking we mean, citizens develop their own applications (whether they be technology-based or not) which create simple, tangible benefits for the community.
gb.tc has partnered with the Mayor's Office of Information Technology and Baltimore's Department of Recreation and Parks to give Baltimoreans a real opportunity to change our urban green spaces. The goal isn't just to better life in Baltimore, but to give citizens the chance to build real, sustainable businesses which help achieve this end.
Hack the Parks is making grants available to support the most innovative park improvement proposals. We encourage you to think small, at least to start. The funded projects are all pilots. In addition to seed money, the selected pilot projects will also be given park space or other Rec and Parks resources to test their plans, pivot, and evolve into truly viable products.
Here's how it works:
Hack the Parks is made possible with the support of
As browser capabilities continue to grow the websites that we are building are getting ever more complex. Fancy JavaScript UIs are great for showing off the latest technologies but they can cause a real problem for assistive technologies like screen readers.
Unfortunately accessibility is one of those topics that often gets overlooked by a lot of developers. This makes me a little sad. If we want the web to remain a place that can be enjoyed by everyone, we need to be considering our users at both ends of the spectrum.
In this article my aim is to show you just how easy it is to make your websites accessible.
There are three main reasons why you should care about making your websites accessible.
This reason alone should be all you need to convince you that accessibility is worth the time and effort.
Building accessible websites is just simply the right thing to do.
As developers we enormous power to create anything that our minds can dream of. It’s our responsibility to make sure that the things that we create can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of whether they might have a disability.
Whether you are a programmer, designer, copywriter or any other web professional, having a focus on accessibility will help you to improve your skills.
Lets look at the example of a programmer. Building accessible websites means that you need to write good, standards-compliant code. That point in itself has a lot of benefits outside of the realm of accessibility. Writing good code that complies with W3C and WHATWG standards means that it is going to be easier for others to understand, which is a big bonus if you work on a team with other programmers.
The same benefits are present for designers. Having a conscious focus on accessibility will make you consider how your choice of color and layout will effect users that are color blind or suffer motor impairments (a loss or limitation of muscle control).
In the fantastic documentary Objectified industrial designer Dan Formosa said something that has really stuck with me.
What we really need to do to design is look at the extremes.
The weakest, or the person with arthritis, or the athlete, or the strongest person.
Because if we understand what the extremes are, the middle will take care of itself.
That last line is particularly powerful. When we are designing we need to think about the power users. How can we make using our application easier for people that spend significant amounts of time using it? Keyboard shortcuts in GMail are a good example of designing for power users.
We also need to think about people at the other end of the spectrum. What can we do to make our site easier to navigate for blind people that rely on screen readers? Will somebody that has trouble moving a mouse precisely be able to click that small button?
Asking all these questions forces you to think more deeply about whatever it is that you are building. It develops your understanding of problems and expands your skills as a web professional.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and the following should not be taken as legal advice.
In some countries there are laws that require certain organizations (usually government) to make all digital information accessible.
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the United States requires that all Federal agencies make digital information accessible to everyone.
The UK has a British Standard (BS8878) that makes recommendations on accessibility but there is no legal requirement for anyone to follow them.
Before we dive into how you can make your website more accessible lets first take a look at one of the most common assistive technologies begin used, screen readers.
If you’ve never used a screen reader before I definitely recommend that you get one installed on your computer (if it didn’t come with one) and give it a go. You will probably need to read the help documentation first so that you understand how to move around a web page.
If you are a Mac user you should have VoiceOver already installed. You can fire it up in System Preferences.
For Linux users the best screen reader I have used is ORCA.
Windows users should check out NVDA.
You might be surprised at how difficult it is to navigate a website using the screen reader alone. I know that I was the first time I used one. Now imagine that every time you wanted to check your Facebook feed, post a tweet or do a simple web search you had to use a screen reader. It’s a bit of an eye-opener.
Now that you’ve explored some of the reasons why you should care about accessibility, lets take a look at some practical tips for making your websites more accessible.
Using the new semantic HTML elements such as <header>, <footer> and <article> can help computer programs to identify key areas of content on the page. This is because the HTML5 specification explicitly defines what types of content these elements should contain.
The concept here is great, but as HTML5 is still evolving a lot of companies that develop assistive technologies have not yet implemented the new standard. This means that while the use of these new elements should make accessibility easier for developers, many of the tools on the market today simply don’t understand them.
Before HTML5 came along there was an effort to give greater meaning to HTML markup through a standard called WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Web Applications). This standard defines a number of roles that page elements can have. Some of these roles closely mirror the new HTML5 semantic elements (such as article and main) but there are a few unique ones too. HTML elements are assigned a role using a role attribute.
<div role="article">...</div>
If you want to learn more about WAI-ARIA check out this great article from Opera Software: Introduction to WAI-ARIA.
Even though a lot of screen readers don’t currently understand the new semantic elements I personally think that using them is a better approach than WAI-ARIA.
Note: The W3C is working on some guidelines for using WAI-ARIA in HTML5.
There a couple of key things that you can do to make your web forms accessible. In this article I am going to focus on the proper use of labels and the tabindex attribute.
Labels are really important for users that rely on screen readers for navigating the web. Without them it can be really difficult for these users to fill in your web forms.
Simply adding labels to your form isn’t quite good enough. You need to make sure that you are properly assigning each label to it’s corresponding input element(s).
To do this you need to first give your <input> element an ID. You then add a for attribute to your <label> element and set its value to the ID that you just gave your input. An example of this can be found below.
<label for="name">Name:</label>
<input type="text" name="name" id="name">
An added benefit of assigning labels to inputs is that the area taken up by the label becomes a clickable target for the input. So if you click the label the input will gain focus, or if it is a checkbox or radio button it will toggle the input state. This is really useful for users with motor impairments that might not be able to accurately target small form controls.
The tabindex attribute gives you a way of specifying the order in which inputs should be focused when the tab key is being used to navigate through a web form.
The default order that inputs are focused is determined by the placement of the <input> elements in the HTML markup. If you want to change this order for any reason you should specify the tabindex on all of the <input> elements in the form. Passing in a value between 1 and n (where n is the total number of input elements).
<label for="name">Name:</label>
<input type="text" name="name" id="name" tabindex="1">
<label for="email">Email:</label>
<input type="email" name="email" id="email" tabindex="3">
<label for="phone">Phone:</label>
<input type="tel" name="phone" id="phone" tabindex="2">
In the example above the focus order will move from the name input to the phone input and then finally to the email input.
If you have a web form with a slightly irregular layout, manipulating the focus order can really help users relying on assistive technologies.
To make your images accessible you need to ensure that you add a detailed description of the image in the alt attribute. When a screen reader encounters an image, this is the text that it will read to the user.
<img src="cows.jpg" alt="Cows grazing in a field on a sunny day.">
You should be able to build up a mental picture of the image by reading the alt text alone.
There are two accessibility considerations to make when creating links. The first is to think about the anchor text that will become the clickable link. This text should make sense if it was taken out of the context of the page. ‘Click here’ is a really bad example of anchor text.
The second consideration is the use of a title attribute. This can be used to add a description of the page that you are linking to. This description will then be displayed in a tool-tip when the user hovers their mouse over the link and may also be read aloud by a screen reader.
<a href="http://teamtreehouse.com" title="Learn how to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create websites by watching videos on TeamTreehouse.com">Learn to build websites with Treehouse</a>
Tables can be tricky to understand for assistive technologies. In this section you are going to learn about two techniques you can use to give your tables greater meaning.
The <caption> element can be used to add a description of the data in the table. This should be placed directly after the opening tag of the <table> element.
<table>
<caption>
Table 1.1 shows the exam scores of 120 pupils in the Physics exam.
</caption>
...
</table>
Captions will be displayed on the page so you will probably want to style them using CSS.
Screen readers will read the caption aloud before continuing on to the data. This helps to give the user more context around the data in the table.
It is important to use table headers (<th> elements) to markup row or column headings in your tables. You can however go one step further and use the scope attribute to define whether the heading refers to the data in the column or in the row. This is done by setting the scope attributes value to either col or row.
For example, if you were marking up a restaurant menu you might use table headings scoped to the column for the column headings in the first row, and table headings scoped to the row for the title of each individual menu item. This is because the name of each menu item is associated with the price of that item. Here is some HTML markup to demonstrate this.
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col">Menu Item</th>
<th scope="col">Price</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Scrambled Egg with Salmon</th>
<td>$3.50</td>
</tr>
...
</tbody>
</table>
Defining scopes on table headers makes it much easier for computer programs to understand the relationships between data in your tables.
Now that you’ve picked up some tips on how to make your websites more accessible lets take a look through some tools that you can use to test your websites.
Using VoiceOver on the Treehouse Homepage
The best way of testing for accessibility is to utilize the tools that your users will be using. Use a screen reader to navigate your website and identify areas that are difficult to access. Could you move some of your markup around so that the main navigation is encountered sooner by the screen reader?
Using WAVE to Identify Accessibility Issues
WAVE is a really useful tool for identifying issues in your websites. The tool works in a similar way to the W3C HTML validator. You pass in a URL to your web page and it then analyzes the page against a list of common accessibility issues. WAVE gives you recommendations around page structure, navigation, the correct use of elements (and attributes) as well as much more.
Using Spur to See The Treehouse Website in Greyscale
Spur is a great web application for testing the visual design of your websites. It allows you to apply a variety of effects – such as greyscale, high contrast and blur – to a snapshot of your website. These effects can be really useful for evaluating the use of color in your designs.
Using Color Oracle To Simulate Color Blindness
Color Oracle is another great tool for testing the colors used in your web page designs. This tool replicates a number of types of color blindness, such as Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia. It can be really useful for identifying areas in your designs that may need to adjusted to better cater to color blind users.
In this article you’ve taken a look at some of the techniques and tools that you can use to make your websites more accessible. However there are some things that we haven’t covered. I recommend that you check out the W3C Web Accessibility Initiativee for more information on what you can do to make your websites accessible to everyone.
I’m interested to hear about your experiences when dealing with accessibility. Share your thoughts in the comments below.
The post Tackling Accessibility on The Web appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
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