I am drafting an article for the RI:Technology blog on Screen readers and Search Engines, and was reviewing a paper a colleague wrote about Search. He mentioned sIFR as a technique “to bring content to search engines”. I asked another colleague about this, as I’d always just considered sIFR as a “stylability” technique.
We started talking about the weight factor of search engines, whether content written to a page and then sIFRized would be weighted more heavily than the alt text of an image. I hadn’t really thought about that before. I then mentioned a habit I have of placing images within a heading tag, i.e.
<h1><img alt="descriptive text" /></h1>. Toby asked if this really worked, if the alt text would be considered the header. I realized that I’d never really verified it before.

So I took a quick look at an example using FANGS, and learned that alternate text, really isn’t. Turning off images would cause the alt text to display as the appropriate heading level, but at least for FANGS, the alt text does not get surfaced as the heading (the text should show up before the colon in the screen shot below)

Now, obviously FANGS is an emulator, and it’s possible that a screen reader would access that alt text. But this gave me something to consider..

After our weeks and weeks of training and some hands-on experience, some of us at Resource are looking into the ATG Certification exams. The ATG site has a sample quiz to see if you’re ready for certification. This quiz is a great starting point, as it showcases the type of questions that will be asked, offers feedback on the correct responses and points the visitor to the appropriate reference material. I’ve decided to use this sample quiz as the structure of the study guide I’m creating. The actual exam overview document provided by ATG goes into much more detail, obviously, but this will be a starting point.

This will be something I’ll be doing as I have time, and I will post the link to it from here.

In high school, I was very comfortable speaking in front of groups. I was in debate and drama, and had to do several presentations when I was an exchange student (often in French!). For some reason, however, when I got to University I developed a slight fear of public speaking. I struggled with an inability to connect with members of an audience if the group was too large.
Since then I’ve become more comfortable with public speaking, and within the past few months I added a task to my “life list” — “be solicited for a speaking engagement (and not be deathly nervous about it!)”.

As Dr. Wayne Dyer would have me believe, what you focus on manifests itself in your life. Within the past three weeks I’ve been asked to speak to Columbus Digital (the Central Ohio Adobe Users Group), and several colleagues at work have encouraged me to suggest something for Spring <br />.

Even before my recent paper on accessibility for rich internet applications, I was eager to share my knowledge about accessibility with others. I’m even more excited to speak about it now. If anything, it helps me appreciate the hard work I’ve put into my graduate program for the last few years. This is not to say that this is information I was specifically instructed on, but I feel fortunate that I am at a point in my life and my career that I have information to offer others.

I put a little thought into it, and proposed the following three topics for Spring <br />:

1. “For Human Consumption Only? Building for Search Engines and Screen Readers”
2. “Making RIAs Accessible”
3. “Web Accessibility Acronyms (WCAG, WAI-ARIA, JAWS) – WTF?”

I will be eager to see if any of these topics are deemed appropriate for the conference, but I hope they will. I saw the courses as each slightly different, and varying in their level of detail and expected background knowledge. I’ve been working in the accessibility arena for several years now, so it’s sometimes hard for me to remember that not everyone has the same appreciation for the nuances of the field. I see the proposed topics as appealing to different groups, as well - I’d argue that the last one could be for non-technical attendees, whereas Making RIAs Accessible would definitely be technical, and the other session would fall somewhere in between.

While I’ll be waiting to hear if my proposed topics are of interest, I may consider developing them out regardless. I haven’t yet decided exactly what to speak about at Columbus Digital, so there may be some overlap there.

I’m definitely excited about this opportunity, so I hope it will all pan out..

There was recently a post on ReadWriteWeb that referred to an article on Museum2.0, “How Much Time Does Web 2.0 Take?“.

Lately I’ve posted a few times on the classification of user online behavior that was based on the individual’s motivation. In several cases, we examine users online behaviour and accordingly assign them to a group. This classification may help marketers better understand why people are engaging as they are.

Museum 2.0 looks at things from a different angle altogether. It is geared towards an organization looking to develop an online, web2.0-y presence.
The article also assigns neat little labels to users: (participant, content provider, community director), but these levels of engagement and interaction are recommended based on the amount of time they have available.

When I first read over this article, I was trying to see how this classification complemented or conflicted with the iCitizen and Groundswell classifications. I realized, however, that the Museum 2.0 article was not actually geared towards individuals who would be operating online as individuals. Rather, the article was proposing activities that would be performed on the behalf of an organization.

The challenge in recognizing this was that the same activities are being engaged in by individuals as well as by representatives of organizations. And sometimes, the lines blur. Kelly Mooney co-authored The Open Brand, and she blogs at Mooney Thinks. The Groundswell blog actually incorporates that of Charlene Li. Those individuals engage in an activity both under their own name as well as as a representation of another entity. It may not always be clear which voice is being heard.

As the activities of the individual, the community and the brand become increasingly intermingled, it may seem less important to really recognize from whom the message is coming. However, it is arguably more important to be forthright in acknowledging from whom a given message is coming, so we may understand the meaning behind the message. Just as we cannot assign an individual to a given online behavioural profile if he is not acting on his own behalf, we also have little reason to trust his message. We understand advertising and marketing is different than unsolicited recommendations, and there is a place for each in the market. We simply must know with which we’re dealing.

It turns out that the Groundswell Social Profile quiz I blogged about earlier wasn’t an official Forrester creation. Rather, it was created by a fan - and you can read the official Forrester take on this on their blog. This raised an issue I read about earlier this week on ReadWriteWeb: Content is Becoming a Commodity. The concern is that content is “being used, shared and profited from” without the author’s permission, and it is therefore being devalued.

I suppose I feel that any message is going to be altered somewhat from its original intent, just due to the personal experiences of the listener. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”. Personal opinion or bias or expectation will always impact perceptions. Once upon a time we may have felt that a message could be crafted and executed and perfectly delivered, but we cannot anticipate precisely how it will be received.

Both Groundswell and The Open Brand acknowledge different levels of online engagement, and we are all very familiar with all the outlets for personal expression and creation online. I suppose I see the commentary and “remixes” of online content and ideas as an extension of this. It really is the very essence of the Open Brand. It is about a three-way relationship between the individual, the brand and the community. It is not a matter of a brand, or a blogger, pushing a message out, it is about that level of engagement, and allowing individuals to make the message relevant and personal.

I will admit, I’m likely at the far end of the spectrum in terms of my online activities being centered around creating or personalizing. If I read an interesting article or post, I feel compelled to do something with it, be that sharing it with others or storing it away for future reference. I would argue that even my commenting on something I read is having an impact on it, either directly or indirectly.

In an era where we classify individuals based on their behaviours and motivations, we are obviously recognizing differences between them. Should we not aspire to delivering messages that can appeal to members of different classifications? If so, we must acknowledge and welcome the impact the recipient has on the message, that it may be appropriate and effective.

(I mention Schroedinger’s Cat because I long felt it was simply analogy that we cannot know the fate of the cat without acting on the box. I thought that the premise was that our input was required. I’m no longer sure that’s entirely the intent, but this further drives home the idea that a message may be effective and memorable, but for entirely different reasons than were originally intended).

We at Resource have been educated in the concepts pertaining to The Open Brand for months now. One of the premises in the book is that there are four different types of “iCitizens”, divided based on their motivations behind their online activities. We’d done some internal activities involving self-assigning ourselves to one group or another, and it helped us all to understand the different motivations and how a company could appeal to particular groups. A few weeks ago, I tossed out the idea of surfacing this activity: creating an online survey that would allow users to self-assign into one group or another. Plenty of us have taken the time to figure out “what care bear we are” or “what american accent we have”. This would give us the opportunity to educate people on these different levels of iCitizenry, and perhaps personalize an experience for them, based precisely on the attributes that characterize them as one type or another (potentially offering tools, tips or the types of activities they were attracted to). And, of course, some cool swag (a widget or badge) to share elsewhere.

Today iKeif sent me a link to Groundswell, the new book out by Forrester about “winning in a world transformed by social technologies.” They use the metaphor of a ladder to describe six different levels of user engagement. And lo and behold, there is a tool to profile social computing behaviours.

It seemed this was similar to what I’d suggested, but my basic premise had been that an individual would self-assign by describing his own activities. And of course there was the badge, and the education as to the significance of the assignment.

Hm. Lookie what I found tonight: a quiz to Discover Your Groundswell Social Technographics Profile

Just slightly too late :-/

As I mentioned in my last post, I am taking some time to look back on my time in grad school. A list of course titles and descriptions doesn’t really speak to what I got out of the course, or what I put into it.

4. Application of Artificial Intelligence - This was the first elective course I took in my program. Much of the course time was centered on discussion, and there was a major project of our choice. I continued to focus on natural languages, and whether a machine could “learn” language in the same way a child could.
I had initially wanted to perform some first-hand research with children, but I wasn’t sure about my ability to gather, tag and analyze the amount of data that would be required. As well, I would only be able to observe the children’s output, I would have to infer how they arrived at such input. I decided therefore to focus my attention on accepted linguistic concepts like Universal Grammar and Principles and Parameters. As it turns out, the idea of “teaching” a machine in the same ways as a child was not a novel idea, and it has seen some success. This project was intended to serve as a starting point into more detailed research, for at the time I anticipated my capstone project would be related to natural language processing.

5. System Architecture and Engineering - I had been nervous about this course prior to enrolling in it, but it ended up being one of my favorites in the program. This course was the first to introduce us to Martin Fowler’s book “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture”, to which we’d end up referring in several more courses through the program. Immediately, I loved the idea of patterns: identifying possible solutions for common problems, without getting into the specific implementation details. The course clearly contrasted functional and non-functional requirements, and spoke to how different requirements complemented and conflicted with each other. It was for this course that I wrote the Critique of ‘the value of a usability-supporting architectural pattern in software architecture design’ paper. At the time I was working in the Design and Usability/User Experience department at LexisNexis, and as was noted in the paper, often usability is not an initial consideration in architectural decisions. In the few months following my taking this course (and enthusiastically talking about it to everyone who would listen), I was selected as the departmental representative on the newly formed “Architectural Advisory Board” at work. We reviewed new project concepts and identified any architectural implications from the standpoint of the department or organization we were representing. I completed this course heartily acknowledging that “I want to be an architect!”.

6. Project Management of Information Systems - This was the second elective in the program. I will admit that I enrolled primarily because of the instructor, Roger Engle. On the first day of class, every student was asked what they hoped to gain from the class. I was blunt when I stated that my perception was that project managers were really baby-sitters, and I wanted to have a better sense of what they really did. Over the next twelve weeks, I gained a much better appreciation of the role of project manager, and I will admit I even toyed with the idea of PMP certification. I believe that this appreciation has made me a better individual contributor and a better team member.

7. Issues in Database Management - I’ll admit, this was one of the courses I was least looking forward to. I’ve taken database courses before, but I don’t have a particularly strong background in them. This was another case, however, where it was an ability to grasp concepts and strategies that proved to be more important than a background in a specific technology. Indeed, many of my classmates often struggled with the theoretical aspects of the class. “but how do we do this in SQL?” they often asked. We were being introduced to general concepts or best practices, and often my classmates were unable or unwilling to look beyond what they had been exposed to. We looked at object-oriented database models unlike any that current exist in the industry. Because of the lack of immediate applicability, some students resisted even learning about such. In contrast, I held no strong convictions about “how things are” (and therefore, how they are meant to be) so I was more open to the suggestion of different conceptual models.