The Tink Tank

In 1997, Mary Schmich published a guide to life in the Chicago Tribune. In 1999, Baz Lurhmann turned it into a chillout anthem called Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen). It was, and remains, some of the best advice for life I’ve ever heard…

With the first signs of spring upon us, it’s time to get out into the garden at weekends. It’s often still chilly in the evenings though, so this slow cooked chicken casserole is fabulous for those busy outdoor days! It’s easy to throw together before you head outside, and the smell of rosemary and tomatoes [...]

The California State University Northridge 26th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference, referred to simply as CSUN, was an extraordinary few days. People from all over the world gathered to share knowledge and discuss ideas. Here are a few highlights from the web stream.

The February 2011 London Web Standards event focused on accessibility, best practice and harsh realities. With a smart set of slides courtesy of Tom Waterhouse, my talk brought together a cast of screen readers to explain how they work on the web, and how they’re dealing with emerging technologies like ARIA and HTML5.

NVDA is one of a new generation of access technologies for blind and partially sighted people. It’s given thousands of blind people a chance to use a computer, and it’s the darling of the open standards community, but on 19th January NVDA’s developers sent out an urgent SOS.

You are lost, deep in the darkness of the land of the dead. Your eyes are useless to you here — but your ears are filled with sound. Thus the scene is set for Papa Sangre, one of the most stylish (and screen reader friendly) games on the iOS platform.

When the cold winter weather sets in, there’s nothing like a bowl of home made soup and some Ffresh bread to warm you up. Leek and potato soup is one of my favourites and I love spending an hour or so on a Sunday morning putting a batch together.

Screen reader support for tables is something of a curiosity. Although tables are among the most common of HTML elements, they’re often misused and poorly coded. To some extent this has influenced screen reader support, but even so the variations in screen reader behaviour are quite remarkable.

With a little bit of sunshine and blue sky recently, I’ve been thinking about salads again. Although the evenings are set to get lighter now, there’s still a chill in the air, so this warm potato and bacon salad does the job beautifully.

Some while ago I was asked how screen readers handle disabled and read only form fields. Despite forms being commonplace on most websites, there’s remarkably little information available on the subject. It turns out that there’s also very little consistency in the way different screen readers behave either.