Council member John Ellis, FIAP introduced, in March’s VSJ, some ideas about Web accessibility. Since then, in May, you’ll have seen Paul Lynham’s report on the presentation by Julie Howell from the RNIB to the Annual Symposium. Here, John takes things a stage further.
In my last article on making Web sites more accessible to those with visual impairments, we made some basic changes to the Web page, removing frames where possible or, at least, giving them meaningful titles. In addition, we added basic ALT tags to the images on our pages. We also added the Style Sheet to remove the basics of the Web page, font styles, sizes and colours etc. This allows people to then set local style sheets if they wish to override our defaults, perhaps to change the font size or colours to improve visibility. As Julie Howell said, it’s flexibility that counts – different conditions call for different strategies. We tend to assume that a visually impaired person will want a big font. But someone with glaucoma often needs a very small font because his or her visual field is small.
This may well reduce your Web page’s size, by removing the repetition of text size and font setting, as is often done by packages like FrontPage. Recently I had to work with a table of values on a Web page, generated by an ASP. Because the page had some 200 rows of figures with 5 columns of data, there was a lot of repetition in terms of the display characteristics. The page took nearly 60K bytes. Not the biggest page on the planet, but I thought it could be better and access improved.
By adding the following into the table structure:
<colgroup>
<col>
<col>
<col>
<col>
<col>
</colgroup>
and appending corresponding entries in my style sheet, I reduced the size of the page to 19K bytes.
So we’re telling the table that each column has a class in the style sheet. In this case I had a title to the left, followed by sets of figures in the alternate columns, and the last four columns alternated their colour for effect. The result of then removing the font sizes, colours and font style reduced the page to a third of its original size. That reduces download time on a 56Kb modem (assuming a 46Kb connection) from around 13 to 4 seconds.
We improved the customer’s experience in viewing the page, improved access to those who need more flexible viewing and, as a bonus, our bandwidth is not being eaten up. This page is heavily viewed so a saving is achievable as the pipe bandwidth can remain ‘as is’ and not be upgraded.
Also, you can give titles to columns and rows to explain what they represent. The specialised browsers used by blind people are designed to interpret them.
Next time I’ll focus on those with motor disabilities and show how Web sites can be improved to give them better access.
You can contact John at john.ellis@wellis-technology.co.uk
[Interesting project or development? Let us know at eo@iap.org.uk!]

New Web Site Features

Have you visited www.iap.org.uk, the IAP Web site, recently?  It may look the same, but under the covers it has been totally revamped.  The features that were merely promised by the old site are now fully implemented.  Members may find the following of particular interest:

• Email forwarding. If you feel FredBloggs123@hotmail.com is not quite the right image for a member of the Institution, you can have email sent instead to FredBloggs@iap.org.uk. We will then forward it to any email address you wish. Incidentally, Yahoo! Mail surveyed HR managers last year and discovered that most will not look at job applications quoting ‘wacky’ (or workplace) addresses. So an IAP address makes good sense.
• A link to your Web site. Search engines are more likely to find your Web site if it is linked to the IAP. A link will also boost the status of your site and tell people that you are a member of Britain’s leading body for software professionals. There are three kinds of link: Business, Education and Personal.
• Consultants’ Register. If you are available for consulting assignments (full or part-time) and of at least Associate Member status, you can have a free entry in the Register, which is available for search in the public part of the site.  Apart from providing you with easy access to fellow professionals, the Register can be a useful source of work.

These facilities are all accessible in the secure Members’ Area of the site.  If you do not yet have a Login name, complete the simple online form. We will process your application ASAP.
Christopher Hill FIAP of Programatic Solutions is our Webmaster and can be contacted at webmaster@iap.org.uk.

IAP Council

Five IAP Council members stood down at the end of May this year, after their three-year terms of office. They are Ray Butler, Steve Cumbers (IAP Vice President), John Ellis, Phillip Hamlyn and Selva Naidu.
Of these, only Phillip Hamlyn has indicated that he is unwilling to stand again. Only one nomination had been received from the general membership by the deadline of 21 February. So we have five candidates who can be co-opted to the five vacant seats and it will be unnecessary for the Institution to hold an election this year.
The new member is Siddique Khan, an Indian national who lives in London but has worked extensively in the Middle East. He is a specialist in Document Management, Knowledge Management, Imaging and Database Programming. Siddique takes up his post on 1 June.

New Fellows

We are pleased to welcome two new Fellows, who have been admitted to the Institution recently.

James Tweedie BSc(Hons) PhD
Dr. Tweedie is a specialist in geology and computing, with a strong academic background and extensive industrial/commercial experience in the field. Graduating in Geology at Aberdeen University in 1976, and working on his PhD until 1982, he managed to find time to undertake a number of jobs and consulting assignments and to teach himself computing. He was a field geologist for Consolidated Goldfields until 1983, moving to programming assignments in Germany until 1985. He was an enthusiast for the BBC computer of the period, developing software to make it more useful for business.
In 1985 Dr. Tweedie set up GeoMEM Consultants, his own vehicle for developing and reselling technical software for use in geology, mining and geo-environmental applications. This is what he is doing today. The company has undertaken a variety of key assignments for major players in the field. Many are highly specialised but, for example, it surveyed the breakthrough pilot hole for the Channel Tunnel, and developed a barcode-based borehole logging system for Amey Roadstone.

Joseph McKie
Joe McKie has spent almost the whole of his career with one company. He is nevertheless a versatile professional, with comprehensive training and varied experience including assignments of great responsibility. He joined Zurich Financial Services in 1988 (following three years as an analyst/programmer with the British Shoe Corporation), working initially on a system to speed the onward transmission of stock market data. In 1988 he was responsible for redesign and innovation in a number of areas, all with the purpose of streamlining Zurich’s operations across Europe.
In 1995 he took a consulting assignment with Zurich, moving to the USA, and providing technical consultancy to a number of the company’s centres in North America. Joe was responsible for support, product design and system implementation. Promotion to Senior IT Consultant in 1999 expanded his horizons worldwide. Today, as Senior ABAP Consultant to Zurich Financial Systems in Portsmouth, he has returned to Britain, but continues to push the boundaries of technology in his very specialised area.
[Don’t forget to email eo@iap.org.uk with items of news about you or your company.]