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Re: Question regarding accessible badges or widgetsfor Facebook and Twitter

for

From: Debra Cerda
Date: Feb 25, 2009 2:15PM

Hi,
Thank you everyone for your responses, my apologies for not being more clear. I appreciate the additional information on the accessible twitter and FB. However, I'm on the content side of it, wanting to include a "Follow me on twitter" badge or link. Or a "Tweet the Facts" much like on the bottom of Charity: Water's http://www.charitywater.org/twestival/index.html , which appears to fail accessibility testing. Friend Feed was also recommended if we wanted to aggregate the non-profits FB and Twitter to their front page, but I also don't know how well that would meet accessibility requirements. Again, we want to help the non profit use social media tools to promote their mission, but need the content on their website to be accessible.

Sincerely,
Debra

>>> "John E. Brandt" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 2/19/2009 1:26 PM >>>
I see someone already beat me to the answer regarding Accessible Twitter and
Accessible Facebook. I've put the info on my blog
http://www.jebswebs.net/blog/ - the Accessible Facebook appears to be a work
in progress and I still can't find an actual application that can be used.
The Twitter link is: http://www.accessibletwitter.com/ and though usable now
is still being developed. BTW, one comment on Twitter from an screen reader
user questioned why the need as apparently the plain ole Twitter site was
pretty accessible.

All that said, this is still a great question. We might broaden it to
include all social networking systems including ones that you "build"
yourself like NING and KickApps. My testing of both of these leaves me
wondering if there are any out there that are accessible.

BTW, I am experimenting with NING right now and it's accessibility problems
do not seem as severe as KickApps. So, I will work with NING for now.

I also have to mention at this point the caveat that you can create the most
accessible web application in the world and it only takes one user to add
inaccessible content to create an accessibility problem.

Lastly, it is my understanding that JavaScript and Flash and even AIR can be
made accessible, but that needs to be done early in the development cycle.
We need to get our message to the developer community.

~j

John E. Brandt
Web Design, Development, Consultation
Augusta, Maine USA
www.jebswebs.com
<EMAIL REMOVED>
207-622-7937