Isaac.Eiland-Hall.com

Lawsuit over web site accessibility for the blind becomes class action
A lawsuit brought in 2006 by a blind student at the University of California-Berkeley has now morphed into a class action case against US retailer Target. A federal judge has just certified a nationwide class in the case, which alleges that Target’s web site is not fully accessible to the blind. It’s a case that could help establish the ways in which the Americans With Disabilities Act applies to the Internet, and it has already generated a ruling that, in California at least, commercial web sites must be accessible.

This is definitely something to keep an eye on.

A few months ago, I installed the ‘noscript’ extension for Firefox – it essentially blocks scripts from running on domains unless I give explicit permission. I have been very disappointed to see how many sites do not operate correctly with scripts disabled. I believe this issue is very related to the issue of disabled website visitors.

I think it would be no bad thing to require certain standards be followed, and would eliminate some really poor website design choices (i.e. all-flash sites, at least most of the time).

The AudioFile: Understanding MP3 compression: Page 1
But what is MP3? The usual explanations usually take one of two forms. The long version, available in technical papers, is written in jargon and filled with math. The short version, often used by newspapers and nontechnical periodicals, simply states that the process eliminates parts of sound not normally heard by the human ear. But this one-sentence description raises more questions than it answers for any reasonably tech-savvy reader: how does it find those unheard sounds, and how does it get rid of them? Whats the difference between the different bit rates and quality levels? If youre anything like me, youve often wanted to know the mechanics of MP3, but not to the point of writing your own encoder.

This is a very well-written article, intended to try and bring more understanding of exactly how the MP3 format works to non-engineer—types, and I think it succeeds pretty well. It’s still a little heavier than some might wish; but if you stick with it, I think you’ll have a better understanding of the general process of making an MP3. I think it helps to have a basic understanding of what an audio waveform basically means (in regards to how it relates to the makeup of frequencies), but I’d imagine even folks who don’t have that understanding can still glean some [hopefully] interesting information.