If you’re both, a Marela and Firefox 1.5 user, then you should really take a look at Pickup . Brian has, with help of others, developed an excellent uploader for multiple photo services including Marela.

Extension has been translated to Slovene, but you need either a translated version of Firefox or an installed language pack together with a language switcher .

My thanks go to all who helped making photo uploading less painful.

Ever since I listened to Andy Clarke’s talk at @media, I’ve been convinced that what we’re missing is a simple way to distinguish between visitors which need accessible version of the site and those who would prefer to use a non-accessible version.

I still think that by and large sites should be made accessible to everyone and done so completely. But just as Braille signs are used only by those who need them, there’s no reason why everyone should be using the same user interface when not doing so can be beneficial.

Those who’ve been dabbling with Javascript and AJAX for a while have probably noticed that it can be very difficult if often not impossible to make every piece of interface accessible. A common approach was to add javascript as a layer on top of an accessible website, which could be turned off when necessary. I find this a rather blunt instrument, since all or nothing approach removes even pieces that may be useful and accessible. Yet, there didn’t seem to be a better way.

Accessibility preference would ideally be provided by a browser in a way that can be picked up with Javascript (environment variable?), but lacking that, I was looking for a way to signal such preference through user defined CSS. My idea was to define a syntactically valid, but normally not used combination of a page element, CSS property and its value that could be interpreted as a switch for accessible version of the site.

Well, now there’s another way to learn if screen reader is used ( via Jeremy Keith), which uses Flash 8 and its JS-Flash bridge to read if such a device is present. Obviously its use is not universal, but it covers scenario that troubles me most.

Still a real fix would be a better support from user agents. It doesn’t seem to be that hard to add an environment variable and a preference switch, so is there some other reason why it hasn’t happened yet?

You know you have a busy week when you don’t get around to posting a couple of sentences short note.

It’s been great seeing that Microsoft proved what I’ve been saying all along. Customization can be a problem especially when it benefits few on account of many.

On the other hand, does anyone wonder HOW do they know all that?