Archive | 2005

Using MagpieRSS To Create An AJAX RSS Reader

23 Jun

When I recently redesigned this site, one of things that I got asked about the most was my Flash RSS parser. I built it in an attempt to try and ‘reedem’ Flash a little as it occassionaly gets misused in terrible ways and I thought it would be nice to see some practical, useful Flash applications.

However, its very limited. I can only parse RSS 2 feeds which excludes Atom users totally and seeing as a lot of my favourite authors publish in Atom I needed a way to parse this data too. I could’ve adjusted the RSS parsing engine that Flash used to accomodate Atom feeds but then I realised I was making life much more difficult than it needed to be. It seemed to me that switching to MagpieRSS which already accomodates all these feeds would be a much easier proposition. But then, the reason I wanted to use Flash would be lost – and if I used MagpieRSS then I’d need to refresh the page every time a new feed was selected.

Obviously you can see where I’m going with this; the next stage in my thinking was ‘is it possible for me to adjust MagpieRSS to serve its results via AJAX?’.

I didn’t know. Mainly as I’ve never used MagpieRSS before and neither have I written anything using the AJAX methodology before but I thought it might be interesting to find out and (as always, the best thing) teach me something new. So, the first step was to learn about how AJAX worked. As I understand it, AJAX can only be triggered through variables sent from form elements i.e. you can’t send data via a querystring appended onto a URL. This would mean some minor hackery on my part.

So, my AJAX application would entail a few distinct sections. First would be the links that a user would click to select a feed. This would then send the value of the name/value pair appended to these links to a hidden form field and hence make this value available to the AJAX toolset.

Next we turn our attention to our Javascript and setting up the XMLHTTP objects:

Next, the field value is turned back into a query string and appended to a URI that is sent to the behind-the-scenes MagpieRSS script. The MagpieRSS script then does its thing and our AJAX script returns the results back to our page and displays them in a div.

This is really a no-brainer. Because all the hard work is done by the MagpieRSS script it makes the job much easier. All I really had to do was fit it into the traditional AJAX framework. You can see the results here along with all the bits I couldn’t fix to make the page validate. Maybe you’ll have some ideas on how to do these things or maybe you can re-write this whole thing much better. Either way, I’d like to hear about it.

Its not live on my site yet as I haven’t found time to style it to my satisfaction but I can think of ways this will benefit the websites I work on as well as my personal sites.

I Am A Child Abuser

22 Jun

Some of the comments coming from Generation Rescue’s ‘Rescue Angels’ are getting scarier and scarier. This was posted to a Parents.com thread:

The problem is that doctors keep telling people that autism is not caused by mercury to cover their asses. They screwed up by giving our kids way too much mercury. Those of us who know this don’t like seeing unknowing parents allowing their kids to rot in the abyss of autism. Wake up and smell the coffee is approprite. Anyone who is not chelating to get rid of the mercury is guilty of child abuse. Every doctor who is not telling their patients to chelate is guilty of malpractice. There was no autism until Eli Lilly started putting mercury in vaccines. Aside from fragile X which some say is not really autism, it is all caused by mercury. Any parent who listens to the doctors tell them that there is no known cause or cure for autism is too damn stupid to have kids.

Parents.com

Now aside from the factual errors, isn’t that the most frighteningly, almost fascist, shivers-down-your-spine-hair-stand-on-end-uh-oh-here-come-the-fundie-whacko’s genuinely disturbing thing you’ve read in awhile?

This is a self-styled ‘Rescue Angel’ of Generation Rescue.

A Person’s Medical History Is Their Own

22 Jun

People who support the idea that autism is mercury poisoning get to a certain point in the debate (i.e. when they feel themselves to have no recourse to logical debate any more) they resort to asking you:

have you had your daughter’s metals levels tested? And NO…I am not asking for your daughter’s medical records. It’s a fair question.

They do this mainly as they are unable to debate on an intellectual level about the issue at hand but they also believe this to be an acceptable request.

In my opinion it is totally unreasonable and entirely inappropriate to ask someone to discuss any aspect of their child’s medical history unless they feel comfortable discussing it. Especially over the Internet with people you never met before and who you don’t trust the motives of anyway.

There’s a few reasons I feel this inappropriateate. Firstly, its nobody’s goddamn business but my daughters. How would she feel in 20 years time to stumble across this blog Googles cache and find me blithely discussing her medical history with total strangers? I know how I’d feel about it if it was me – I’d feel that my parents had crossed a line between whats acceptable and whats not.

Secondly, this blog is basically an online extension of my house. Would you feel OK about me being invited into your house and then questioning you about matters that are nothing to do with you? I’ll bet you wouldn’t. I’d bet you would tell me to mind my own business and to stop asking such highly personal questions.

Thirdly is the issue of legitimising the argument of innuendo. Every time I read some neo-biblical testimony from some set of parents about how after they started using Chelation the mercury was ‘pouring out of our kids body’ I think mainly of how utterly irrelevant stories like this are – true or not they are not empirical research and thus prove nothing whatsoever. This is why science tends to eschew circumstantial evidencence like this – it is representative only of that particular individual and as such, without proper scientific investigation into _all_ the variables that came into play in that situation its meaningless as decent evidence.

So to my way of thinking if I start discussing what my daughter has or hasn’t had and claiming it as incontrovertibleble proof of my opinion I’m doing the exact same thing. The *only* way I’d let my daughters medical history be used like this was if it formed part of a large study run by a large, well respected medical institution, headed up by a well respected scientist and we were assured of complete anonymity.

24 Hours Later

20 Jun

Two things:

First: NTL – Bastards!! I’ve been offline for nearly 24 hours now and I really genuinely felt like my right arm had been cut-off. I felt horribly out of touch. All because of one stupid thunderstorm and no redundant exchange filtering.

Second: Things are finally happening. Had a visit from the Midwives today (Naomi not me you understand) and apparently the Cervix is 90% effaced and she’s getting on for 4cm dilated.

Yeah, I’m not too sure what it means either but its a positive step and means birth type things are definitely underway.

Autism And Mercury – Defining the Battle Ground

19 Jun

Autism is Mercury poisoning because:

The symptoms match so closely. Well, thats what the regular claim of the ‘no mercury’ crowd is. So lets see. Mercurysafety.co.uk lists the clinical symptoms of Mercury poisoning as:

Low Dose Exposure

  • Erethism (nervousness, irritability, mood instability, blushing)
  • Tremor
  • Personality change
  • Suicidal tendency
  • Paraesthesia
  • Impaired hearing
  • Speech disorders
  • Visual disturbance
  • Abnormal reflexes
  • Disturbed gait
  • Gingivitis (inflammation of the gums)
  • Impaired nerve conduction
  • Renal damage
  • Adverse outcome of pregnancy
  • Infertility
  • Pneumonitis (lung disease)
  • Glioblastoma (brain cancer)
  • Immune system dysfunction

High Dose Exposure

  • Gastroenteritis (stomach upset)
  • Mouth pain
  • Abdominal pain
  • Vomiting
  • Excessive salivation
  • Anuria (urine production stops)
  • Uraemia (urine products appearing in the blood)
  • Nephritis (kidney disease leading to kidney failure)
  • Anorexia (lack of appetite)
  • Ataxia (difficulty in moving)

Now I have to say immediately that this sounds nothing like the autistics (mainly kids) that I’ve met, including my daughter. There may be a case for arguing ‘speech disorder’ and/or ‘visual disturbance’ but even then you’d be stretching it. By contrast lets have a look at the diagnostic criteria for ASD.

A. Abnormal or impaired development is evident before the age of 3 years in at least one of the following areas:

(1) receptive or expressive language as used in social communication;

(2) the development of selective social attachments or of reciprocal social interaction;

(3) functional or symbolic play.

B. A total of at least six symptoms/signs from (1), (2), and (3) below must be present, with at least two from (1) and at

least one from each of (2) and (3):

(1) Qualitative abnormalities in reciprocal social interaction are manifest in at least two of the following areas:

(a) failure adequately to use eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gesture to regulate social interaction;

(b) failure to develop (in a manner appropriate to mental age, and despite ample opportunities) peer relationships that

involve a mutual sharing of interests, activities, and emotions;

(c) lack of socio-emotional reciprocity as shown by an impaired or deviant response to other people’s emotions; or lack of modulation of behaviour according to social context; or a weak integration of social, emotional, and communicative behaviours;

(d) lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g. a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out to other people objects of interest to the individual).

(2) Qualitative abnormalities in communication are manifest in at least one of the following areas:

(a) a delay in, or total lack of, development of spoken language that is not accompanied by an attempt to compensate through the use of gesture or mime as an alternative mode of communication (often preceded by a lack of communicative babbling)

(b) relative failure to initiate or sustain conversational interchange (at whatever level of language skills is present), in which there is reciprocal responsiveness to the communications of the other person.

(c) stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic use of words or phrases;

(d) lack of varied spontaneous make-believe or (when young) social imitative play.

(3) Restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities are manifest in at least one of the following areas:

(a) an encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that are abnormal in content or focus; or one or more interests that are abnormal in their intensity and circumscribed nature, though not in their content or focus;

(b) apparently compulsive adherence to specific, non-functional routines or rituals;

(c) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms that involve either hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole body movements;

(d) preoccupations with part-objects or non-functional elements of play materials (such as their odour, the feel of their surface, or the noise or vibration that they generate).

Now do these two things look even vaguely similar to you?

Autism started to be discovered at the same time as mercury/thimerosal was used in vaccines.

Proponents of the autism/thimerosal/mercury link say that autism and mercury became known at the same time – that the first cases of autism were diagnosed immediately after thimerosal was added to vaccines.

The dramatic rise in autism rates correlates with the increase in mercury doses. Thimerosal was first marketed in the mid 1930’s and autism was first described as a new never before seen disorder in 1943, in children born in the 1930’s.

No Mercury

However, its simply not true. There have been numerous reports that describe autistic people going back to Victorian Britain. The only thing that differs in these cases its the actual label of autism but there were certainly autistics long before either dental amalgams came into widespread use or vaccines were being used at all.

I also have anecdotal evidence of my own. 2 members of my family both born between 1910 and 1920 were diagnosed AS in the 90’s. However, they’d been the way they were since birth my grandparents claim – long before thimerosal was ever used in vaccines.

Autism cannot be genetically based because you cannot have a ‘genetic epidemic’

A very misleading argument as it presupposes the idea of an autism epidemic. It also supposes that even if there is an autism epidemic that mercury is the cause.

So, is there an autism epidemic? No. No Gvmt has declared epidemic status for autism at all. The phrase is simply part of an increasingly shrill demonisation of autism in increasingly disrespectful and shameful terms. Other phrases coined include ‘autism tsunami’ (distastefully coined after the events of last Boxing Day), the ‘hell’ of autism ‘autism is our enemy’ and many, many more.

In fact, as is usually the case in situations like this, the real reason is misunderstanding of stats:

The reason why some states show an “almost infinite” increase is that when you increase from zero to 100 the increase is “almost infinite” One does not measure a change from zero in percentage. If the change is from 2 to 100, one can say the number has gone up 50 times.

AutismDiva

Proponents of the ‘autism epidemic’ tout a figure of 1 in 166 for prevalence of autism. This figure is entirely bogus.

There has been no autism epidemic, whether or not there has been an increase at all is debatable.

AutismDiva

The reason there is an apparent increase in ASD is because of two things – better training allowing people to ‘spot’ ASD and more places one can get an official diagnosis:

Variation in the administrative prevalence of ASD is associated with education-related spending, which may be associated with better-trained educational staff who can recognize the problem, and more and better trained in-school specialists who can provide screening. It is also associated with the availability of health care resources. Increased access to pediatricians and school-based health centers may lead to improved recognition of ASD. Interstate variability in the identification of ASD should be taken into account when interpreting the results of prevalence studies based on administrative data and the associated system characteristics taken into account by policy makers working to improve the recognition of ASD.

David S. Mandell, ScD; Raymond Palmer, PhD

The incidence of research-identified autism increased in Olmsted County from 1976 to 1997, with the increase occurring among young children after the introduction of broader, more precise diagnostic criteria, increased availability of services, and increased awareness of autism. Although it is possible that unidentified environmental factors have contributed to an increase in autism, the timing of the increase suggests that it may be due to improved awareness, changes in diagnostic criteria, and availability of services, leading to identification of previously unrecognized young children with autism.

William J. Barbaresi, MD; Slavica K. Katusic, MD; Robert C. Colligan, PhD; Amy L. Weaver, MS; Steven J. Jacobsen, MD, PhD

federal and state administrative changes in policy and law favoring better identification and reporting of autism are likely contributing factors to the prevalence increases and may imply that autism spectrum disorder has been underdiagnosed in the past.

James G. Gurney, PhD; Melissa S. Fritz, MPH; Kirsten K. Ness, MPH; Phillip Sievers, MA; Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD; Elsa G. Shapiro, PhD

But surely the autism/thimerosal crowd have some stats of their own to counter these? Well, no they don’t. What they have (so they claim) is an absence of facts. A bizarre piece of ‘scientific’ reasoning that apparently ignores a basic precept of science: absence of proof is not proof of absence.

If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis, then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?

Boyd Haley

Its a shoddy piece of ‘logic’ repeated by David Kirby in Evidence of Harm. In fact, Haley knows very well where a lot of adult autistics are because he incurred their and their families wrath when he referred to autism as ‘Mad Child Disease‘. In the subsequent uproar that followed Haley was forced to confront the reality of adult autistics. Amusingly he also claimed he was using MAD as an acronym – Mercury Acquired Disease – obviously a better scientist than linguist he failed to spot that when lengthened out his phrase would read ‘mercury acquired disease child disease’. And in fact, he’s a pretty rubbish scientist as well.

Michelle Dawson also had something very pertinent to add to the ‘hidden hordes’ scenario:

Mr Kirby (author of Evidence of Harm who swallowed Boyd Haley’s thesis hook line and sinker) deploys the “hidden hordes” to express his disbelief in the possibility that there is no autism epidemic. Were numbers of autistics steady over the years, he argues, America would be clogged with aging hopeless autistics gruesomely burdening society. Mr Kirby cannot find us (I’m one of his “hidden hordes”) how and where he expects (doomed and confined to institutions), so he denies we exist. Szatmari et al (1989) suggests that Mr Kirby should look for his hordes in university records. In a follow-up of autistics diagnosed as children before 1970, 7 of 16 had university degrees (one was an MBA).

Michelle Dawson

Lots of studies prove a link between autism and mercury and there are none to disprove it.

Wrong on both counts. There are a few studies that suggest there may be correlation but none – none – that suggest causation at all. You can read a comprehensive review of the literature at Pediatrics online. By contrast only one study has been done which showed a link and this was shown to have flaws in methodology so severe that:

the Geiers have used shoddy study methodology and also engaged in data collection irregularities, drawing a rebuke from the CDC and suspension of Dr. Geier’s IRB approval from Kaiser-Permanente.

Orac Knows.

The Geiers in the course of their ‘investigation’attempted to compromise the confidentiality of patients on the CDC database. Nice going guys.

Of course, these studies that fail to show a link are pounced on and traduced as being produced by ‘shills’ in the pay of big Pharmaceutical companies. These same people though fail to mention that David Geier, one of the co-authors of the woeful study referenced above, works for MedCon – a company that helps vaccine injury claimants to obtain money from both the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and through civil litigation. Coincidently, Geier senior made (makes?) a good living on the side as a ‘professional witness’. Although as I’ve noted before – he’s not very well respected by either the judiciary or the medical systems in the US.

This point about correlation being different than causation is important to understand: On Orac’s blog Kaethe Douglass commented:

“The fact that Iowa’s 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children’s vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone,” says state Sen. Ken Veenstra. But Veenstra is wrong. That isn’t evidence. That isn’t anything but coincidence. The 1990s also saw a sharp increase in the use of car seats for children, but no one is blaming them. A 700 percent increase in autism, or any other diagnosis, is much more likely to indicate a growing awareness of a possible diagnosis, rather than an actual increase in patients suffering particular symptoms. And if Veenstra cared to do a little bit of research, he would see that the less specific diagnosis of “mental retardation” dropped as sharply as autism increased.

If people want to research possible causes of their kids autism then thats entirely up to them – I did it so I’m in no position to judge these efforts. But it behooves the researcher in question to apply scientific criteria to scientific data. Its no good extracting the bits that suit your argument and discarding the bits that don’t.

edit: Just noticed AutismDivas has made a very similar post to this – sorry AD!

Autistic Pride Day: Us

19 Jun

So what did we do for Autistic Pride Day?

Well, basically we did all the things that Meggy loves to do. First of all we went down to Sainsburys so Meggy could have a bloody good sing in a really echoey environment (song of choice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive…)

When we got back we indulged her passion for DVD’s and basically gave her the remote and let her pick and choose whatever she wanted (age appropriate of course!).

Next up we went into the garden where Anthony (my NT 12yo son) and Meg indulged in Megan’s biggest love – water play. Megan would _live_ in water if we’d let her and its our ambition if we ever win the lottery to get a house with a wet room. She splashes so much in our current bathroom that it comes through the Kitchen ceiling so a wet room would be ideal. But for now this is the next best thing – outside in the garden with the tap on and a good natured brother to soak as occasion demands.

We had a great day all round, if you were marking the day, we all hope you did too. And next time someone starts banging on about the ‘hell’ of autism or how autism is ‘the enemy’ show them this post. We had a great day immersing ourselves in Megan’s world but most importantly, Megan did too.

Letter To JB Handley, Founder Of Generation Rescue

18 Jun

Dear Mr Handley,

I’m writing this letter to you to ask you to make textual revisions to the ‘generationrescue.com’ website. As it stands, your website is responsible for perpetuating untruths about the nature and causes of autism that can only serve to promulgate negative stigma and reduce funding into valid interventions.

On the website you state:

Generation Rescue believes that childhood neurological disorders such as autism, Asperger’s, ADHD/ADD, speech delay, sensory integration disorder, and many other developmental delays are all misdiagnoses for mercury poisoning.

and

There is no evidence to suggest that autism is genetic. No autism gene has ever been found and the search will be endless – how can you have a gene for a mythical condition? Autism is mercury poisoning.

These two statements (one an expression of opinion and one an expression of your opinion disguised as a statement of fact) are untrue and misleading. Whilst it may be true that there is no *proof* that autism is genetic, there is plenty of very good, valid *evidence* to indicate that there is at least in part a genetic component to autism. To baldly state ‘autism is mercury poisoning’ is facile. In fact, there is no proof that could lead you to make such a claim although, like with genetics, there may be some evidence.

I don’t have an issue with you claiming that autism _may in some cases_ be resultant from an environmental insult such as Mercury. It is your unfounded and belligerent claim of fact that bothers me so much.

Your organisation advocates the use of Chelation Therapy. In fact, I’m given to understand that you use it own your own son. If your son is Mercury poisoned then from what I understand of Chelation Therapy, it may work. Equally it may not. If it works for you then more power to you. No one wants to see children suffering. However, I’m of the opinion that informing parents that *all* autism is mercury poisoning and that Chelation is the answer is grossly over simplifying the case and tantamount to a willful misleading of people trying to do their honest best. And costing them thousands of dollars as a result.

Chelation therapy also has a dark side. One that has resulted in injury and death. Your blasé support of it as a therapy is worrying in respect of parents who may find only after the fact that they preferred an autistic child to a dead or seriously injured child. Your failure to advise on the potential dangers associated with such an untested and unknown procedure is also very worrying. What are the long term effects of Chelation Therapy for autistics? Where are the long term studies?

But by far my biggest worry in regards to your simplistic stance on ‘autism is mercury and nothing else’ is this: Every time that lie is perpetuated, every time its circulated and every time its repeated a little less attention and importance is attached to finding and researching valid interventions that can greatly benefit our autistic kids. Not only that, but you debase and devalue a whole section of society by effectively labeling them as ill when they are not. This is unacceptable to me.

As the parent of an autistic I face an uphill battle getting services that my child deserves. When you move your campaign to the UK (as I’ve no doubt you will) your dogmatic claim stands a good chance of even more seriously impeding my daughters ability to access services she needs. What could possibly be your reason for insisting to the detriment of autistics everywhere that autism is mercury poisoning and only mercury poisoning? Why do you desire to make the lives of parents like me even harder? Why do you desire to increase the stigma of autism?

I ask you from the bottom of my heart Mr Handley, as one Dad of an autistic child to another on Autistic Pride Day and on the eve of Fathers Day here in the UK – please, try and see your way clear to undoing the damage you are doing. I’m not asking you to disband your organisation or discard your beliefs. Instead I’m asking you to moderate your tone and please try to be respectful of autistics and parents of autistics who know beyond doubt that autism is *not* only mercury poisoning.

My best to your family.

Kevin Leitch

Accessibility, The Law and Social Responsibility

17 Jun

In Andy Clarke’s recent post on why he believes that accessibility shouldn’t be enforceable by law he made reference to Foucault’s theories of social control and how such controls seek to obviate responsibility from individuals to protest what they feel to be injustices.

As it stands on the surface Andy’s argument is spot on. Foucalt says that (in essence) once a law governing an aspect of human behaviour is codified its akin to society saying ‘we don’t need to care about that anymore’ and that the resultant law can never be as well intentioned as the masses refusing to accept a certain behaviour. Again, its all true.

Unfortunately, its a bad argument to use to support the position that no laws are better than laws when it comes to accessibility. Why? Firstly because of the people this law seeks to make responsible. Unlike individuals, businesses are primarily concerned with profit. And thats as it should be. If we accept that we live in a capitalist society then the aim of generating profit is a good thing. However, as we all know, businesses take this aspect too far on occasion. For us to take Foucalt seriously in the context that Andy has used him we have to believe that business is responsible and concerned a large percentage of the time. Ask yourself if you believe that to be the case. We also have to believe that big business is capable of large scale acceptance of the needs of minority groups. Ask yourself if you believe that to be the case.

The truth is that big business will by and large voluntarily do nothing that might impinge on their profit margin (except in instances where a ‘loss leader’ is seen as a viable option). Do we believe that if enough people protested outside the London office of Nike about their appalling practice of exploitation that they would stop? Or do we believe that they would simply ignore it and/or relocate their offices or possibly make cursory gestures and trumpet them loudly in glossy ad campaigns?

The second reason its a bad argument is to do with the people that this affects. And lets make no mistake – this affects people. When we say we build accessible websites, I think that we sometimes forget that this phrase hides a whole section of society of people. I’ve grown increasingly worried about the amount of people who strive to get their site to validate with Bobby or Cynthia or even the WCAG but in the urge to make it pass, totally forget that its supposed to benefit people. In this sense accessibility is vastly more important than web standards. Whilst I totally accept that web standards are vital they don’t have the same day-to-day impact on people that the concept of accessibility does.

And when we do actually get around to talking about the people behind the phrase we talk mainly about people with a visual disability – a group that is numerically vastly less significant than all but 2 other groupings of disability in the UK. Why do we do this? Is it because its simply the easiest problem to address? Is it because thats the emphasis the WAI put on WCAG1.0? However, please consider the numbers below:

According to statistics provided by the DDA, the breakdown of people with a disability who would fall under the act is as follows (broken down by type of disability):

Type of Disability Number of People (millions)
Lifting and carrying 7m
Mobility 6m
Physical co-ordination 5.6m
Learning and understanding 3.9m
Seeing and hearing 2.5m
Manual dexterity 2.3m
Continence 1.6m
Total 29.6m

From these statistics I feel we can safely remove ‘lifting and carrying’ and ‘continence’; neither of which would add to the difficulties of using a website. Doing this leaves us with:

Type of Disability Number of People (millions)
Mobility 6m
Physical co-ordination 5.6m
Learning and understanding 3.9m
Seeing and hearing 2.5m
Manual dexterity 2.3m
Total 20.3m

As we can then see, there are two main groupings; physical and learning based disabilities. In our adjusted group, those with a learning disability equal 19.22% of the overall total of people in the UK who fall under the jurisdiction of the DDA and who we would also expect to be adversely affected by inaccessible websites. If a strong enough argument could be made for including the two sub-groups of people I removed from the equation then this percentage would be a little over 13%. Whichever way one looks at it, it’s a high percentage. A much higher percentage for example than say, people who use Mozilla or Opera and yet strenuous efforts are made by standards aware designers not to exclude these users. At the recent @media presentation why did attendees witness someone using a Screenreader? Why didn’t they witness a user with Downs Syndrome trying to use a website?

One of the features of some learning disabilities is that the resultant behaviour governed by the condition in question leads the person to not be in a position to advocate. I am not saying they are incapable due to a lack of intelligence, rather, what I am saying is that some people are not able to advocate in such a public way as might be required for businesses to take note. Or even, if we are honest, for society at large to take note. An example: for some autistics, their condition leads them to be very uncomfortable around people and they find social interaction distressing and actively painful. It simply unreasonable to expect someone in this situation to be able to commit to a prolonged media campaign of advocacy and awareness raising. In which case we should do it for them right? These are people with whom we share a common belief of accessibility for all – aside from putting compliance badges on our websites and saying how jolly nice it would be if everyone cared as much as we do, what have we actually done?

It is these people, this 19 or so percent, that legislation is vital for. I am not claiming that the law in the UK is any good as its not, its far too ambiguous. Neither am I saying that we should abandon our social responsibility to others and assume the law will take care of everything for us. What I am saying is that whilst the law is not very well implemented and needs to be much tighter and more specific that the underlying aim of this particular law is a good one and in the absence of businesses growing a social conscience or web designers joining disability rights marches it serves a purpose: to protect the rights and freedoms of a section of people who are most vulnerable.

Autistic Pride Day: Jane Meyerding/Helen Ford

15 Jun

Another dual set of contributions here.

Helen is a friend I’ve known for a year or so and is a student currently enrolled at University. Jane I’ve only recently ‘met’ (in the online sense) but her fascinating website kept me reading for quite awhile!

— Helen Begins —

For me Autistic Pride Day is a chance to show the world, and that being autistic is not completely negative. It is to show the world that Autistics the world over do have a voice and are not afraid to use it. That we can help show parents that Autism is not a complete negative; that sometimes we can be amongst the best, and that there is hope for their children.

— Helen Ends —

— Jane Begins —

Autistic Pride is a concept I have to struggle with a bit. Not because of the autism part, but because of the pride part. For me, the only kind of pride that makes sense is pride in accomplishment.

I live in a part of the world where some people say (or put up signs saying) “I’m proud to be an American.” Occasionally those signs/sayings belong to people who became “American” (resident or citizen of the United States of North America) through their own efforts, but usually the phrase is uttered by people who were born into their U.S. citizenship. How can a person be proud of something so automatic and, indeed, inevitable? Perhaps they mean “I am proud of my country.” But if that’s what they mean, why isn’t that what they say? (And what exactly would it mean to say that?)

Similarly, I was born autistic. So how can I be “proud” of it? The only answer that works for me is: We can be proud that we have overcome the shame we were forced to feel for being our “weird” autistic selves. We can be proud to have gained an understanding of our autistic selves, despite the constant social pressure to “fix” ourselves or at least behave like non-autistics. We can be proud of reaching out to other autistics in order to learn from them, share our knowledge, and support each other.

Most of all, we can be proud to be autistics who are advocating for greater understanding and acceptance of autistics, for an end to separating us into categories (such as “high-functioning” and “low-functioning”) that contradict the realities of our lives, and for the kinds of accommodations and supports that will enable more of us to lead richer, more independent lives.

Autistic Pride Day thus is a day on which we re-dedicate ourselves to self-acceptance, mutual support, and advocacy. That’s what we have to be proud about.

— Jane Ends —

Latent Semantic Indexing And Google

14 Jun

Google has undergone a major algo change over the last few weeks. This change will have a significant on how well your sites do in Google.

Codenamed ‘Brandy’ by the SEO industry, this latest update is the biggest series of changes to happen to Google since Autumn 2003 Florida and Austin updates. Interestingly all three of these major updates are only really indicative of what Google are planning when examined together. Florida removed a lot of sites from Googles overall index. Austin out some back (people speculate that Florida went a bit further than even Google expected and Austin was an attempt to pull things back a little) and now Brandy seems to have reinstated almost all sites – we seem to have returned to a pre-Florida state.

However, there’s been a big change since Florida about the way Google now ranks sites and what it places importance on. Of course the very basic idea is the same – high quality, frequently updated content will always do well sooner or later – but the overall emphasis is changing.

It used to be that on-page factors were equally as important as off-page factors. For example, good use of Title and elements together with a keyword/phrase rich body would see you doing reasonably well. Particularly if you had lots of quality backlinks. Since Brandy it seems that these factors are not so important. Thats not to say they’re unimportant but Google is making a conscious effort to reduce the chances for SEO spamming to occur by lessening the impact these elements can have.

The big change for on-page optimisation factors is LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). This is a logic system that Google have always been very keen on incorporating into their algo. What it does is basically study the theme of the page, then remove all associated keywords/phrases but look and reward words and phrases that share a semantic root.

A practical example: The site I run at work concentrates on Loans, Mortgages and Insurance. Traditionally I would use these keywords in the Title,

elements and repeat the keywords as much as possible in the body text. What the LSI system will do is ignore all these (or more likely lessen the impact they’ll have individually) but look for related words to support the theme of the page e.g. for a loans page it might look for mentions of holidays, new cars, furniture etc as these are things you might require a loan for and hence they are part of the theme of the page.

Latent semantic indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few words in common to be semantically distant. This simple method correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content, might classify a document collection. Although the LSI algorithm doesn’t understand anything about what the words mean, the patterns it notices can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.

LSI Definition.

Using this system makes it a lot more difficult for a SEO spammer to guess what semantically related words/phrases Google might assign most weight to in relation to the theme of the page.

Its also very likely that Google will be stepping up the importance of high-quality backlinks and will almost certainly use LSI techniques to judge the impact of these links. So for my Insurance pages it might be worth my while trying to get links on a holiday site (travel insurance related) or a dentists site (dental insurance related) or on a car sellers website (car insurance) as oppose to relying on big finance related directories.

This will probably have an impact on PR which may be used more ‘locally’ to distribute ranking around your site and reward each page due to the amount of themed pages that link directly (as oppose to through the home page) to it. As ever, text links will do better than image links.

You can read the whole of the article I linked to above at the Middlebury College site.

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