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LED Digest 2305: Site Accessibility Print E-mail
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List Moderator:                     Published by:
Adam Audette                          LED Digest
adam, led-digest.com     http://www.led-digest.com
..............................................
December 11, 2006                   Issue no. 2305
..............................................


            .....IN THIS DIGEST.....


====== NEW =====================

        --== Site Accessibility ==--

                ~ James Miller
"There's actually more to this than you think."

                <Moderator Comment>


==== CONTINUING =================

        --== Kanoodle Experience ==--

                ~ Chris Nielsen
"One solution...: Bidding for flat-rate advertising."

        --== Sitemaps for Search Engines or Users? ==--

                ~ Lee Price
"...the only real benefit of a site map...is if
you constantly add new pages."

        --== The Email Crisis ==--

                ~ Joel Lesser
"Here is a solution [that] creates a mailto
hyperlink with javascript..."

                ~ Steven Birk
"Jim King offered a suggestion to encode
the path of your form CGI script in ASCII..."

                ~ John Brumage
"The catchall address prevents spammers
from using a 'dictionary attack'..."

                ~ Mari Bontrager
"...I think the available [form] solutions are
a whole lot better than mailto links."


==== BILLBOARD ===================

        --== Arbitrage & Highest Profit Margins ==--
                ~ Al Toman


========== NEW ===================================

From: James Miller
Subject: Accessibility

[As cited by GJ Berg in issue 2302]:

---------------------
"In order to reach the minimum standards - tested against the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - websites needed to provide
adequate text descriptions for graphical content so that visually
impaired people could 'read' pictures. 93% of the websites failed to
meet those guidelines.

"A further 73% failed to make the grade because of their reliance on
JavaScript for some of the website's functionality. JavaScript does
not work with some screen readers used by those with impaired vision.

"Ninety eight percent did not follow industry web standards for
programming code, meaning the foundations for web accessibility
simply were not there."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6210068.stm
---------------------

There's actually more to this than you think.

I'm sixty next year and need glasses to read the screen, as do many
people.  But often your glasses are not as strong as they need to be
to read some web sites.  Dare I say it, but some because vanity
don't wear the glasses they should!

So make sure that the text isn't too small.

I suspect that one of the problems is that most web designers are
young and don't appreciate the problems of older and disabled users.

As an aside to this, my wife has several different shampoos and
conditioners.  When I run out of my shampoo, I then have to decipher
which of hers are shampoo.  Several times, I've tried to wash my
hair in conditioner, as none seem to have large labels saying what
they are!

So it's not just a web problem.

James Miller

Daisy Analysis:
www.daisy.co.uk

<Moderator Comment>

You're right, James - there's much more to this than just
"accessibility." This topic has ramifications on many areas of Web
design and (to a lesser degree) ecommerce. Designs with thoughtful
usability are naturally more accessible, which can influence
conversion rates and sales.

More reading below:

LED Digest threads:

Designing with Fixed Font Sizes

HTML Structure Validation - Who Cares?

Reading by Scanning: A Web Habit

WebmasterWorld thread on the BBC article

Bad Advice that Sounds Good (Aaron Wall blog post with debate
about HTML validation)

-Adam


======== CONTINUING ===============================

From: Chris Nielsen
Subject: Click fraud

> I have put this email exchange up on a page on my website
> to offer it up to any LED-Digest readers that would be interested
> in this apparent larceny.
        - Karl L. Baldwin, LED Digest 2303
        - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1392/55/

I looked through the messages that Karl posted and it reminded me
why we stopped using Kanoodle for one client. We had run the account
for about a year and then stopped for a while. We were getting some
traffic(?) but the conversions were poor as they were for Enhance,
Looksmart, Mamma, etc.

When we started the account again, I watched it this time and it was
like you could see the meter whizzing away. The un-funny thing was
that the variety of mesothelioma keywords we were running just don't
get that many valid clicks in such a short time, even at Google or
Overture. While I didn't have time to closely analyze the traffic we
were getting, it was clear to me that something was VERY wrong and
we had only click-fraud to lose by closing the account.

One solution is something that I have suggested before: Bidding for
flat-rate advertising. There's a number of ways you could do it, and
it should be pretty easy. But only companies that care about us as
advertisers are going to try this and remove the incentive to click
or generate false impressions (As in Google site-targeting, which is
a great first step towards flat-rate ads).

Thanks,

Chris Nielsen

Minnesota Fire Department Search
http://www.mnfd.com/


-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Lee Price
Subject: Sitemaps

> I use Google Sitemaps only for its statistical reports about
> how it sees my web sites... The sitemap program was originally
advertised as a way to insure that Google knew about your pages
> that were hard to find and index for various reasons.
        - Jim King, LED Digest 2304
        - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1394/55/

Jim,

My colleague came across this interview between Rand Fishkin &
Vanessa Fox from Google.  One of the great items they touch on is
what Google uses the Site Map for.  Basically the only real benefit
of a site map, in my mind, is if you constantly add new pages.
Vanessa make a great point and clears up a common misconception
about the 'priority' variable for pages within your site:
http://videos.webpronews.com/2006...google-sitemaps

Regards,

Lee Price, Search Engine Optimization Analyst
ebasedEVOLUTION


-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Joel Lesser
Subject: Email

In LED 2304, Peter D'Aprix commented:

> Do you have a nice code that us morons could use
> to take the place of "mailto:' that is more secure?

Peter,

Here is a solution we just started using with success.  It creates a
mailto hyperlink with javascript and to my knowledge, spam bots do
not know how to interpret it.

Place this script just above where you plan to use the mailto link:



<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

<!--

     function make_mailto (user, host, text) {

          document.write ("<A xhref=\"mailto:" + user + "@" + host +

"\">" + text

+ "</A>");

        }

// -->

</SCRIPT>

Use this HTML where you want the mailto link to appear:



<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">make_mailto ('EMAIL_PREFIX,

'YOURDOMAIN.COM', 'YOUR_NAME_HERE');</SCRIPT>

That will create a link with text "YOUR_NAME_HERE" to the email address
" This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ".

This solution has been tested in all browser types as long as javascript is
enabled of course.

Happy Holidays!

Best Regards,

Joel Lesser
http://linksmanager.com


-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Steve Birk
Subject: Contact Form Spam Fix

Back in LED 2272 [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1265/55/
], Jim King offered a suggestion to encode the path of your form CGI
script in ASCII which caused his contact form spam to disappear. I
too was starting to get more and more spam via my contact form on my
site. I tried his suggestion (ON THAT DAY!) and from that day, I
have not received one spam from my contact form since.

Try it... go to
http://www.golivecentral.com/pages/txttut/scramble.shtml or any
other site you use to encode addresses... (no affiliation with this
site, just use it because it works)

Copy your ENTIRE path to your form CGI script i.e...
http://mydomain.com/form/form.cgi

Paste this path where it says "enter the email address" (overlook
the email part, its only encoding whatever address you paste there).
Click the submit button and the entire ASCII encoded path is
displayed below. Copy that and paste it in your forms source code of
your web page, replacing the original entire path.

Upload the revised page to your site then test it out and your form
should still work, but the spam-bot's somehow have trouble with the
encoded link in your source code to your form CGI script.

LED-Digest rocks! It's all about the community helping each other
out! But don't forget about doing something good in the community in
which you actually live in :-)

Regards,

Steven Birk, FF/EMT
http://publicsafetyhub.com/emergencycard
Free Emergency Contact Card - Don't Leave Home Without It!


-------- new post - same topic --------

From: John Brumage
Subject: Email -- in defense of catchall

> There is one predominant affect... which is the
> largest contributor to Spam on the Internet and
> that is the old "Catch All" function which is active
> on the majority of e-Mail accounts world wide.
        - Roger Hass, LED Digest 2304

The catchall address prevents spammers from using a "dictionary
attack" in which a long list of usernames is tested against a mail
server.

This also is useful as a honeypot, since any email signature
addressed to a few hundred non-existant will be recognized by your
span-scoring systems.

An earlier suggestion, to add a subject line to any mailto: makes a
certain amount of sense. It would prevent harvesting of email
addresses from your website by most spam software, however it would
be trivial for a spammer to include the subject line in outgoing
spam.

John Brumage
Disco Legend Zeke


-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Mari Bontrager
Subject: Email

> Do you have a nice code that us morons could use to take
> the place of "mailto:' that is more secure? If so, it would be
> lovely of you to share it with us.
        - Peter D'Aprix, LED Digest 2304

Hi Peter,

Don't let the old timers get you down :) They can't help feeling
they know how the world should be. Most old-timers in any field get
the same idea. (Just ask Granny- she knows everything!)

I'm not a web programmer either, but I've lived with one for a long
time and I think I can help make some sense of the mess without a
lot of guru-speak.

Back in the more innocent days of the web, you could get away with
encoding mailto links using a tool like this:
http://bontragerconnection.com/tools/linkgenerator.shtml

These days many creaters of spambots have made their software smart
enough to decode and slurp what you are trying to hide.

The options we are left with include CGI contact forms and PHP. As I
don't do PHP, I will let the PHP guru clarify that (if I can get him
to write a note!).

Whatever objections you have to contact forms, I think the available
solutions are a whole lot better than mailto links.

We offer 3 different ways of presenting a contact form: free, easy,
and highly sophisticated but not hard to use.

- Free: Master Feedback- A CGI program that will protect your
contact form from being hijacked to send spam to others. Master
Feedback will not prevent auto-submission, just hijacking. Your
email address is nowhere available for the spambots to harvest. If
you can FTP and set permissions, you can handle this. Plus a form
generator is available, too. http://willmaster.com/master/feedback/

- Easy: For those who just don't want to mess with CGI, InForm(tm)
gets you a copy and paste form for a reasonable fee. Your email
address is not accessible anywhere to spambots. And there is no
hijack risk, no auto-submission is possible, and forms are easy to
create. http://webform.flowto.info/

- Sophisticated but not hard to use: Master Form V4 is about the
best you can get. Hijack code built in, auto-submission protection
ready for you to turn on, and it will handle more kinds of web site
tasks than you can imagine at one sitting.
http://willmaster.com/master/formV4/

I confess I shake my head everytime I run across a site with a
mailto link. My first thought is, "Those poor folks! How do they
ever wade through the spam!" And then I wonder if it is worth my
time to to write to them. Will they ever see the email, or will it
get lost?

I suppose this makes me one of the old-timers since I have firm
opinions on the subject.  Just call me Granny :)

Mari Bontrager


==== BILLBOARD ===================================

From: Al Toman
Subject: Arbitrage

> I have a client who wants to set up a PPC campaign for
> his new web site. I have no experience with PPC so we
> would like to hire a specialist.
        - Carol Simicich, LED Digest 2303

If you're marketing your web site Arbitragely, you may find this
article of interest: http://www.forbes.com/home/technology...google.html

The December 11, 2006 issue of Time Magazine may be of interest to
one-person startup web marketing enterpreneurs.  If you're wondering
how to make your millions, you may want to plan a strategy around
one of these industries (showing % of operating profit margin) and
grab a piece of the (cash flow) pie:

Commercial Banks ... = 32.4%
Pharmaceuticals ....... = 24.2%
Newspapers .............. = 19.3%

Hotels/Restaurants .... = 14.1%
Computers - related .. = 9.1%
Airlines ......................... = 2.8%
Automobiles ................ = 0.4%

Dang!  And to think my copy of the N.Y. Times sits in the recycle bin!

Al Toman
studio9.ws


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