Wasn’t it just summer here? Actually I was just telling hubby moose that I didn’t have much of a summer this year – at least not an Alaskan summer. What with the trips Outside – one pleasure – two business – I sort of missed out on all of the fun normally had here at home in Alaska.

And, now that the great wet season has arrived I am beginning to miss the summer all the more. When does it stop being rush, rush, rush? Well, it keeps me young, I guess, so I’ll stop complaining. Besides, complaining doesn’t work much anyway. :s

I mentioned Lessa and the contact page for my workplace website in my last post. That has just started the ball rolling. In between meetings and presentations last week I have been busily updating the agency website. Any agency that accepts federal monies MUST have accessible websites by 2007. That’s something I learned on the Nashville trip. We do, so we must, so I am adapting. Getting rid of frames and changing color schemes and font schemes and identifying photos and links with alt or title tags.

I had NO clue just how many pages I had developed on the site over the past 3 or 4 years! But I am seeing the light – well over half way done, now. Yay! And, a tip of the antlers once again to Lessa. Thank ya kiddo.

After I have finished upgrading I will begin checking for any other accessibility issues there might be. There are some web pages I have access to that do an online check.

You might be asking “what accessibility issues could there be?” Yeah, I asked that, too. Well, for instance, I mentioned frames. While frames make the pages look nice and all, if a person uses a voice reader to access pages (they are low vision or blind, perhaps) frames just confuses them. The reader can get hung up in the left frame and never make it into the right frame where I had all the pages opening into.

I am also taking background images out of the site. I only had two anyway – one was a light gray pattern and the other a green pattern. VERY HARD to read type on, I discovered as I allowed our site to be a test site at the conferences. Ouch! I did hear several times – “it’s Pretty!” but hard to read. So, off with the background images!

Type fonts – I had used the default which is times and my hubby said he has trouble reading it because of the serifs. Ouch again! Never thought of that. So – I’ve changed to arial throughout – at least on the pages I’ve finished.

And, I am old school – I hand code the pages. WYSIWYG is very nice – especially here on the blog. But I learned the old fashioned way and so I still write in html. You should have seen me when I decided to do the site in frames!!!! oh my oh my oh my. Lessa came to the rescue then, too. She tells me that css would help in the long run because you only have to tell it once and the page scheme is carried throughout.

While I am not using css, I do have a system now – copy from one page to the next with the basics and they all have the same flow. :moose: There’s more than one way to skin a moose, you know.

So, anyway, I have been keeping myself pretty busy – making myself indespensible is how I like to think of it. And, October being a big month for my field, I will be involved in three more presentations – no, make that four. I did the one chamber presentation last week. I have two special presentations this coming week, and on the 30th I am helping my boss with yet another. I think I’ll be glad to see November get here. :moose:

Oh – and Meredith at Violet Voices published two more of my pieces. Follow the links here to them.

Okay – I need to get off here and get busy with my “other” job. I need to type up an interview and get it sent to the person for review before submitting it to the paper by Thursday.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.