Web Accessibility: How Screen Readers Read a Website

Screen readers are assisting eyes of a screen that uses verbal translation. Screen Readers work by translating screen text into computerized speech so that a person can listen to the screen content. Currently these audio devices read content is a linear format.

Experienced screen interface users have concocted a few methods as ways to “skim” the web content. Some methods include: Using the links to parachute from link to link. Using Headings to bungee jump to other Headings- where Headings available.

When Web developers conveniently define these element, visitors can use ARIA Landmarks and HTML5 sectioning tags to navigate through a site.

WordPress News: Automattic Buys Scroll Kit for Storytellers

According to Venture Beat, Automattic purchased Scroll Kit, a visual online editor for storytelling. According to Scoll Kit, “Our objective was to create a process for making the web that was more like drawing on a piece of paper.”

Scroll Kit is a drag and drop, multimedia content app that allows creation of visual stories online in a scrolling format. Scroll Kit arranges elements in layers so that objects can be placed on top of other objects

An example of how Scroll Kit works can be seen from Contently.com on a feature story called “Brooklyn Took It” and the New York Times Snow Fall.

Information and tutorials on how to use Scroll Kit may be found from Mariam Posner and in the Pharrell interview on Complex.

Interview Cody Murphy: Marketing Maverick on WordPress

Cody Murphy is the young entrepreneur and founder of Stearns 208 Marketing located in Saint Cloud, Minnesota and provides businesses with online marketing solutions.

Why did you choose WordPress?

WordPress has become our “go-to” content management system because it’s regularly updated and has become a polished, versatile system. We’ve been able to customize WordPress for small business websites to larger, complex websites like a social network thanks to a popular Plugin called BuddyPress. The software’s back end simplicity makes it attractive for our clientele who, for the most part, are not tech savvy.

Interview with Cody Murphy

Who updates your WordPress site?

We update our WordPress website internally; I’m primarily in charge of that task. For our client’s websites, we use a very handy piece of software called InfiniteWP – each WordPress website has a client Plugin installed (InfiniteWP Client) and from the main system we can update every website, etc. from one area instead of going into WordPress install for updates.

What does WordPress do better than anyone else?

I would say transparency. Given that it’s open source software, everything is well… open. Beta versions, discussions with developers, etc. are all easily accessible and anyone can contribute to the platform if they’d like. Transparency, in my opinion, is what has enabled WordPress to become the widely-used system it is today.

What features would you like to see added to WordPress?

That’s a tough question. WordPress has become polished and mature over the past couple of years. I would, however, like to see the member management features expanded some so user profile fields, roles, etc. could be changed without the need of a Plugin. Another feature(?) I’d like to see is to be able to flush the WordPress database. It would be handy to ensure old/uninstalled Plugins are properly removed, etc.

Do you have any favorite Widgets?

Another tough question! This made me think a bit. I feel that widgets are commonly forgotten but provide some handy functionality to a WordPress website.

While you may consider them boring, I think my favorite widgets are the “Text” and “Recent Posts,” both included by default. The text widget comes in useful for displaying a promotional type of graphic in a sidebar (quick and easy to edit/change instead of going into the template files).

The “Recent Posts” widget is nice as it helps integrate a blog with the rest of a website (if the blog isn’t the primary focus) and also helps “fill in” a sidebar.

WordPress has become our “go-to” content management system because it’s regularly updated and has become a polished, versatile system. We’ve been able to customize WordPress for small business websites to larger, complex websites …Cody Murphy “

Explore more about Stearns 208 Marketing

• Sample of Stearns 208 Clientele Portfolio
• Stearns 208 Website
• Facebook page of Stearns 208

WordPress Words: Menus

Navigation Menu is a theme feature introduced with Version 3.0. WordPress includes an easy to use mechanism for introducing customised navigation menus into a Theme.
WordPress Codex

The WordPress Menu helps you to design your own menu such as: Adding Pages to your menu; specifying Custom Links when you would like to link directly to another site. You can even add Category Pages that creates a filtered blog feed displaying only the posts from a category that you designate.

WordPress Words: WordPress Meetup

People in a community getting together — meeting up — who share an interest in WordPress, whether they be bloggers, business users, developers, consultants, or any other category of person able to say, “I use WordPress in some way and I like it, and I want to meet other people who can say the same.”
“Year of the Meetup” – WordPress.org News

Quick Guide to Password Protect Posts in WordPress

WPBeginner has a quick guide to password protecting posts in WordPress from homepage and archives. Would you like to keep your site to a select few? This guide comes with screenshots to walk you through step by step.