Fixing the menu led me to investigating just how accessible my site really is, and I found a lot of things to fix. The web site WebAIM: Web Accessibility In Mind was tremendously helpful. I’m still working on improving overall accessibility, but here’s what I’ve done so far.

• Installed a fix for the terrible Internet Explorer keyboard focus bug affecting same-page links. Wow. I thought I knew all the IE bugs, but this is a new one, and I’m astounded that Microsoft still hasn’t fixed it in IE 8. It breaks basic keyboard navigation. There is a fix at Juicy Studio: Keyboard Navigation and Internet Explorer – or see the javascript include file used on my site (located in the site header, wrapped in some conditional commenting for IE).
• Added an improved “Skip to Content” link that appears on tabbing, and a visible “Skip to Sidebar” link, for keyboard users.
• Bolded links or added underlines. I prefer no underlines for visual reasons, but relying on colour alone to distinguish links is a problem for colorblindness.
• Fixed the accessibility of my e-mail address on the Author page
• Removed the “WP Ajax Edit Comments” plugin which allowed you to edit your comments after entering them. It couldn’t be navigated using the keyboard (darn AJAX developers). I need a replacement for this because I love the functionality.
• Removed tabindex from the comment form in WordPress. Bad WordPress. This fixed most of the tab order problems in the comments. I hope WordPress fixes this in the new default theme for WordPress 3.0.
• Rewrote link text for many links so they could be understood out of context (for screenreaders). This is ongoing! Blogs and LiveJournal/Dreamwidth have taught me bad lessons! *grin*

Still to be fixed

The image gallery. That uses a different code base.

What I couldn’t fix

The Preview function on blog comments will continue to cause confusion for users of screen readers, and keyboard navigation users in general, as the keyboard focus jumps up to your name instead of taking you to the Post button. In addition, the “Reply” button is confusing when it appears in previewed comments because one assumes that pressing “Reply” will finalize the comment, when it actually does nothing. This button ought to be labelled “Reply to this Comment” and should not appear in previewed comments. I can’t change this without hacking the WordPress core. Another thing I hope this is fixed in the release of WordPress 3.0 next month.

Unveiling the New Power Girl Creative Team

It’s official: the new writer is Judd Winick and cover and interior artist is Sami Basri.

I really don’t know what to think about Winick. I’ve never read anything by him. I only know that fan response to him has long been very divided. I can only go by reactions from people I trust like Shelly’s. I’m going to go into this with an open mind and see what he delivers.

The cover to Power Girl #13 (above) by the new artist is gorgeous but sadly, it looks like the Amanda Connor revamp is going to be ignored. That’s a real disappointment.

From the DCU Blog:

As some of you recall, Power Girl was once a member of Justice League Europe. It seems like a lot of the characters that were under the umbrella of Justice League International are reforming in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST. JL: GENERATION LOST is written by Judd Winick. Well, so’s POWER GIRL, starting with June’s issue #13.

Teaming with new artist Sami Basri, who contributed some fantastic covers to recent issues of THE SHIELD and is also handling interiors on POWER GIRL, the latest chapter in Power Girl’s life finds her inching closer to her former JLI teammates — but why? It’s too early to say, gang, but Judd’s got a few teases to keep us on our toes. Right, Judd?

“It is with GREAT fear and excitement that Sami and I leap into this gig. Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner have bought an amazing, fresh, and inventive rebirth to this character. Our greatest challenge will be to remain faithful to what they’ve created and also take Power Girl to a new place. As far as the course that the story will take, I’ll be uncharacteristically forthcoming : The story is tied to JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST. Not CHAINED to it, but tied. Power Girl has a history with the JLI that will be explored. A lot.”

I’m going to take whatever comfort I can from that phrasing “not chained to it”. And hey, maybe it’ll just be this first story arc when Judd takes over that will tie into Justice League: Generation Lost (announced in January) however that’s a year long run – good god, since when is a 26-issue biweekly a “miniseries”?! -so I don’t know. Just so long as she goes back to doing her own thing after with Atlee and StarrWare. It’s always frustrating when a new writer talks about talking the character(s) to “a new place” when you’re happy with the place she’s currently in.

That said, I was somewhat glad that the current writing team is leaving after reading Power Girl #10 with that awful stalking/blackmailing subplot, where the behavior of the little rapist-in-training was treated as harmless and worthy of indulging (rather than, say, dangling him off a cliff for a while until he begged for forgiveness). Yeesh, that was bad.

Here is a nice interview with Jimmy Palmiotti over at Robot6 that looks back at the series under this foundational creative team.

I’d seen this effect on many sites without knowing what it was called. I never really liked it because the way the viewer loaded images felt sluggish. Turns out that’s due to the transitions, which are totally customizable and can be turned off completely. I’ve done so here. If you have scripting turned off in your browser it degrades nicely, another requirement for me. The original script is called Lightbox, and there are numerous versions based on it: the one I chose is Slimbox. It’s installed on this site through the WP-Slimbox2 WordPress plugin. This is a great plugin that allows you to customize everything through WordPress settings (I love WordPress so much).

Please let me know if you have any issues or criticisms about this plugin: is it difficult to navigate, does it not work the way you expect, does it “break” anything in your use of this site? The one thing I don’t like about the Slimbox script is that you can’t just click on the expanded image to close it, as I’ve seen on other scripts (can’t recall which). Accessibility-wise, pressing Escape closes the viewer.

The trade paperbacks have been updated with SUPERMAN Codename Patriot (HC), SUPERMAN: Last Stand of New Krypton (HC), and the next Supergirl TPB which includes the excellent Supergirl Annual:

SUPERGIRL Death and the Family
Collects: SUPERGIRL #48-50 and SUPERGIRL ANNUAL #1
Published Sep 21, 2010
$17.99 US, 144 pg