Beachballin’

CBC fails basic accessibility

I don’t know if I’m supposed to give them extra credit because it’s the holidays or something, but CBC has managed to put together one of the worst forms I’ve ever seen, as far as accessibility goes. Maybe no one there ever tabs between form fields, but for people like myself, and for thousands of Canadians with disabilities preventing them from using a mouse, this form is nigh-unusable.

I’m not sure how the problem came to be – I haven’t looked at the HTML and don’t care to – but I know you have to go pretty far out of your way to get the browser to skip entire blocks of form fields.

I discovered this when signing up for an account with them and trying to progress past the Email field. Now, admittedly I have seen forms that were completely messed up, where tabbing took you to an apparently random box, resulting in a connect-the-dots, family-circus ordeal, never knowing which field you’ll be required to fill in next (and not having ‘Password’ and ‘Retype Password’ one after the other is jarring), but never anything that completely skipped over two thirds of the form.

Seriously CBC, get with it. You’ve been so good with new media, but you can’t get a simple form right? That’s sad.

Tags: accessibility, cbc, skitch, whining

Amylie - Mes Oreilles

The latest Single of the Week from iTunes Canada. It’s French (in case you care about that), but it’s catchy, she’s got a beautiful voice (for my tastes). Great song, and it’s free so download it and give a listen. The snippet doesn’t do it justice.

Fido Adventures

Today was a big week for me as far as the iPhone goes. I’ve had issues with both Fido and Apple that necessitated a call (for the former) and a Genius appointment (for the latter).

If you haven’t been to the Fido website lately, you won’t have seen the changes - and they’re dramatic. The entire look and feel has changed. After updating their website when the iPhone was launched, they’ve thrown all of that away - and taken the plans with them.

In an effort to compete with Koodo (warning: ugly) and Solo, the no-frills carriers run by Telus and Bell respectively, Fido’s plans have been completely redone. How redone? Well, you can now get no-frills cellular service for $16.95 after tax.

Having signed up for their plans quite a while ago, and having two iPhones on my plan, my bill runs around $170 every month, and so I figured there was some room for improvement there. I was right, of course, but the difference was not as much as I had hoped. I can technically save money on my phone, but because I have a group plan, the cost on the other line would go up, and my total cost would remain the same (and I would lose 5.5 GB of data per month).

What they did offer me, however, is to trim the System Access Fee from my plans, saving me $15 every month - a reasonable change that I’m willing to accept.

The interesting thing here - they are not doing this for all of their customers. They will continue to charge you the SAF unless you call in and ask them about it. They can remove it, but there are conditions - if you are getting a discount already through some negotiating you’ve done before, you have to choose between that and losing the SAF, so if you’re already saving $7.50 or more then it’s not worth it.

If, unlike me, you aren’t on a group plan, you can probably save a fair chunk of change by switching. You also have the option, if you do less than 500M of data, of going with the $60 iPhone plan and adding unlimited incoming calls and caller ID if you want them (if not, you save even more!). There are various benefits and drawbacks you’d have to weigh.

So, if you’re a Fido customer, go to their website, check out their voice plans, check out their iPhone plans (just add any iPhone to your cart to see plan options), and see if there’s anything that will benefit you. At the very least, stop paying the system access fee!

Here’s a little table of what my options (for my first line) came out to. 

Honestly, the only change that would really benefit me at this point would be if Fido introduced a 500 megabyte data plan for $10 (which compares favourably with their 6GB promotion for $30). They won’t do this, of course, because even people with the 6 GB plan are probably only using between 50-150 MB of data per month at most, so they’re making three times the money and providing the same amount of service. Perhaps once their network is built out and the instabilities are ironed out, they’ll consider more competitive rates.

For more iPhone fun, check out my same-day iPhone Adventures, where I exchange my iPhone for a new one, which probably won’t help me.

Vision Vancouver’s @PeterLadner Twatting

So, here’s the story as I understand it:

Someone at Vision Vancouver decided that, in an attempt to be ‘hip’ and ‘edgy’ or whatever, they should register a Twitter account. The account they registered (now deleted) was @PeterLadner - the name of a Vancouver mayoral candidate. I’m a fan of light-hearted political parody in the style of @FakeSarahPalin, but what VV did was different - they essentially posted ‘parody’ using his name on Twitter.

How is this different? Well, for one, there was no clear indication that this was, in fact, parody. It was posted with his name, as though written by him, and there were no overt indications that this was, in fact, a fake - like, say, calling the account @FakePeterLadner. Anyone googling Peter Ladner’s name, perhaps to find information on the candidates in this election, would find Vision Vancouver’s words coming out of Peter Ladner’s mouth, out of context, with no indication that this is just a cheap political stunt.

Vision Vancouver, apparently in response to negative publicity from the Twitter and blogger communities (including posts by Gillian Shaw and Jenn Lowther), and an article on the Vancouver Sun website, has deleted the account, and recreated one at @PeterLadnerFake (which apparently was then deleted as well). Lesson learned?

Well, I wasn’t going to vote in the election because I’m new to the area and don’t understand the issues. Now I’ve learned more about Vision Vancouver, and I’ve decided that I don’t really want them around. Not just because of this issue, mind you, but others - like refusing to pay transit fares, even if he did eventually pay up. Seriously, if you don’t like the rules, then fight to change them, but don’t refuse to play ball because you can’t make your own rules up as you go. I’ll admit that I’ve run two zones on a one-zone pass (sometimes accidentally, sometimes not) but if I were caught, I’d pay the fine.

So, maybe I will vote after all. I haven’t decided for sure, and I’m not necessarily going to vote for Peter Ladner, but it looks like Robertson and his campaign are going about things the wrong way, and I couldn’t really vote for them after this kind of thing.

Oh well.

Stephane Dion, our next PM

From CTV.ca, an interesting clip of Stephane Dion giving a speech at the Canadian Club of Toronto.

A few of the things that really struck me about the speech:

1. Stephane Dion’s accent seems somehow reassuring. I think it’s partly a reminder that we have someone who’s bilingual, and possibly a little more worldly than some other candidates do.
2. It doesn’t seem weird to me to hear him switch between English and French in the middle of a sentence, thanks to living in Montreal. In fact, it seems weirder that someone else’s voice covers them up. Watch Bon Cop Bad Cop for another example of this (with subtitles, which I prefer).
3. For some reason, I trust him a lot more than the goofy goon-smiling Harper, who always seems uncomfortable and awkward. No idea how this guy got into power, don’t much care - I’d much rather have Stephane Dion.

High hopes! Don’t forget to vote!

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