Readability on the web

In my work as a Web Services Librarian I am constantly looking for ways to improve accessibility for the web sites and resources our library provides. In library school I took a class on "Resources and Services for Persons with Disabilities" and learned that (at that time) the most popular software packages to assist persons with visual impairments were created for Windows-based systems. As an avid Mac user this troubled me, and I was delighted to find today a free application for Mac called Readability. Here is an excerpt from the online article:

As Web sites have gotten more and more complex, many Web pages have become more and more difficult to read. Type is smaller, page layouts are getting more cluttered, and ads and other objects are breaking the flow of text. So I’m a big fan of programs and services that make the Web more readable.

Which leads me to today’s Gem, Readability, which, unlike most Gems, isn’t a program you download to your Mac, but rather an online service. Call it—with apologies to ESPN—a Web Gem.

Readability, a project of the Arc90 Lab, is a bookmarklet-based browser tool that reformats a Web page and presents the page’s text content in a plain, easy-to-read format. Inspired by Instapaper, the save-it-for-later-reading Web service, Readability lets you make almost any page more readable with a single click—or even a keyboard shortcut.

I intend to test this as soon as possible.

Happy Holidays!

Late lunch but worth the wait: guacamole-chicken sandwich with lots of fresh garlic in the guac -- MMM!

Making Web 2.0 Work at Work

After a 5-day weekend battling the flu I now seek to utilize Web 2.0 technology with a practical issue at work: remodeling. I have been advised that our building's fire suppression systems need to be brought up-to-date, and they are embedded in a ceiling that includes asbestos. So we are gathering our entire collection and moving it to the lower level. We will be closing the library for 8 months and our staff will be scattered to nearby buildings. I have committed to combining notifications on our website, Facebook page, Twitter and (yet to be created) Flickr accounts. I have played with these tools off and on for awhile now, so it should be no problem. Yet I am nervous about taking the first steps and actually doing it. I am a perfectionist, and not happy when I make mistakes. So I will post to my personal blog one more time to make sure the system I've created works here. Then I can venture out and do the same thing for my job.