General:
Talk is about making mobile applications accessible for ALL. Don’t want to just talk about people with disabilities because all people want to be able to use mobile devices in all environments. PWD are on the cutting edge and we should listen and learn from them.

Poll audience:
Who is aware of accessibility Api for iOS?
Who has used it?
Who has tried VoiceOver on iOS device (3GS and above)?
Any PWD here that use an mobile device?
Which one?
What do you like/dislike about it?
What advice do you want to give developers for making more usable apps?

Where are we with the different devices?

Android

EyesFreeAndroid - Google solution
TalkBack(screen reader), SoundBack(auditory), KickBack (haptic)
Code Factory - just released new set of 10 apps and a screen reader
IDEAL Group - makes accessible open source apps for Android.
Speaking Pad - one of most popular applications. Type something in and press a button for phone to speak the text.
Does Android have an advantage with at least some “hard” navigation buttons? Or devices with “real” keyboards?
Edwin speech recognition app- how useful is this? Is there speech reco built into Android, now?

BlackBerry
no built in screen reader? Can buy one but is expensive

iOS

VoiceOver
Accessibility API
API helps to make apps accessible - what about mobile Web sites?
Voice control - do people use it?

Standards for Accessibility
What about ARIA? HTML 5 is incorporating ARIA so that should help make it more universal and force better support
Use standard HTML accessibility, avoid scripted controls (for now)

Google Voice
How many use it? Still relies on visual interpretation but does provide easier access then typing
Experience on iOS vs Android?

Dragon Nuance Mobile Development Kit
cloud based speech to text and text to speech service that can be accessed from iPhone and Android devices
http://dragonmobile.nuancemobiledeveloper.com/ - developer kit that allows you to integrate into apps

What about captioning?
Google has beta auto-captioning on youTube - but that option is not available on iPad?
auto transcribing could allow you to follow a meeting in a noisy environment - subway, bus, conference, etc.

Self Voicing Apps? What is available how are they used?

What about using the cloud?
Access an assistive technology by sending data to via the network and have spoken text or perhaps a transcript come back?

Need for device independent interactions and events.

Lenovo has eye tracking laptop - do we see that going to mobile devices? Maybe for tablets???

Next was Accessibility the Musical! Moderated by Sharron Rush, the executive director of Knowbility. She had a great panel of accessibility experts and users of assistive technologies. There was live sign language interpreting and many demos and videos! Barbie Parker discussed the field of interpreting live performances and how much work is involved. I never realized how important it is to do research on the person or performance being interpretted. Imagine trying to sign a live musical performance without knowing the playlist? Or, who would have thought that knowing about someone’s behavior or background, or OCD would be important for interpreting? It is much more than just translating spoken word to sign “on the fly”. Celia Hughes of VSA Texas reminded us all of how important it is to enable ALL people no matter what their abilities and capabilities and shared some great success stories. Desiree is a blind “tech geek girl”, mother, and musician who demonstrated some of the accessible and non-accessible apps and web sites she encounters. Elise Whitworth is a deaf web designer. It was great to get her perspective. And, it is always fascinating to watch and appreciate the great work of the interpreters! There was a discussion of how planning for people with disabilities at conferences and events is important. You can’t wait until the last minute to get braille versions of programs, to arrange for interpreters, full access to the venue and stage, etc. Truly an enlightening presentation - I wish it could have attracted more attendees but it was recorded - I’ll try to post the recording here when it is available.

I had lunch with some of my accessibility friends. That was a nice break!

The final presentation of the day was Voices from the HTML5 Trenches: Browser Wars IV. Representatives from Google Chrome, Opera, IE 9 and Mozilla shared insights and opinions. This session was well moderated by Arun Ranganathan. There was lots of discussion about HTML5 video and codecs, standards, etc. Always a fun session to attend.

I also go to attend another movie, Buck, about a modern day Horse Whisperer. It was great and I encourage any one interested in horses or human nature to check it out. See buckthefilm for more details. It is a truly inspiring movie - even if you aren’t interested in horses!!! I’m sorry that Buck doesn’t have any clinics in the New England area this year - I would love to attend as a spectator just to watch this man perform his calm magic!

1. Creativity
2. Consciousness
3. Collaboration

She said she would be talking about three different gaming models - Posit Science Brain Training Module (which I was disappointed to learn costs $395 per module), Call of Duty, and Civilization - none of which I was familiar with. However, a fair number of people in the room had participated/played in one of these. She then discussed the 6 aspects of the brain:

1. brains are dynamically interconnected
2. brains are predictive systems
3. brains are good at predicting patterns
4. brains are neuroplastic
5. brain is a good soda jerk (delivers correct concoction of hormones when needed)
6. brains love novelty

So, we should design with these in mind to keep the brain engaged. Dr. G cited studies that showed higher cognitive function after playing games. Hey, I can now justify that game playing break during the middle of my work day! The take away message was to design applications with selective attention, incorporate face and pattern recognition and increase visual / spatial fluency. A one hour talk (and these poor notes) do little justice to the session - I plan on doing a google search on DrG or to start following her on twitter to learn more!

I toughed out another workshop (2.5 hours) on Cross-Platform Multi-Screen Development. It started out pretty generic with the top 10 considerations for multi screen development. Multi-screen referring to different devices and screen sizes.
10. screen size and resolution - display resolution is no longer just 72 dpi
9. device sensors and capabilities
8. orientation
7. hardware buttons
6. device specific interactions models
5. processing power
4. OS - single task vs. multi-task
3. Network protocols and security
2. User interaction and experience
1. deployment

Then Adobe presented on how you can achieve multi-screen development on “most” platforms using the Adobe tools and flash. Yawn. And no real answer when I asked how to implement accessibility.

Then Brian LeRoux from Nitobi gave the PhoneGap pitch again (see day 2).

Always a glutton for punishment I went to another workshop: CSS3 Beyond the Basics. This was really great! It was one of the most technical workshops or sessions I attended at SXSW and started right in with the code. All of the presenters are REALLY knowledgeable. Not being a CSS guru this quickly got over my head so I left to attend another session. Although in hindsight I should have stayed in this one - even if I don’t use this level of detail in CSS very much. But, from all of the tweets about the session it was very well liked by those who use complicated CSS on a regular basis - I’m still at the “CSS for dummies level with respect to fluid layous and all of the cool things you can do with backgrounds, transistion, etc. etc, etc. The presenters also brought a bottle of tequila and there was a shot to the asker for each good question asked!

I left the CSS3 Workshop to attend LBS 101: The arrival of Ubiquitous Geolocation. I guess from the title I shouldn’t really have expected anything new or exiting. This was just a general introduction to geolocation. I did find a few interesting facts to jot down.

• 53% of text messages in the US in 2010 where “where R U” type messages
• of the 101 most popular apps (on iTunes, I think), 47 transmitted the phone’s location

Some of the listed uses for geolocation:

• marketing
• fraud protection - don’t authorize my card at an ATM if my cell phone isn’t at that same location
• compliance
• insurance /telematics

UShip.com, an ebay-like/ crowd sourcing type shipping model, was provided as a use case for geolocation. Hmm, maybe I can get someone else to transport my cats and listen to them howl all the way! No, worries, I’d never do that to my kitties

I really enjoyed the IBM and Austin Chamber of Commerce sponsored party at the Four Seasons Hotel. It included a live band (although a bit too loud for trying to chat), great food and drink. The highlight was the presentation by Dr. David Ferrucci of Watson fame. I think IBM would have appreciated a larger attendance but since this wasn’t an official SXSW party it didn’t get any space in the schedule. This prevented it from being overrun by the “free food and drinks” crowd which I appreciated. Not usually one at loss for words I had some trouble mingling with the folks at this party - until I connected with some IBM folks from Application Services in Vancouver, BC. That made the evening even more enjoyable!

Started the morning at Gueros for breakfast ( I had the Huevos Motuleños) with my accessibility friends - there are many of them based in Austin! Although, I’m not sure it was wise to schedule an 8:00am meet up on the first day of daylight savings time. However, we did have 12 brave souls attend!

Joe McCann did a great session called One Codebase, Endless Possibilities: Real HTML5 Hacking. You can find his slides at bit.ly/hack_5. And check out his example web app: freebeernear.me from your mobile or web enabled device. He started with a great overview of what is the “Web Stack” and why you should use it for mobile development and then went on to provide a real example. He listed tools and demo’ed PhoneGap, Appcelerator Titanium as well as Node.js. Definitely worth checking out the slides. I didn’t pay attention to whether or not this was recorded by SXSW but since it was in a large room it probably was.

Next I attended Designing iPad InterFaces - New Navigation Schemes. While Lynn Teo was a knowledgeable and good speaker, I really didn’t get all that much out of this presentation. Again, it seemed like another “common sense” type of presentation that, unfortunately seems to becoming more common at SXSW. Lynn started out with a few basics to consider when designing a tablet application:

• size
• shape
• form
• mechanics

Form must inform function and items must be relatable, discoverable, and learnable. She then went through many apps pointing out the different navigations schemes used and why they were successful. To be honest, it didn’t really hold my attention - maybe it was because of daylight savings time, maybe because I am not a designer. Thus, not too many notes or take aways. This was held in one of the Ballrooms in the Austin Convention center and thus, likely to have been recorded. Probably worth a look by designer types or anyone wanting to understand tablet design better.

I was really captivated by the Non-Visual Augmented Reality and The Evaporation of the Interface talk that was presented by folks from geoloqi.com. Check out the description and speaker bios at http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP000326. These folks tracked their own locations over time and wanted to look at location apps and issues. The current location apps often require

• picking the location from a list that is displayed
• selecting the friends to share location data with OR always sharing with all friends in the system
• don’t deal with “temporal” friends - for example the client I am visiting at 2:00 may want to be able to see my location and know I am on the way
• need to deal with “noise” and inaccuraties from cell tower triangulation

The presenters believe that sharing location data should eliminate stress by notifying someone about current individual’s location or the location of the bus I am waiting for. These kinds of messages can eliminate uncertainty - yes, the lunch will be delivered to the meeting on time as the delivery person is two blocks away. There is no traffic ahead, I will be on time for my Dr.’s appointment. They want to be able to combine location notifications with calendar info and perform automatic checkins.

They have taken this a step further and used it to automate their own home. When they are x blocks away from home the system is notified to turn on the lights. When they are x blocks away, the lights and other unnecessary appliances are turned off - no more worries about leaving the stove on when you leave for the day!

You can also set up location based notifications for the future - next time I’m in Walmart/Target/Big Box Store remind me via text message to buy AA batteries. Request directions from my hotel to the convention center automatically sent when you reach the hotel. Automatically text Mom that I have arrived safe and sound when I reach a particular airport. They talked about experimenting with a haptic belt that would vibrate when the wearer was pointing North. What if you downloaded directions to the belt? It could then vibrate when you reached an intersection with the location of the vibration (front, back, left, right) indicating the direction to turn. I immediately thought about this being a helpful device for blind / low vision folks navigating within a new locale. Heck, I’d like it too so I wouldn’t have to stand out on the corner reading my map on my tiny smartphone screen!

The presentation also talked about integrating with IRC - phone could text location to IRC and a channel bot passes on the command to a device. For example turning on the AC in the home when you leave the office. They have an iphone app - Geoloqi that I am going to check out and a set of api’s for accomplishing the location messages. There was a discussion for the need for locations within buildings - such as convention centers, malls, etc. There is no standard for this right now. Seems like a market opportunity for some company to standardize this. Obviously there are security considerations with location data so that needs more investigation and proposed solutions. My write up really doesn’t do this session much justice - it was one of the few that I really found exciting and I plan to look into the geoloqi api in more detail.

The Future of Collective Intelligence: Location, Location, Location! was disappointing. Maybe because it was late in the day in a packed room. It started out interesting with discussions of what data collectors such as foursquare, gowalla, etc can give back to the consumers? Perhaps the long term reward of “checking in” can be future recommendations for products/services/locations based on previous locations? Could we use traffic data to control traffic lights in real time? When the audience was asked who would be willing to give out location data for the opportunity to drive down a street and have the traffic lights be timed to turn green as traffic approached - 2/3 of the room raised their hands. It would also be helpful to have employers be able to track employees when traveling - useful for disasters, accidents, changing plane schedules, etc. Foursquare and American Express are currently working together for automatic discounts. Just by checking into a location and agreeing to pay with your AmEx card you automatically get a discount on the bill. This session also mentioned future checkins but didn’t really go into in much (certainly not in the detail that the geoloqi folks did in their presentation).

Today was the AustinJS party. I knew some folks who were going to be there so I made the 1.0 mile trek to the KungFu Saloon. I was hoping the distance might cut down on the crowds - no such luck! It was packed but I did get to see the #5kilts (check them out on twitter) and score some free beer and tacos. I worked off some of the free food walking back to the convention center and called it a day.

I started Day 2 by attending iPad Design Headaches. Unfortunately the sound quality in the room was bad and it was hard to hear. Although 10 minutes in and the presenter really hasn’t said much: iPad is winning, has superior design, iPad users are mellow…..

Did warn developers to be aware of “greedy pixel syndrome”. The iPad and tablets have more space and designers and developers often strive to use it but should be aware of keeping designs clean and uncomplicated. Use space wisely to ask questions of user about what data is desired and provide that data. Tap quality trumps tap quantity.

Strive for Media quality and avoid overkill. Gave ABC news as a bad example with the globe paradigm. The Globe is a unique way to display article titles but users can’t get entire article title until they actually click on one of “globe pieces”. The goal should be to showcase the content and not make the user work to reach it. On a side note, another iPad design session showed off the ABC news site as a unique design paradigm.

Marvel comics was given as a good example of using space. User can see three “lines” of a comic on one screen or can drill down and see only one “line” at a time in a larger format. However, in the other iPad Design session I attended the Marvel comic app was shown as a bad example because it was not intuitive to get the single line version to display (you had to double tap). Just proves that beauty (and design) is in the eyes of the beholder! NYTimes was given as a good example to maintain brand familiarity. FlipBoard showcased as a reorganization of twitter and FaceBook feeds - plenty of room for new and old, focuses on content and let’s user explore at their own pace.

Suggested that page flip paradigm is a pathetic lack of imagination. Although familiarity and intimacy invite touch. When designing apps want to honor brand identity. Always ask if different is always better when designing an app. Used the term FrankenInterface and gave the Apple contacts on the iPad as a good example of this bad interface. If you open the contact on an iPad it is presented as a book and you would expect swipe to go from page to page - it does not, you must use the navigation icons at the bottom of the screen. The session was interesting but I really didn’t feel that it provided much new information. I also had to leave early to prepare for my session which was next.

I hosted a core conversation on Inclusive Mobility. It was well attended and had great participation. I was a bit nervous about hosting this conversation as, unfortunately there isn’t too much to say on Mobile Accessibility at the moment. I had some notes in case I needed to keep the conversation flowing - I will post those in another entry. I didn’t take any notes during the session as I was busy I did, however, have several folks approach me during the rest of the week to let me know they enjoyed and appreciated the session!

Was very disappointed in the Inclusive Design Session. Had good information but was not presented well. The speakers were not very dynamic and they could have done a much better job at providing good and bad examples to make their points. They talked about developing a plan when designing to consider:

• Brand custodianship
• user experience
• content stragety

Gave a list of important design elements:

• user centered
• beautiful
• on brand
• accessible
• usable
• interoperable
• open
• meaningful
• universal

Basically just common sense, in my opinion. Also, went through 10 principles of design. But, I was starting to lose interest at that point. Too bad since this is an important topic - we really need to educate mainstream developers on inclusive design.

I attended a 2.5 hour workshop on Building Native Apps Across Platforms. It started with Jonathan Stark basically giving the same one hour talk he gave at SXSW last year - that is a fail in my opinion. He demo’ed CSS transistion, animations, and transforms. Then did his JQTouch demo. You can find the demos at jonathanstark.com/sxsw.

David Kaneda talked about Sencha Touch. This was a good overview and interesting pitch for Sencha Touch. 1.1 will be coming out soon and will support Blackberry 6 and Playbook. Other interesting tidbits: Sencha uses base64 encoded icons for icons and also makes use of SASS and Compass within the CSS. Version 1.1 is adding a charting package. It is SVG with fallback to canvas as necessary. Sencha definitely seems worth looking into. I know folks are also working on Dojo Mobile - hope we can see that demo’ed at SXSW next year. I was really disappointed to not hear Dojo mentioned much at all at SXSW this year.

Brian LeRoux gave the pitch for PhoneGap. Gave a brief demo using xCode. PhoneGap schedule is 0.9.6 in April and PhoneGap 1.0 in the May/June timeframe. Indicated that Samsung is going to be contributing Bada work. I work on the open source PhoneGap project. For those who don’t know what it is- PhoneGap is an open source project that bridges the gap between Web and mobile devices. Developers build apps using Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript and PhoneGap provides a JavaScript api to access native device features. The developer packages up the Web app with the PhoneGap code to create a native application. The beauty is the developer builds the app with web technologies they know and that work across platforms, then uses the PhoneGap code with the native SDK to build the app for each platform. The developer using PhoneGap doesn’t need to know the native language for each device. IBM has several developers contributing to PhoneGap.

Brian also demonstrated, weinre, a remote debugger for mobile devices. One of my IBM colleagues created this! We also got a video demo of build.phonegap.com which allows you to submit the Web content for a PhoneGap app and have it built for different devices in the cloud. No magic bullet to work around device specific (ie apple and blackberry) licensing agreements - there are mechanisms for you to submit them into the build process. Brian also suggested search for “sounders bookmarklets” in google for some useful tools.

Enough for one day! I skipped the parties and went to the documentary, “The City Dark” about how light pollution is affecting our world. Definitely worth seeing! Happy that my badge gets me into both SXSW Interactive and Film AND that I made it to a film!

I decided not to lug my laptop around the conference this year and just bring my iPad. I have penultimate for taking notes and can check email, my SXSW schedule and twitter as needed. Only issue with penultimate is I wish I could have a finer point on the stylus - and better handwriting!

Things got started at 2:00 and I attended the interview with Tim O’Reilly. Although he is an icon in the industry I didn’t really know much about him. He started by writing computer books when he couldn’t get a job out of college with a degree in Greek and Latin! I liked this quote that his success has been, “happy accidents that came from ignorance”. He also discussed how great brands have a core - they mean something.

When asked about getting into politics, Tim made it clear that he is working on government and not politics. He said a concept that got him interested in government was in a book that referred to government as a vending machine. Tim’s take on that (which differed from the author’s intent) was the government is a vending machine where you put $ in and get services out. And, it really isn’t working and he believes that government should really work more like a platform. When asked about his political views, Tim believes he is a fiscal republican and social democrat (I know a few people like that ;). He mentioned codeforamerica.org and how govt. needs help from savvy tech folks.

Tim said much more - he never seems to be at a loss for words! That’s what I took away.

I also attended Thin is In The Future of Digital Wallets. This talk reviewed what a “digital wallet” is and who are the players. The presenter, Christina Nguyen White of SapientNitro, indicated that the talk was not technical but more about dealing with the digital wallet from the eyes of the consumer. The four pieces of a digital wallet are

• payment method
• financial method
• coupons
• tickets/passes
• comparison shopping

Examples of players who are “close” in the digital wallet market in the US are PayPal and Starbucks. The big question to ask with digital wallets is security. A poll of who users believe is responsible for security reveals 55% individual, 15% phone manufacturer, 30% carrier responsibility. Who are the players? Consumer, retailer, financial institution, and carrier. Who owns the digital wallet? - financial institution, retailer, carrier. I’m not sure I really want the carrier that involved in my digital wallet but it seems fairly inevitable. Christina spent time discussing the different responsibilities of each of the players. Most of it was all common sense, the retailer needs to build brand loyalty using special offers, coupons, push notifications, etc. without annoying the customer. I was hoping for a more technical talk on how digital wallets will be implemented. My take away is that there is still an opportunity to shape the market with a payment solution using smartphones. ISIS, the mobile payment service organized by the carriers, was offered up as the driving factor going forward in the US but no details were provided.

My last session of the day, How Farmers Get Serious Business Done with Mobile, was a panel of 5 people all involved in the Farming industry in the US midwest. Folks were from Loud Out Technologies, John Deere, Lava Row, agriculture.com. Farmers use of smart phones is 33% Blackberry, 18% Android, 10% iOS. Why is iOS so low for farmers? One reason is lack of AT&T coverage another is emotional - farmers don’t seem to like Apple. It was also suggested that the iPhone isn’t “tough enough” for farm use.

What are the things farmers want in a smartphone? Calilng, advertisement related info, pictures, and 69% use SMS. They definitely use it for data on commodity markets as well as weather. Use for controlling equipment such as sprinklers. During the talk animal management came up as an area with little software - there are no good applications for animal management on the desktop nor for mobile. Looks like a possible market given more stringent livestock controls and tracking requirements.

Talked about needing apps to help with information management. John Deere representative showed a video on Farm Insight. The John Deere service rep appears at a farmers work shed with a new air filter. The tractor was being used out in the field and it communicated to John Deere that it needed a new filter. The farmer contacted the operator and sure enough, the tractor was displaying a signal code for a filter change.

Other resources that came up: farmers4thefuture.com. Farmersfreshmarket.com - there was an article written about this at myfarmlife.com recently.

And got to see my accessibility family at the AIR Awards party! That was fun - it was a fully accessible party with close captioning as well as signing of all the events and music!

All you never wanted to know about tabindex

The tabIndex attribute can be used to allow nearly any element to be put into the tab order or receive focus programmatically. This has been implemented in Internet Explorer starting with version 5, Firefox starting with version 1.5, Opera 9.5 and Safari 4.
Being able to set focus to any element on the page is important for accessibility in order to implement full keyboard navigation. Elements that represent the intial interaction with a user interface component
can be but into the tab order. Other elements which are part of a particular user interface component can be interacted with via other key combinations. The keystroke interaction and identification of the user interface components to assistive technologies depends upon being able to set focus to these elements.

How Focus and tab key navigation work

• Normally only input and anchor elements are put into the tab order of a page by default.
• Setting a tabIndex attribute of 0 onto an element will put it into the tab order of the page and allow it to receive focus via the keyboard.
• Setting a tabIndex of -1 on an element will allow the element to receive focus programmatically. For input and anchor elements, setting tabIndex of -1 will remove the element from the tab order and allow focus to only be set programmatically.
• Setting a tabIndex of >0 onto an element will put that element sequentially into the tab order based on the tabIndex value. Elements with a positive tab index are put into
  the tab order before other elements with a tabIndex of 0 or which are in the tab order by default.

There are different behaviors for the tabIndex attribute and capitalization of the I makes a difference in how the attribute is interpretted in html and xhtml.
After testing different combinations of setting and querying the tabindex attribute, a set of best practices is outlined below followed by a table listing the results of each test.

Using tabIndex across browser and content type

1. Always use tabindex with lowercase i in markup. See row 1 in table below.
2. Use tabIndex with uppercase I when setting in script via element.tabIndex. See row 4 in table below.
3. Check browser and/or content-type when setting in script via element.setAttribute()
   • if is IE or content-type is text/html - set via elem.setAttribute(tabIndex) uppercase. See row 6 in table below.
   • if is content-type application/xhtml+xml or not IE 6 or 7 - set via elem.setAttribute(tabindex) lowercase. See row 7 in table below
4. Use lowercase when querying a value using getAttribute(tabindex) that was set in markup as lowercase. See row 9 in table below.
5. Use lowercase when querying a value using getAttribute(tabindex) that was set directly on element using element.tabIndex uppercase. See row 15 in table below.
   Setting tabIndex directly on the element using element.tabIndex avoids having to check browser or content type when getting the value.
6. If the rules above have been followed, use lowercase when querying a value using hasAttribute(tabindex) where available. See rows 25, 31 and 33 in table below.

Simplified Rules

• use tabindex lowercase to set in markup
• use element.tabIndex with uppercase I to set in script
• query via getAttribute(tabindex) lowercase

TabIndex testing results

The following table shows the results of testing on Windows with Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, and 8, Firefox 2.0.0.20, Firefox 3.0.1, Firefox 3.5, Opera 9.64 and Safari 4.
IE 6, 7, 8 where tested using HTML 4.01 strict. Firefox 2, 3, 3.5 as well as Opera and Safari were tested with HTML 4.01 strict as well as with XHTML 1.0 strict
served with content-type of application/xhtml+xml. Unless otherwise noted, a div was used as the test element.

Table Notes:

1. Setting in markup as uppercase tabIndex does not work in XHTML to allow focus to element.
2. setAttribute(tabindex) lowercase does not work in IE to allow focus to element.
3. setAttribute(tabIndex) uppercase does not work in XHTML to allow focus to element.

• Test file for HTML 4 strict
• Test file for XHTML 1 strict

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When writing JavaScript I generally use the object.getAttribute("attributeName") syntax to get an attribute value. However, this will return very inconsistent results for the disabled attribute. What makes it even worse, is there is more than one way to specify the disabled attribute on an input element. In HTML 4.01 you should just add the keyword disabled. In XHTML 1.1 you must use disabled="disabled". You can also use this in HTML 4.01.

What I learned from all of my testing is:

• Use disabled (HTML 4.01 only) or disabled=”disabled” (HTML or XHTML) to set in markup.
• When setting via scripting use one of the following to disable and enable, respectively
• inputObj.disabled=true and inputObj.disabled=false via boolean values;
• inputObj.disabled=”disabled” and inputObject.disabled=”" via string values;
• inputObj.setAttribute(”disabled”, “disabled”) and inputObj.removeAttribute(”disabled”)
• When testing for the disabled attribute on an input element, use inputObject.disabled for consistent results between browers.

Full testing results are tablulated at Testing the Disabled Attribute.

day off of work to visit elderly parents - although I think work would be easier #

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