With so much drama on the web today, its kinda hard not to submit to the @nsa
The open web is, and forever will be under fire from forces that want to control every aspect of it, and profit along the way. Recently The Day We Fight Back, led by fight for the future led a protest to further awareness of these direct threats to our ways of life. After the protest, I came across the typical memes of how joining an online protest does nothing, and how no one really cares, etc. The same old amazing media coverage we got about occupy from the lamestream media owned by the very forces we are fighting. But to spite all of the dissenters and naysayers, I say to you, here’s how you can fight for our future by coding for america.
Code Across 2014 is a hackathon run by Code for America, occuring on Open Data Day and concurring with simultaneous events across the globe (including international open data day hackathon which is the already linked too) this weekend. Code for Hampton Roads, my local brigade (and totes the kewlest), is hosting Code Across Hampton Roads 2014, in downtown Norfolk, and is open entirely to the public. Actually, the more the merrier.
Please do not feel like you need to know how to code, or stay away because you are intimidated by code; there are plenty of roles for everyone not involving code. As well as if you are interested, we are here to help you learn because a code literate population is a long term goal, that goes hand in hand with everything we are trying to accomplish. Also, we are all constantly learning as well, and every single member of our brigade can relate to not knowing or understanding something. Remember:
The Only Bad Question is the One That You Did Not Ask
Find an event near you and attend, get involved, come back for subsequent meetups, work with open data, and local government transparency, to shed light on problems facing your community. No doubt, your community is not alone, and somewhere, another community will benefit from your work, as you from theirs, as is the nature of free software/open source/crowd sourcing/the way of the web.
The following article was posted in Time magazine; it’s a great introduction to Code for America. I want to say someone posted it on the Brigade mailing list, but I don’t recall exactly. I’ve thrown it up on github, if anyone needs a copy.
Peace Corps For Geeks
By Bryan Walsh
The Gumbo is great, and the nightlife is even better, but let's face it: no one is ever going to mistake New Orleans for a tech hub. But that's exactly why Amir Reavis-Bey knew he could make a difference in the Crescent City. In 2012, Reavis-Bey left a well-paying job as an investment-banking technologist in New York City to join Code for America, a fledgling nonprofit group that puts civic-minded techies to work in city governments around the country. He felt some culture shock at first–the tech infrastructure "was very different than in New York, to say the least," he notes–but before long, Reavis-Bey and his three fellow team members figured out how to use their digital know-how to make a mark on New Orleans. After a monthlong survey of residents and officials, they focused on the problem of urban blight: the damaged and abandoned properties that afflict large portions of New Orleans. Over their year of service, the Code for America fellows built BlightStatus, an app that uses city data to allow residents to instantly find out the status of properties in their neighborhoods and helps officials keep on top of the spread of blight. "We were able to solve a problem that citizens brought to us," says Reavis-Bey. "This was a huge chance to make an impact."
That kind of impact–using digital tools to make a real-world difference–is exactly why Jennifer Pahlka founded Code for America several years ago. After nearly a decade of organizing Web- and game-development conferences, Pahlka was searching for her next project in 2009 when she had a conversation with Andrew Greenhill, then the chief of staff for the mayor's office in Tucson, Ariz. The tech world's focus had turned to Washington–it was energized by Barack Obama's innovative campaign–but Greenhill told Pahlka it was local governments that really needed help. Municipalities sit on vast amounts of data–think of all the paperwork an urban bureaucracy can create–but lacked the technical expertise and the money to make it accessible and usable. Meanwhile, smartphone-enabled citizens were increasingly expecting city services to be delivered by the Web. "It was a moment where you could see what the principles and the values of the Web could offer government," Pahlka says.
Government 2.0
Code for America brings those values and skills to government service. Programs like Teach for America and the Peace Corps recruit smart college graduates into education and economic-development work, but there were few ways to channel young people with a tech background into public service–even though digital skills are becoming more and more important at every level of government. Pahlka wanted to build a similar model for tech but wasn't sure if it would work. With Silicon Valley companies throwing money and perks at the best engineers, would techies be willing to take a year off from the private sector to work at not much above minimum wage? (Code for America fellows receive a $35,000 stipend.) "I was very worried that it would be a tough sell," she says.
She needn't have been. In 2011, the program's first year, Code for America received 360 applicants for just 20 spots. It turned out that there was no shortage of coders, engineers and designers out there who were looking for a chance to use their extremely valuable skills for something bigger than the next hot mobile-gaming app. (It also helps that most of the fellows were already fairly-well-compensated professionals.) By 2013, the program had grown to include 28 fellows operating in 10 cities, ranging from Oakland, Calif., to New York City. In February it received a $5 million donation from the Knight Foundation. "It's such a neat way to learn how cities work," says Ariel Kennan, a designer who is now working on the Kansas City, Mo., team. "I never thought I would work with the government, but it's been really inspiring."
Once they've had about a month of training–mostly to prepare them for the culture shock of moving from Silicon Valley to city hall–the fellows are dispatched to work in their chosen cities, which themselves have to apply to earn a spot in the Code for America program. The work is meant to go deeper than just improving a city's official website or putting the mayor on Twitter. City governments generate a vast amount of data, everything from bus routes to property-tax records to police reports, but much of that information tends to molder away in archives, untouched except by those motivated citizens willing to make public-records requests. Code for America, which is part of a broader movement to improve the way governments function, aims to liberate that information and find creative ways to use it–and to do so inexpensively. With municipalities under increasing financial pressure from a combination of sagging tax revenue and federal spending cuts, that's a powerful draw for city officials. "We can no longer do things in the old way," says Karen Boyd, communications director for Oakland, who notes that the city has seen staffing reduced by 25% over the past 10 years. "Technology is moving in a new direction, and government needs to move that way too."
In Oakland, Code for America is helping create a Web-based outlet for public records and an online public tracking system for city procurement spending. Cris Cristina, a former design manager at Cisco and an Oakland resident for more than five years, notes that the city government has sometimes had an uneasy relationship with its citizens–especially since the violent reaction to the Occupy protests in 2011. For Cristina, his work as a Code for America fellow isn't just about streamlining city services via the Web; it's also about restoring public trust. Before his three-person team even began programming, they spent a month in consultations with citizens and officials, trying to gauge what they wanted and what they needed. "We started with the city staff and went down to people on the street," says Cristina. "There's a level of transparency that the public is looking for, and that's what we're trying to provide."
Dot Give
Technology alone won't fix America's cities. You may be able to design an app to track blighted buildings, but you'll need more than software to repair them. Still, the success of Code for America demonstrates the latent desire among some young techies, who are usually assumed to be too rich and busy to do volunteer work, to do something for their communities. "You can walk by your neighbor and ignore their problems, or you can build an app to help them," says Reavis-Bey. "You just need to be a person interested in improving the city where they live."
I recently came across a discussion in the Accessible Innovators group on LinkedIn, regarding making a href="javascript:void(0)" and accessibility. My first inclination was to say never do that, but that’s not a solution for everyone. After recommending using ARIA role="dialog", another group member responded that it’s not that great for accessibility. According to AccDC Technical Style Guide, role="dialog" has enough issues to warrant not using it. I did some quick googling and unsurfaced screen reader testing of ARIA role=”dialog”, which touches on this, however it didn’t cover JAWS 12. I have JAWS Version 12.0.1158 installed, so I figured I’d give it a whirl. It would be ideal to combine the data from both sources, however AccDC didn’t have the data (at least not in tabular format) to share. By no means am I discrediting AccDC, actually it looks like Brian has done an extremely in-depth and well versed job in creating it, I’m just trying to push the data along and get it all in once place. The table below shows my findings, which I submitted to @wcagtest to be compiled into the rest of the results.
Using Aria role=dialog to expose a dialog (pop-up div box) in JAWS Version 12.0.1158 (Windows 7)
chrome Version 28.0.1469.0 m
Tab
Down Arrow
tab display a dialog button
enter – modal shows
enter – reads the title of the document
enter – does not declare ok button
tab – declares cancel button
tab – announces tab
tab – declares ok button
down arrow – link
down arrow – display a dialog button
enter – triggers modal
does not focus on ok button
down arrow – cancel button
cycyling through the arrows, the ok and cancel button are declared
firefox 21
Tab
Down Arrow
tab – display a dialog button
enter – just an example dialog. ok button (receives focus) to activate press space bar
tab – cancel button (receives focus) to activate press space bar
down arrow – link
down arrow – display a dialog button
enter – just an example dialog. ok button (receives focus) to activate press space bar
down arrow – does nothing
the rest of the arrows do nothing. the document moves (scrollbar) but focus does not change and jaws says nothing
ie10
Tab
Down Arrow
tab – display a dialog button
enter – just an example dialog. ok button (receives focus) to activate press space bar
tab – cancel button (receives focus) to activate press space bar
down arrow – link (does not receive focus)
down arrow – display a dialog button (does not receive focus)
enter – just an example dialog. just an example button (does not receive focus) to activate press space bar
down arrow – does nothing
the rest of the arrows do nothing. the document moves (scrollbar) but focus does not change and jaws says nothing
opera 12.15
Tab
Down Arrow
tabs go right over example into results table arrows do nothing except scroll via scrollbar
safari 5.1.7
Tab
Down Arrow
tabs go right over example into results table arrows do nothing except scroll via scrollbar
I attended “Rethinking the Community Calendar” tonight, a talk by Jon Udell (@judell) about creating and cultivating a community calendar. One immediate, glaring takeaway is that iCalendar, AKA iCal is a web standard, and not a proprietary format owned by Apple. Apple Calendar did use to be called iCal, but this is no longer the case. It is also designed to be independent of the transport protocol, and iCal data can be embedded in HTML using the hCalendar Microformat. iCal is very much like RSS, however, and this is important, they are not the same; you should already have an RSS feed if you are publishing content on your site. If you are publishing events in a calendar, you should also have an iCal feed. While pointing out their differences is necessary, thinking of iCal like RSS was an easy way for me to paint the picture in my head. I blog a new post, my feed automagically pushes an alert to everyone who’s consuming my feed.
think pubsub, for iCal
Jon Udell,2013-04-23,”Rethinking the Community Calendar”
This “pubsub for iCal” is actually called elmcity and is open source for everyone who wants to get their hands dirty. (One of my initial thoughts was yes! Another tool to break away from silos!) As a web developer, I can fork this and have my own instance up and running today, but that’s not realistic for the masses. Which is essentially what the brunt of the talk was about, empowering citizens to control their data.
The Daily Press sponsored the event, and will be empowering Hampton Roads citizens to control their calendar data, as they have teamed up with Microsoft and Jon, to deploy elmcity. Hampton Roads’ elmcity will be among the first communities
in the country to adopt; this is exciting, ground-breaking stuff in the public forum, and will hopefully work in building momentum for adoption by the masses.
Two Reasons Why You Should Care About Publishing iCalendar Feeds
Personal Information Management
When you publish an iCalendar feed, people can subscribe to it from their personal calendar programs: Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, others. They can see public events (the soccer game, the musical performance) as overlays on their personal events (the dentist appointment, the birthday party).
Social information management
When you publish an iCalendar feed, it can syndicate to one or more services like the elmcity collector. A comprehensive view of what’s going on in a town or neighborhood can therefore emerge without any central management or control. Individuals, groups, and organizations can write down their event information once, and have it propagate through the syndication network without loss of fidelity or control.
Moving Forward: Hampton Roads
The best thing for Hampton Roads locals to do is to make sure that your calendar feeds are iCalendar; “Your” meaning feeds that you curate, as well as feeds that you use. If a feed that you curate is not, you can use
third party options like Google Calendar or Outlook. If the feeds that you use are not, contact the site admin and request that they provide an iCalendar feed. Once you have the URL to your iCalendar feed, or to a site’s feed that you use, simply submit it to the Daily Press. The rest is taken care of by the software. The more feeds the merrier!
Moving Forward for Web Developers
If you’re not using the calendar standard, start using the calendar standard. If you’re relying on a service for your calendar, ensure
that they are using the ical standard. I’m not aware of adoption statistics, but awareness of the standard is not that high (at least not to me), so I’m assuming adoption is not either. Notable non standard users are Constant Contact and Facebook. Jon is actually pulling in events from Facebook using the
developer API, which is cool, but that shouldn’t have to be necessary, plus who knows when they’ll pull the plug on it.
Code for Hampton Roads celebrated Document Freedom Day 2013 on March 27th, along with 57 other user groups across the world. dfd luckily occurred on the date of our weekly meetup, so it seemed only natural to tie it into one of our group projects, hrvawiki.org. Unlocking (liberating) data is also core to our values, so participating was a no-brainer. Our “celebration” consisted of freeing data locked in proprietary formats and relocating the data into the wiki.
Document Freedom Day 2013 was a rousing success for us in terms of turnout: ten members (some new!) showed up and aided in the data liberation. Roughly ten new pages were added to the wiki, along with a few pictures and maps. While that may not seem exponential, it was a 16% increase in the wiki’s total number of pages. Furthermore, the number of participants was nearly double from our previous meetups. Lastly, as a badge of honor, Code for Hampton Roads was the lone participating group from the United States.
Code for America Hampton Roads Brigade working to liberate data on Document Freedom Day 2013
Overall Document Freedom Day 2013 was a success: we added content to our LocalWiki, while achieving the main goal of liberating data to be shared on the web. Serving the same purpose(s) was quite beneficial and hopefully next year’s dfd will be even more liberating, not just for us, but internationally! It would be sweet to see all of the brigades involved next year! Imagine what could be accomplished!
