The North Meets South podcast, hosted by PHP community members Jacob Bennett and Michael Dyrynda, has posted their latest episode - Episode #47: Reinventing form controls, typing ahead, and converting MySQLi to Query Builder

In this new show Jacob and Michael return after a hiatus during the summer to talk largely about accessibility in applications (including forms and the overall UI) and updating the Query Builder to work with MySQLi versus MySQL.

You can listen to this latest episode either using the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 of the show. If you enjoy it, be sure to subscribe to their feed and follow them on Twitter to stay up to date on when new shows are released.

On the SitePoint PHP blog Parham Doustdar has posted a look at accessibility in PHP tools or how easy they make it for those with disabilities (such as his own blindness) to do their development work.

Usually when I tell people that I’m blind, many people ask me how I can use the computer. “Is someone reading you my messages?” I remember someone asking. Many people imagine that I have this super-nifty speech recognition software that I can just talk to, and it would do anything, even write code. Imagine dictating code to a speech recognition system! [...] I gave an answer on Quora, to someone who had asked How does a visually impaired computer programmer do programming? I recommend you go through that answer to have a better context on what I’ll be talking about in this post.

He starts with a look at how visually impaired people could normally use a computer using screen readers, interaction with the software (all through the keyboard) and some things that just can't be done with this setup. He covers some of the issues screen readers have when parsing web applications and links to the WebAIM articles page for more information there. He then gets into the IDE comparison covering essential, assistance and supplementary features as well as community engagement around accessibility issues. He compares:

• PHPStorm
• SublimeText
• NetBeans
• Eclipse-based IDEs (Zend Studio, Eclipse PDT)
• Notepad++

Unfortunately, most of the software on his list received a rating of "zero" on the scale with the exception of Notepad++, though it still has places it falls flat.

The Acquia blog has posted the second part in their series sharing tips for developers around web accessibility. In this new post they focus on page content and making things accessible.

We’re at the halfway point of what hopefully has been a helpful guide for developers to make a website accessible for all visitors. (If you missed the first part of this two-part series, please click here.) In this blog, we’ll review how instructional text, navigation, and other parts of development can allow those with blindness and low vision, deafness, and other disabilities to make full use of a website.

In the post they share helpful tips on:

• There’s a Proper Place for Instructional Text
• A Search that Searches When Instructed
• Jump Directly to Main Content
• An Easier Way to Zoom and Shrink
• Know What to Show; What to Hide

Each item comes with a brief summary (and screenshots where it helps) to illustrate the point.

The Acquia blog has posted a few helpful usability tips for developers to help you think about how users will be interacting with the systems they create. This post is the first in a four part series and kicks off the content with four good tips.

Creating the code that makes a website accessible to all visitors doesn’t have to be as time-consuming or resource-intensive as you might think. All you need to do is follow some simple steps that require a little extra time and effort. [...] It’s up to both the developer and the client to achieve site accessibility. Although they usually work together in the planning and later stages of website creation, a developer and client also have separate responsibilities in making a site accessible.

In this post they touch on points around the use of "read more", clear requirements for input and good error messaging practices.

The Voices of the ElePHPant podcast has released their latest episode, an interview with a member of the Los Angeles PHP community, Joe Devon.

Cal's "three questions"

• What is "Global Accessibility Awareness Day" and how did it turn out?
• Tell us the good and bad parts about selecting talks for a conference.
• Tell us what you're doing as an independent developer and what advice do you have for someone wanting to go out on their own?

You can listen to this latest episode either via the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

The IBuildings blog has posted the latest podcast in their Dutch PHP Conference talks series - Christian Wenz on Web Accessibility.

Making a web site accessible may require extra effort, but also increases the target audience. The W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative released their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 specification in May 1999, and version 2.0 followed almost ten years later. This session will give you a good overview of the concepts, principles and guidelines of the specifications and provides you with a basic understanding of how to create accessible web content.

You can either use the in-page player to listen to this latest episode or download it directly.