Hotel and training centre, Melksham, Wiltshire
High quality accommodation for course delegates, business travellers and the leisure visitor too.

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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Making pages clearer - easy Disability Discrimination Act Compliance

Welcome to the new, clearer, Horse's Mouth. You should spot that the text size is slightly larger, and contrasts better against the background. And if you're not keen on the new look, you are now empowered to change it to suit your own preference - simply click on the "customise" link on the right of the main page, and you'll be able to choose the colour combination and font size you want in another window, then choose "reload" that's just to the right of customise. If you're viewing this page on the archive, then the "Accessibility" menu will let you make a new selection ... and whichever way your selection is made, it'll be remembered for subsequent pages via a cookie.

The MovableType software that I use for this daily update is an excellent piece of software - but it's written and updated outside Europe, and doesn't necessarily conform to UK and European requirements. If this update provides a service, and I guess it does, then I'm required under DDA to make all practical efforts to make it equally accessible to everyone if asked, be they colour blind, or if they find a tiny text hard to read. Plenty more information from folks like the RNIB.

I could, probably, have claimed that I'm not providing a service when asked - that this is just a personal daily note. But I don't feel that's morally the correct position to take. Nor is it the correct long term business position to take - I want readers, and happy, non-struggling readers too.

Our main site and business is already DDA compliant - we've taken all reasonable steps to provide a level playing field, or one that's biased in favour of people with a disability ... but how to do it with a standard piece of software? It turns out that PHP and style sheets come to the rescue; the HTML pages are unchanged, but the style sheet is dynamically generated to meet the individual's request.

Here's part of the top of the style sheet code :

<?php
header("content-type: text/css");
if ($_COOKIE["whcmy"]) {
  @mysql_pconnect((database login info));
  @mysql_select_db($sqlaccount);
  $q = @mysql_query(
    "select * from whcmy where userkey = '$_COOKIE[whcmy]'");
  if ($row = @mysql_fetch_assoc($q)) {
    $fontsize = $row[fontsize];
  }
}
$bfsize = 12;
if ($fontsize == 4) $bfsize = 10;
?>


And within the CSS code, you'll find things like:

#banner h1 {
font-size: <?= $bfsize+12 ?>px;


If you want to learn more about using style sheets in this way, the RNIB offer abasic course at the HTML and CSS level - see here, and we at Well House Consultants can provide you with PHP training, MySQL database training, and so on so that you can automate and integrate DDA compliance. Not only does it makes legal sense ... it also makes moral and business sense.
(written 2006-09-23, updated 2009-01-04)

Commentatorsays ...
Cait:Why not use relative units instead of fixed such as pixels?
(comment added 2006-09-23 15:07:21)
Graham Ellis:Good question! I guess I'm personally more comfortable having more detailed control, and I wanted to leave the way open to provide a single very large font size for all the text should that be required by anyone in the future.
(comment added 2006-09-23 15:19:56)
Cait:Mozilla and Opera products already support a user set minimum font size option. IE 7 (from what I've read) will allow users to override font sizes specified in pixels with View -> Text Size -> Small, Medium, Large. It seems to me that font sizes in pixels will eventually become a thing of the past as users gain more control of their browser settings.

My favourite method of setting sizes has been with a %/em combination (http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/typography/index.html). Been using it for quite some time and it's showed consistent results cross-platform/cross-browser (with the exception of Netscape/IE 4, for which I use the @import trick to serve them pixels).

So if I use a stylesheet switcher to offer a change in font size, it can be done with one change to the body's font-size, from 76% to a larger percentage.
(comment added 2006-09-24 06:18:19)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
W511 - Web and Intranet - Further Aspects
  [528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
  [1001] .pdf files - upload via PHP, store in MySQL, retrieve - (2006-12-19)
  [1187] Updating a page strictly every minute (PHP, Perl) - (2007-05-14)
  [1970] Plagarism - who is copying my pages? - (2009-01-02)

M162 - Well House Manor - Disabled Facilities
  [252] A West End show - (2005-03-20)
  [654] Making use of disabled facilities - (2006-03-22)

G905 - Well House Consultants - Blogging and Blog Administration
  [1] First Jottings - (2004-08-05)
  [6] Blog v Forum - (2004-08-07)
  [18] Wanted: More hours in the day - (2004-08-18)
  [141] Too technical? - (2004-12-05)
  [145] A comment on comments - (2004-12-09)
  [177] Blogs come of age - (2005-01-14)
  [185] Who am I? - (2005-01-21)
  [204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
  [231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
  [245] I'm not blogging it - (2005-03-14)
  [359] Chicken soup without the religion - (2005-06-26)
  [390] Moderating wiki, blog, and forum contributions - (2005-07-26)
  [405] Horse's Mouth is a year old - (2005-08-07)
  [410] Reading a news or blog feed (RSS) in your PHP page - (2005-08-12)
  [425] Caching an XML feed - (2005-08-26)
  [508] Comment, please! - (2005-11-28)
  [671] Both ends of the animal - (2006-04-05)
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [1077] In answer to 'am I glad I started a blog' ... - (2007-02-12)
  [1203] A Fresh horse - (2007-05-24)
  [1978] From spam to mod_alias - finding resources - (2009-01-05)
  [2000] 2000th article - Remember the background and basics - (2009-01-18)
  [2192] Copy writing - allowing for the cut - (2009-05-21)
  [2449] Four aspects - Chamber, Transport, Courses and Hotel - (2009-10-11)
  [2517] Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections - (2009-11-29)
  [2564] Microblogging services - Plurk, Twitter, Jaiku and more - (2010-01-05)
  [2751] Going off at a tangent, for a ramble - (2010-05-04)
  [2823] Where have all the bloggers gone? - (2010-06-24)
  [3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
  [3163] Twitter - the special use of @ # and http: in tweets - (2011-02-09)
  [3186] How to add a customised twitter feed to your site - (2011-02-27)
  [3208] Links for social media, microblogs and business networking - (2011-03-20)
  [3514] Microblogging - what I should have tweeted in the last 48 hours - (2011-11-10)
  [3759] The five oldest blogs and the horses mouth - (2012-06-09)
  [4000] 9 years, and 4000 articles on - (2013-02-09)
  [4121] Has your Twitter feed stopped working? Switching to their new API - (2013-06-23)
  [4292] The Horse is back! - (2014-09-15)
  [4568] Moderation - and the tendency to over-moderate - (2015-11-02)
  [4714] The technical article feed continues - personal updates more proactive on Facebook now! - (2016-10-30)

A213 - Web Application Deployment - Commercial and Legal Aspects
  [142] Colour for access - (2004-12-06)
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [532] Copyright - how much can I legally copy? - (2005-12-17)
  [746] Domain Listing Center and Domain Registry of America - (2006-06-06)
  [759] Watch your Google profile - (2006-06-13)
  [795] Remember a site's non-technical issues too - (2006-07-07)
  [994] Training on Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-17)
  [1054] UK legal requirements for your commercial web site - (2007-01-27)
  [1431] Getting the community on line - some basics - (2007-11-13)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1486] Does anyone understand Lithuanian? - (2007-12-27)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1840] Validating Credit Card Numbers - (2008-10-14)
  [1937] Getting hold of the wrong end of the stick - (2008-12-12)
  [2140] Beware - giving copyright away when you upload a picture - Dogs Trust - (2009-04-25)
  [2252] Leaping dog, Leaping horse, copyright of old masters - (2009-06-20)
  [2592] Re-using our pictures - (2010-01-21)
  [2686] Freedom of Information - consideration for web site designers - (2010-03-20)
  [3104] Catering in Syracuse, the Saigon Cafe, stolen images and Christmas - (2010-12-25)
  [3168] Web Sites - Subject to Advertising Standards from 1st March - check your sites - (2011-02-13)
  [3745] Legal change - You need to obtain user consent if you use cookies on your website - (2012-06-01)
  [3746] Google Analytics and the new UK Cookie law - (2012-06-02)
  [3747] An easy way to comply with the new cookie law if your site is well designed - (2012-06-02)
  [4234] Change to Libel and Defamation laws from 1st January 2014 - (2013-12-31)
  [4283] Can a legitimate forum post become illegal a year later? - (2014-07-11)


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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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