Science Tony

By McDonald, T . | Date 13th of December 2017 When a human wakes up in the morning, the next thing to happen depends on the needs of that human.  For instance, if hungry, putting on a dressing gown and heading to the fridge is the most likely thing to happen. If the bladder is full, a trip to the toilet will occur before raiding the fridge. Furthermore, most people can perform these tasks independently, but what if the subject is a robot? Writers have written about autonomous robots and androids with super intelligence for decades. With that in mind, how would an autonomous robot achieve true autonomy? Before understanding an autonomous robot's needs, developers must first consider humans needs and second understand the meaning of an autonomous robot then apply human needs to the autonomous robot. Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs First, before understanding the needs of autonomous robots, developers must first consider human needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a g

By McDonald, T . | Date: 6th of December 2017 Almost everybody likes to use the internet for a varied number of reasons. With the increase in disability awareness and the mobile market, every developer needs to think carefully about accessibility from the beginning of the design process. It is a top priority it to consider the needs of accessibility for legal reasons, and because of the mobile market. Accessibility and the law Accessibility needs is a top priority for a developer for legal reasons. Some users will be using assistive technologies to access the internet, for example, screen readers used by people with sight impairments. Subsequently, HTML has attributes in image anchors such as alt and longdesc, which will allow the reeding aloud of a text description of an image or graphic by a screen reader. This is, however, only one example, so it is good practice to involve people with disabilities throughout the design process to get a better understanding of individu

By McDonald, T. | Date 1st of December 2017 You may have wondered what goes into building a webpage or thought about becoming a web developer yourself. If so, you may have noticed that web developers and technology businesses encourage workers to volunteering in the community because it can be a valuable experience. Can volunteering in a charity shop improve web development understanding if a shop is thought of like a webpage even though volunteering in one will not make anyone a web developer? Is thinking of a webpage like a shop useful? Shops have services going on in the background such as sorting products much as a website will sort data. The back room is unseen by the shopper, yet remains a crucial part of the service much as a server is critical to a webpage. In addition, shops have a window, which displays the services much as a landing page does for a website. Service users must be able to see what the shop has for sale just as a landing page needs to clearly di

By McDonald, T.   |  Date 21 of November 2017 Sometimes life can leave us with time on our hands and nothing to fill the void. In other cases, a person may just need a chance to get started or restarted in working life, or maybe, like me, you spend all your time in front of a screen coding and studying and simply need a break. In any case, some suitable activity can provide the experiences all people need in order to achieve a feeling of fulfilment. Volunteering is one such activity that can provide much more than people realise. With this in mind, what can someone expect from volunteering? A volunteer can expect a variety of duties and benefits. Duties in the shop A volunteer can expect a variety of activities. The standard model of a charity shop is to have clothing, housewares and book sections with the intension of providing quality second hand goods in order to support a charity financially. Standard duties in a charity shop can vary but mainly involve sorting and

By McDonald, T. | Date: 19th of November 2017 In the previous blog, usability was briefly covered. Usability is about ensuring a site is easy and pleasant to use. This blog, briefly covers accessibility. Considering accessibility will increase audience and avoid prosecution, so it is worth adhering too.  Make a site accessible to maximise the audience . You may be excused for thinking that accessibility is the same as usability since the two ideas do overlap. However, while usability is more about using the site, accessibility is more about accessing the site using assistive technologies. Assistive technologies are things such as screen readers, which read everything on the screen and even read allowed a description of an image or graphic. In order to do this the image or graphic must have a description in the html code within the tag for the image. Before I go any further, it would be good to examine disability. If you go to a shop and it has a door ten meters in

By McDonald. T | Date: 12th November 2017 As the web continues to grow more and more people begin to depend on it. Everyone is using the net for all sorts of things including using it as the new high street. We can shop online, socialise online, book holidays online, study for our degree online; in fact, you name it and there is more than likely a website for it. For this reason, it is good to know if a website is reaching the maximum target audience. This blog is in two parts. In this blog, part one, I will cover usability and in part two I will cover accessibility . Make a site user friendly to maximise the audience and audience retention. Have you ever been to a site and left it quickly or stayed for hours at a site? Why did you do that? People go to a site for many reasons including: looking for information; to purchase something; or to use a service. With this in mind if any of us went to a shop and it did not have what we wanted we would leave, correct