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MILAN (AP) - Milan prosecutors on Monday demanded a prison sentence of six years and a lifetime ban from public office for former Premier Silvio Berlusconi in his sex-for-hire trial.
The request came days after an appeals court upheld a four-year sentence and five-year ban on public office in a tax fraud case against Berlusconi. The two cases, coming to a head at a delicate moment for Italy, raise questions about his political future.
Berlusconi, who has dominated Italy's political scene for two decades, headed the center-right coalition that finished second in February elections and which is in an uneasy coalition with the center-left. He has no Cabinet post, but he serves in Parliament.
In the prostitution case, Berlusconi is accused of paying for sex with an underage Moroccan teen at lavish parties he hosted as premier, then trying to cover it up.
Berlusconi said in a statement that the prosecutor's summing up was full of "theories, conjecture, far-fetched notions and falsehoods inspired by prejudice and hatred."
Prosecutor Ilda Boccassini told the court during closing arguments Monday that the young woman, Karima el-Mahroug, known by the nickname "Ruby the Heart Stealer," lied when she denied having had sex with Berlusconi. Boccassini said "there is no doubt that Ruby had sex with the defendant and that she received benefits in exchange."
She put the monetary sum at 4.5 million euros ($5.8 million) from the then-premier, citing a written note and some phone calls where money exchanges were discussed.
Boccassini told the court the young women invited to the politician's parties "were part of a system of prostitution organized for the pleasure of Silvio Berlusconi." She said there was "no doubt" that it was known to the organizers of the parties that el-Mahroug was underage when they included her on the guest list.
Under Italian law, it is illegal to pay for sex with a minor under 18 years of age. Boccassini pointed out that it was Berlusconi's own government that had raised the age from 17 - el-Mahroug's age at the time of their alleged encounters. Both Berlusconi and el-Mahroug have denied any sexual contact.
Boccassini described el-Mahroug as a troubled adolescent who had run away from her parents and foster homes, and had been formally accused of petty theft of wallets and expensive jewelry on several occasions.
While working occasionally as a hostess in nightclubs, el-Mahroug wore designer clothes and at times carried as much as 1,000 euros ($1,300) in cash, the prosecutor said.
"We have no doubt that Ruby prostituted herself" before coming in contact with anyone in Berlusconi's circle in February 2010, Boccassini said.
Berlusconi has vigorously denied the sex-for-hire charges, and said he intervened on el-Mahroug's behalf when she was picked up for allegedly stealing 3,000 euros from an acquaintance because he believed at the time she was the daughter of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and wanted to avoid an international incident.
Boccassini said he knew that was not the case, and that he had "abused his position" to help the minor avoid legal problems and himself avoid discussion of "sex for payment." It this is abuse of power charge, on top of the underage sex with a prostitute one, that carries the potential lifetime political ban.
The prostitution trial had been delayed by more than two months for Italy's national election, an eye ailment for which Berlusconi was hospitalized, and a change of venue request that was denied. His defense has the next word in the trial, and a verdict is expected in the coming weeks.
Just two days before the prosecutor's long-delayed closing arguments on Monday in the sensational sex-for-hire case, Berlusconi led a public rally against magistrates, whom he called "blinded by prejudice and hatred toward him." His private TV network on Sunday evening also aired a piece about the trial discrediting the prosecutors' case.
If the tax fraud verdict and sentence are confirmed, they include a five-year ban on public office. A final appeal is expected and could be ruled on before the end of the year.
In Italy, defendants are legally considered innocent until all appeals are exhausted, and Berlusconi's lawyers are expected to appeal the tax fraud case to the nation's highest Court of Cassation once the reasoning for the decision is published.


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Or download our app "Guided Lessons by Education.com" on your device's app store.
Tightrope Walking
With this game, your child won't know he's practising his balancing skills and gaining experience with the directions forward, backward, and sideways. He'll only know he's having fun pretending to be in the circus!
What You Need:
- Long jump rope or strip of masking tape
What You Do:
- Place the rope or masking tape in a straight line on the floor or ground.
- Invite your child to pretend she's walking the tightrope like an acrobat in the circus.
- Once she's comfortable walking in a forward direction, invite her to walk sideways in both directions and, finally, backward.
Eventually you can ask your child to try different locomotor skills. You can either assign them – such as tiptoeing, galloping, and hopping – or add a problem-solving element to the activity. For example, challenge your child to find three different ways to move across the tightrope in a forward direction. This is a great experience in problem solving!

subset: commoncrawl


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Dozens of homeless people lined up for chili dogs Tuesday night from Dog Haus, one of CNN's top five hot dog places, at an emergency winter shelter set up at the National Guard Armory in Glendale.
The restaurant, with locations in Pasadena and Alhambra, doled out heaping servings to Ascencia's winter shelter residents in honor of National Chili Day.
PHOTOS: Dog Haus feeds the homeless in Glendale
The 90-day shelter, run by Glendale's largest nonprofit, closes Saturday.
Follow Brittany Levine on Google+ and on Twitter: @brittanylevine


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Judge Van Voorhis wrote well over a thousand formal legal opinions, including his dissents, and participated in thousands of cases which came before him during his thirty-one years on the bench.
He was born July 14, 1897, in the farm house now occupied by his daughter Allis and her husband on Thomas Avenue in the Town of Irondequoit. In fact, Dr. Thomas, after whom the road was named, delivered him. The judge's father, Eugene Van Voorhis, was a distinguished lawyer and president of the Monroe County Bar Association. He was a member of the firm of John Van Voorhis & Sons, which also included at the time of the judge's birth, his grandfather, John Van Voorhis, Jr., and his uncle, Charles Van Voorhis. In 1896, Eugene Van Voorhis married Allis Sherman, who was a dynamic lady in her own right, having a spirit more like her father's first cousin, William Tecumseh Sherman, than her own mild-mannered father.
The law firm which the judge's grandfather had started prospered from the hard work of its partners. John Van Voorhis, Jr. left the farm he grew up on in the Mendon-Bloomfield area to come to Rochester to read law in 1848 in the office of John W. Stebbins. At the time, his father - the Judge's great-grandfather, also John Van Voorhis - who was a farmer during the week and a Methodist minister on Sundays, believed his son was headed for eternal damnation. By his reckoning, not only was farming the only virtuous occupation, but the practice of law was immoral.
Nonetheless, the judge's grandfather had a spectacular career. Although he never went beyond eighth grade in school, he taught himself Latin and French. After reading law he opened his own office in 1851 in Rochester (later joined by his brother Quincy) and acquired a number of well-known clients, including Frederick Douglas, the Seneca Nation of Indians and others in whose causes he believed. He was elected to Congress three times (1879-1894) and was so outspoken in defense of his causes that he narrowly escaped being reprimanded by the House for speaking too often and too vehemently the first year he was there. As a lawyer, after winning several large awards in negligence cases against the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, he received from the railway an offer to be its general counsel. In his response he politely declined, stating that he could make more money suing than representing them. In 1872, as a result of his service to the Republican party, the judge's grandfather was named counsel to the Monroe County Election Commissioners. In 1872 the commissioners consulted him as to whether they could register a young woman by the name of Susan B. Anthony. His reply was that they could. In his opinion the word "man" in the constitution was generic for both men and women, since the latter also enjoyed constitutional rights. As a result she voted on November 5, 1872. The rest, of course, is history, but when her trial came on the judge's grandfather not only represented the three commissioners, but was co-counsel with Judge Henry R. Selden for Susan B. Anthony herself.
Judge Van Voorhis was born into an active family deeply involved in the political and legal issues of the day. Since his father had moved from the City of Rochester to the Town of Irondequoit in 1896, the judge grew up in a very rural setting. Irondequoit at that time had only a few hundred people, virtually all farmers, and was several hours by steam railway or horse and buggy from the city. In fact during his early years he and his parents would move into his grandfather's house in the city during the winter months. This multi-generational set-up was not the easiest on the future Judge's mother, but educational and stimulating for him.
During his early years on the farm the judge's closest associates were the animals around him. His dog "Rowdy," his pony "Raggie-lug" (which he rode to first place in the Irondequoit Pony Show as a young boy), and a turkey gobbler with a gender identification problem which sat for nearly six weeks on a collection of apples in the ground hoping they would hatch.
As a young boy he had his own ideas about the beauty of indigenous flora, and one day, when his parents were away, he dug a bunch of pretty little three leaf plants in the woods and planted them around the house. Unfortunately he learned the hard way about poison ivy. At his fifth birthday party, which included romping around naked in the mud pond across the road, the guest list consisted of five young lads his same age. As a sign of the judge's loyalty to his friends and theirs to him, all but one of them attended his 80th birthday, 75 years later.
In grade school he attended local private schools in the Rochester area. For high school he went to the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with honors and a prize in public speaking. From the Hill he matriculated at Yale College in 1915. In both boarding school and college he had a heavy dose of the Latin and Greek classics, although his major in college was history. He was admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa society his junior year and graduated in 1919 with Philosophical Orations (Yale's version of a degree summa cum laude). During a hiatus for six months when, because of World War I, Yale closed down, he returned to Rochester and worked as a cub reporter for the Democrat & Chronicle.
After graduating from Yale, he sought out advice from the heads of the leading law schools of the day. First he went to Columbia Law School and spoke personally with Dean Harlan F. Stone (later a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) who, after reviewing his academic record, wanted to enroll him at Columbia. He then went to Yale Law School and was interviewed by Dean Thomas W. Swan (later a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit). Dean Swan likewise wanted to sign him up at Yale Law School. But he wanted to consult additional advisers, so he went to the Harvard Law School, where he was interviewed by their relatively new Dean, Roscoe Pound. After listening to his account of his family and their interest in the law, Dean Pound recommended that he return to Rochester and read law under his father and uncle. This was consistent with his own account of his father's advice that he should "learn the law through the soles of my shoes" rather than in the academic world. As Judge Van Voorhis explained, "The real reason, as father said, was that he thought I was theoretically-minded enough as it was, and that if I didn't get down to brass tacks pretty soon, I would never know what it was all about."1
In 1919 he filed his clerkship papers, passing his bar exams in 1922. In fact, he did so well on his bar exams that a copy of them was retained by the state law examiners and placed in the official archives of the state library to show what a young man could do by reading law instead of going to law school. Despite never having earned a law degree, he ultimately was awarded honorary LL.D. degrees from Hobart College, Albany Law School, University of Rochester, Brooklyn Law School, and New York Law School (where he was an adjunct professor after retiring from the bench).
After being admitted to the bar in 1922, he practiced with his father and uncle until he was elected in 1936 as a Justice of the state Supreme Court. During this interval he took whatever cases he could get his hands on, trying virtually all of the Town Justice Court cases available in the office. By 1924 he was in need of his own secretary and interviewed a number of prospects, giving each one a paragraph or two of dictation. One applicant took down the dictation in shorthand, went to a typewriter (manual in those days), and then quickly typed the dictated paragraphs perfectly, including correct spelling and punctuation. He hired her on the spot. Her name was Evelyn Renagle, later known by her married name, Evelyn Fleming. She remained his secretary throughout his career until she died in the spring of 1983, fifty-nine years later.
On June 2, 1928, Judge Van Voorhis married Linda Gale Lyon (called by her parents and friends "June"). His wife, despite being a very kind, generous, and cultured lady, was very determined, and when she set her sights on him, he did not have a chance. Throughout the judge's public career she was a great help to him politically, often smoothing sensitive political situations. The judge and his wife had three children, Emily (Mrs. Edward R. Harris), June Allis (Mrs. Louis D'Amanda) and Eugene. At the time of his death he had thirteen grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.
In the late 1920s, Van Voorhis became interested in the reform wing of the Town Republican Party led by Tom Broderick, then the Town leader. In 1928, Broderick wrested control from the previous town administration and became Supervisor. Broderick got the town board to name John Van Voorhis as town attorney, a post he held until he went on the bench (but for one year when the Democrats took control of the board).
As town attorney, Van Voorhis took a leading role in one of the leading political controversies of the day: public works financing. Historically, during the 1920s and earlier, there were no particular statewide or even town standards for the acceptance of highways, or even subdivision improvements. Developers would get suburban towns to sell municipal bonds to finance the infrastructure for their developments, claiming that the towns would get their money back through higher assessed values after the houses in these tracts were built. When the depression came, the tracts in many towns including Irondequoit were largely devoid of houses, but the interest on the bonds had to be paid.2 Many towns actually went through insolvency, and the national bankruptcy act was amended to give municipalities and political subdivisions bankruptcy protections. One of the first serious attempts to govern the acceptance of roads from developers came with the enactment of former Section 278 of the Town Law (now Section 279) by chapter 634 of the Laws of 1932. The enactment of this law and others like it was strongly endorsed by Supervisor Broderick and by his town attorney, John Van Voorhis.
But from these endeavors, the pair made political enemies. The Town convinced New York State to sue, on the Town's behalf, several prominent contractors and engineers to recover money obtained illegally from various public districts, boards and officers of the Town.3 In that case the defendants settled for $600,000.00 in 1929. Van Voorhis represented the Town in other litigation involving some of the most prestigious law firms of the day and won.4 By doing so, the seed of opposition to his political advancement had been sown. When Broderick, who by 1936 had become County Republican Leader as well as Supervisor of Irondequoit, proposed Van Voorhis for nomination to the State Supreme Court, Mr. Nixon of the Hubbell, Taylor, Goodwin, Nixon & Hargrave firm and number of other prominent corporate attorneys sought to have the Monroe County Bar Association declare him unfit. The judge's uncle Charles, who kept his ear to the ground politically, learned of what was going on and when Mr. Nixon and others organized a meeting of the association to vote on Van Voorhis's qualifications, his uncle Charles and his father got a number of their old friends, some of whom happened to be judges, to come to the meeting early and sign up as speakers. Since speakers were taken in order of signing, four or five of the sitting judges spoke first, all in strong praise of Van Voorhis's legal abilities. In the face of such praise, his prominent opponents were never able to get the Bar Association to pass their motion declaring him unfit. As a footnote to the judge's entry into politics, Broderick first offered him the nomination to Congress, which he declined on the grounds that it would require political compromises which he could not make in good conscience.
From 1937 through part of 1947, Judge Van Voorhis sat as a trial justice on the State Supreme Court, Seventh Judicial District, and in 1944 he was nominated by the Republican State Committee for election to a vacancy on the Court of Appeals. The nomination was moved at the state convention by the venerable Judge William E. Werner, former judge of the Court of Appeals. But although he carried upstate by nearly a million votes, he was trounced in New York City. Brooklyn alone brought in a million-vote plurality for his opponent, Judge Marvin Dye, with whom Judge Van Voorhis later became very good friends.
In 1947 Governor Dewey designated Van Voorhis to the Appellate Division, First Department at the request of Presiding Justice Francis Martin, who was acquainted with his opinions as a trial judge and very much respected his work. For the next six years he sat in New York for two weeks out of every month. To keep in touch with the bench and bar in Rochester, however, he continued to hold Special Term in the Seventh Judicial District when not in New York. Unlike many judges at Special Term he had a reputation for deciding most motions straight from the bench, dictating into the record his opinions, complete with case names and citations.
In 1953, Governor Dewey appointed Judge Van Voorhis to fill a vacancy on the Court of Appeals. Sometime later at a cocktail party in New York City, Dewey remarked to him that only a strong Governor could have appointed him to the bench because of his independence of mind and decisions, which, though scrupulously following the law, were sometimes politically unpopular. An illustration of what the Governor meant surfaced the next year, when Judge Van Voorhis had to run for election to the Court of Appeals. He handily received the Republican nomination, but the Governor wanted him to be cross-endorsed by the Democrats.
A number of his former colleagues on the Appellate Division, First Department, who had been prominent in the New York City Democratic Party organization, encouraged his cross-endorsement. Upon hearing what was going on, both David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and Alex Rose, president of the United Hat, Cap and Garment Workers, activists in and leaders of the Liberal Party, cut short their vacations and flew back to New York to lobby against his cross-endorsement. At that point Dewey rapidly returned from his vacation out west to lobby in favor of his appointee. After some intense inter-party discussions, Judge Van Voorhis was nominated at the Democratic Party state convention by the leader of the Bronx and seconded by the leader of Monroe County, who together managed to prevail on a majority of the delegates. Judge Van Voorhis ran on both the Republican and Democratic lines in the general election.
As an appellate court judge, he was a prolific writer of opinions. While he is perhaps best remembered for some of his dissents (almost 200 in all), he wrote many more opinions for the majority on both the Appellate Division (126) and Court of Appeals (204).
Virtually all of the legal issues which are regarded as "hot" today were treated in his decisions. He was immensely concerned about protection of what Maitland and other writers about English law would call the rights and liberties of the subject as against the increasing powers of the state. Judge Van Voorhis believed that the right to private property is among the most important of these basic rights. For example, how good is the right to free speech, he reasoned, if the government can take away property from a speaker it dislikes? The same question can be asked of freedom of assembly or freedom of political action or many other basic constitutional rights. He regarded private property rights as a valuable counterbalance to the enormous power and control of government.
The twentieth century saw numerous examples of ruthless regimes that successfully appropriated private property without compensation as a means of political control. In his dissenting opinion in St. Nicholas Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church v. Kedroff (276 A.D. 309, 321 [First Department, 1950] [Van Voorhis, J, dissenting]), Judge Van Voorhis pointed out that Stalinist control of the property of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City would in effect prevent free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the first and fourteenth amendments to the federal constitution.5
He firmly believed the "rule of law" to have been derived from the idea that certain rights such as those to life, liberty, and property are fundamental to the American idea of a free society.6 Blackstone's observation expressed a legal concept fundamental to Judge Van Voorhis's thinking and jurisprudence when he wrote over two hundred years ago:
"So long as these [rights to life, liberty and property] remain inviolate, the subject is perfectly free; for every species of compulsive tyranny and oppression must act in opposition to one or other of these rights, having no other object upon which it can possibly be employed."7
The gradual evisceration of the "public use" limitation on the power of eminent domain was a matter he wrote on often, starting with his dissent in Kaskel v. Impelliteri (306 N.Y. 73 [1953], cert. den. 347 U.S. 934, 98 L.Ed. 2085). In that case he questioned the necessity of taking the entire 6.3 acres between Columbus Circle and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan for the removal of the slum conditions along Ninth Avenue, especially when the property included the Manufacturer's Trust Building, the Manhattan offices of the General Motors Corporation, and the bus terminal of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In his dissent he said "slum clearance" was being used merely as an excuse to take land for the proposed New York Coliseum.
Similarly he dissented in Cannata v. City of New York (11 N.Y. 2d 210 [1962]) in which was questioned the constitutionality of the statute pursuant to which the City proposed to condemn 95 acres of land in Brooklyn for resale to unidentified private developers for the "Flatlands Urban Industrial Park." He opposed what he considered to be an extension of the slum clearance rationale of Kaskel to permit eminent domain to be used to acquire properties that were not substandard (but might become such), so that they might be resold to "private developers whose projects are believed by the municipal administration to be more in harmony with the times."
He dissented again in Courtesy Sandwich Shop, Inc. v. Port of New York Authority (12 N.Y. 2d 379 [1963]), disputing that the statute authorizing condemnation of lands in lower Manhattan for the World Trade Center was constitutionally deficient.8 In Courtesy, he believed that by permitting the Port Authority to condemn all sorts of perfectly good rental properties in order to construct new rental properties to be rented by the Port Authority to other private tenants, the last remaining excuses for a "public use," even the fairly slim ones in the Cannata case, were cast aside and that the "public use" constitutional limitation in the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the federal constitution and the corresponding state constitutional provisions were effectively nullified.
Some forty years later the concerns which he expressed in those dissents have been prominently echoed in the recent dissents of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Clarence Thomas in Kelo v. City of New London (545 U.S. 469, 125 S. Ct. 2655 [2005]). Although the property owners lost in Kelo on a five to four vote, Judge Van Voorhis would have been both surprised and pleased to see such diverse groups as The National Association of Home Builders, sixteen or more distinguished law professors, the King Ranch, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, AARP, the West Harlem Business Group, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, among others, filing briefs amicae in support of the positions he put forward in his dissents in Kaskel and its progeny.
He also had a distrust of the growing power of administrative bodies and the exercise of quasi-legislative and executive power in essentially the unelected, undemocratic organs of government, but recognized that in our modern complex society the place of administrative law and the functions of bureaucracies were indispensable.9
In line with his comments in his Cornell Law Quarterly article, Broad Fields of Law, Judge Van Voorhis voted in a number of cases to uphold the administrative decisions of local boards or administrative bodies.10 In one of his earlier decisions, he held in Vangellow v. City of Rochester (190 Misc. 128 [1947]) that the city's adoption of a major street plan which involved designating a ten-foot strip across plaintiff's property for future highway expansion did not wholly void the city's ordinance and that the court could do no more than refer the matter to the Zoning Board of Appeal.
At the same time, he freely opposed administrative bodies when he thought they had acted improperly, unconstitutionally, or outside of their jurisdiction.11 In cases where there was a background of political pressures behind administrative action, Judge Van Voorhis was especially careful to see that unreasonable or arbitrary administrative action be stopped. In Trio Distributor Corporation v. City of Albany (2 N.Y. 2d 690 [1957]), the Good Humor Corporation challenged a local law that required a second attendant to be on its trucks to protect and safeguard children gathered around to buy anything appealing to children, whatever that might be. The record showed a series of legislative attempts (at least one of which had previously been declared unconstitutional) by the City of Albany to circumscribe the activities of ice cream peddlers (Schrager v. City of Albany, 197 Misc. 903 [S. Ct., Rensselaer Cty, 1950]). Implicit in the record were facts indicating that a political leader of Albany wanted to protect a local rival business from competition by Good Humor. In an opinion by Judge Van Voorhis, the Court held that the wording of the statute was unconstitutionally vague.
In Sleepy Hollow Valley Committee v. McMorran (20 N.Y. 2d 190 [1967]), the issue before the court was whether the State Superintendent of Public Works had the power to change 3.5 miles of the route for a state highway specifically designated in Chapter 290 of the Laws of 1965. Although no specific reason was given for the deviation, the route originally designated by the legislature was to have passed through certain prominent estates in Pocantico Hills. Writing for the court, Judge Van Voorhis held that the power of the Superintendent to modify highways so designated by the legislature was limited by law to minor ones for engineering reasons, and that there were factual issues involved requiring the denial of the motion to dismiss the complaint.
He was especially concerned by inroads on citizens' property rights through zoning, and in numerous opinions or dissenting opinions discussed limits on such powers.12 Perhaps his most compelling dissent on the subject of zoning he wrote in People v. Stover (12 N.Y. 2d 462 [1963]), which involved the enactment of a zoning ordinance banning clotheslines in front and side yards, ostensibly to eliminate one family from protesting the tax rates in the City of Rye by drying their clothes in their front yard. Judge Van Voorhis wrote:
"My concern in this case is not with limitation of free speech nor whether aesthetic considerations are enough in themselves to justify zoning regulations in prescribed instances, but with the extent to which a municipality can go in restricting the use of private property."
He summed up his opposition to such zoning:
"This ordinance is unrelated to the public safety, health, morals or welfare except insofar as it compels conformity to what the neighbors like to look at. Zoning, as important as it is within limits, is too rapidly becoming a legalized device to prevent property owners from doing whatever their neighbors dislike. Protection of minority rights is as essential to democracy as majority vote. In our age of conformity it is still not possible for all to be exactly alike, nor is it the instinct of our law to compel uniformity wherever diversity may offend the sensibilities of those who cast the largest votes in municipal elections. The right to be different has its place in this country. The United States has drawn strength from differences among its people in taste, experience, temperament, ideas, and ambitions, as well as from differences in race, national or religious background. ...This is not merely a matter of legislative policy, at whatever level. In my view, this pertains to individual rights protected by the Constitution."
Judge Van Voorhis wrote on many other issues. He was a great believer in privacy rights, which he discussed at some length in an article he wrote for the New York Law School in 1967 reviewing Professor Alan F. Westin's book Privacy and Freedom (Athenaeum Press, New York, 1967). He believed such rights stemmed from various provisions in the United States Constitution. In his dissent in Sackler v. Sackler (15 N.Y. 2d 40, 45-46 [1964]), he urged the court to reverse a judgment in a matrimonial case on the grounds that the evidence of the wife's adultery was improperly admitted since it had been obtained by an illegal forcible entry into the wife's home by the husband and a couple of private investigators employed by him.
On the other hand he also recognized that such rights to privacy had to be tempered somewhat in order to protect society against lawlessness and other clandestine anti-social acts.13 The greatest threat of governmental intrusion into our personal lives he felt occurred through tax laws, securities regulation, environmental regulations, administration of Social Security, Medicare, and other programs which those who are the most vocal in espousing the so-called "right to privacy" tend to fervently support.14
In line with his views on privacy, he tended to oppose state interference with personal or family relations. In Seiferth v. Mosher (309 N.Y. 80 [1955]), he wrote the court's opinion refusing a petition of the Deputy Commissioner of Health of Erie County to have a young lad with a cleft palate declared a neglected child and removed to the custody of the Commissioner so that he could be forced to have a corrective plastic surgical operation. He ends his opinion with characteristic modesty, saying, "One cannot be certain of being right under these circumstances, but this appears to be a situation where the discretion of the trier of the facts should be preferred to that of the Appellate Division" (at p. 85-86).
In Parker v. Hoefer (1 N.Y. 2d 873 [1956]), where the court upheld a Vermont judgment against defendant for alienation of affections and criminal conversation under Vermont Law for acts allegedly committed in New York, Judge Van Voorhis dissented on the grounds that such a judgment was against the public policy of the State of New York, which had abolished such causes of action and therefore the Vermont ruling was not subject to the full faith and credit clause of the federal constitution.
In criminal matters his opinions were balanced. On the one hand, he was opposed to technical legal requirements which could doom a prosecution when the evidence of guilt was clear beyond a reasonable doubt.15 On the other hand, he believed the police and prosecutors should play by the rules, such as the constitutional restrictions on searches and seizures.16 He also insisted that proof beyond a reasonable doubt be shown prior to conviction, as he set out in his dissent in People v. Halio (13 N.Y. 2d 1073 [1963]) in which a doctor was convicted of the crime of abortion. In several cases, he voted to reverse convictions in which the defendant had not been given an adequate opportunity to defend.17 He believed that when courts have sentenced repeat offenders for longer periods of time based on prior convictions, such prior convictions must be sustained and properly verified as to the type of crime involved.18
Finally, he felt strongly that crimes which were defined based on events, such as death occurring during the commission of what was essentially a malum prohibitum misdemeanor, should only be counted as felonies if the underlying misdemeanor was intended by the perpetrator and not simply a breach of the law without any criminal intent, as he discussed in his dissent in People v. Nelson (309 N.Y. 231), regarding a manslaughter conviction. Whenever possible he felt that criminal sanctions should be imposed on the basis of knowingly intending to commit a crime, as he argued in his dissent in People v. Gray (1 N.Y. 2d 728, 729-731 [1956]).
There were a number of other areas of continuing importance that his decisions touched upon. Although he was quite skeptical, especially in his later years, about organized religion,19 he voted with the majority in Engel v. Vitale (10 N.Y. 2d 174 [1961]), upholding the constitutionality of the Regent's Prayer in public schools, a decision reversed by the Supreme Court in Engel v. Vitale (370 U. S. 421 [1962]). Judge Van Voorhis felt that, as long as all sectarian references had been removed, a prayer which asked God's blessing on students' parents, teachers, and fellow students was not a bad thing for students to pray. But in Board of Education v. Allen (20 N.Y. 2d 109 [1967], affirmed 392 U.S. 236, 20 L.Ed. 2d 1060 [1968]), Judge Van Voorhis dissented vigorously from the majority opinion upholding the constitutionality of Chapter 320 of the Laws of 1965 as amended by Chapter 795 of the Laws of 1966 providing for purchase of text books with public moneys for parochial school students on the grounds that it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the analogous provision in the New York Constitution. His concern was centered on the practical inability to distinguish between secular and religious views expressed in text books and the inevitable pressure for the state to dominate the churches through the provision of text books which would be politically correct as well as concern over the influence of religion on the state. He ends his dissent with support for the positions taken by Madison and Jefferson in favor of clear separation of church and state. His dissenting position was adopted by Justices Black, Douglas, and Fortas in their dissenting opinions in the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Justice Douglas specifically referenced Judge Van Voorhis's reasoning as a basis for his own.20
Although his father was an agnostic, Judge Van Voorhis was deeply moved by the Cranmerian liturgy of the Episcopal Church while in his college years, and helped organize All Saints Episcopal Church in Irondequoit after he was married, where he served as a vestry person for many years. Despite his later skepticism of organized religion, especially what he regarded as its espousal of moralistic causes, many from a "left-wing" or socialistic perspective, he continued to attend church regularly until his death.21
As could be seen from his position in the censorship cases in which he wrote dissenting opinions or joined in the dissents of other members of the court, as well as his writings on religious topics, Judge Van Voorhis was not much for moralistic self-righteousness.22 In a matter reviewing the sentencing of a former football coach from Westchester, who had been prosecuted for sodomy, albeit apparently consensual, with a 17-year-old member of the team, Judge Van Voorhis did not join in the moralistic outrage expressed by the other judges in affirming the man's sentence of a lengthy prison term at Sing Sing. Rather, he expressed the opinion that the man should be removed from contact with school students and put on intensive probation with supervision by the Corrections Department, but that sending the man to Sing Sing would be, in effect, a death sentence. True to his supposition, the defendant in that case was found dead in his cell only a short time after his incarceration.
Some of his dissents have now been vindicated by the Supreme Court of the United States. His dissent in Jenad, Inc. v. Scarsdale (18 N.Y. 2d 78 [1966]) arguing that an administrative body's predicating a land use permit on the permanent cessation to the public of private property interests in land must bear a proper connection to the effects or purposes of the approval sought in order to be constitutionally valid was adopted years later by the United States Supreme Court in Dolan v. City of Tigard (512 US 374, 129 L Ed2d 304 [1994]) in which Chief Justice Rehnquist writing for the court took the position enunciated in Judge Van Voorhis's dissent (129 L.Ed. 2d 304, 319).
Judge Van Voorhis's dissents in People v. Peters (18 N.Y. 2d 238 [1966]) and People v. Sibron (18 N.Y. 2d 603 [1966]), arguing that there was insufficient probable cause for the search of the defendants, were adopted by the Supreme Court in Sibron v. State and Peters v. State (392 U.S. 40, 20 L.Ed. 2d 917 [1968]). The Supreme Court as a whole, although there were numerous concurring opinions, also vindicated his dissenting opinion in Matter of Kingsley International Pictures Corporation v. Regents of the University of the State of New York (4 N.Y. 2d 349 [1958]).23
Despite his interest in the law, Judge Van Voorhis had many other interests, including sailing, which he did from the age of four (when he sailed with his father and uncle) through his years as skipper of both International Rule Eight and Twelve Metre yachts (when he won many coveted trophies on Lake Ontario) until about a year before he died (when he still sailed competitively with his son and grandsons). He also loved classical music and learned to play the flute well enough to play in the Rochester Symphony Orchestra, a distant predecessor of the present Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.
He had a wonderful sense of humor, about almost everything other than socialism. He used to regale his family with all kinds of stories at dinner, including some from his favorite comic strip as a boy, "Mutt & Jeff"; many of which had a discernable moral to tell. Perhaps because of his closeness with nature in his rural upbringing, he would reduce things quickly to their essentials. It is reported that at one time Chief Judge Conway assembled the members of the Court to announce to them that the Budget Bureau and the Governor were going to support an appropriation to renovate the Court of Appeals. When he solicited the views of Judge Van Voorhis after telling him of the millions that were to be spent, the judge's retort was that he would be perfectly happy if they would fix the radiator valve in his office so he could turn the heat down.
As a parent, he was always very supportive of his three children, even if his schedule meant that he would come home later than most fathers. Many times during the winter he would take all three of them cross-country skiing in the pitch dark after supper, when they would walk over the hills at Eaton Road or in Durand Eastman Park near where he lived in Irondequoit. In the other months of the year, he would go horseback riding with them and of course, during the summer months, sailing. If the wind changed at night and/or the temperature dropped sharply, it would be his large frame in his night shirt that would appear at their bedroom door to make sure the children were properly covered. And when they were small, he would often sing to them as they went to bed in his comforting baritone "Now the day is over, Night is drawing nigh, Shadows of the evening, Steal across the Sky."
As a young man he bought an Indian motorcycle, which he enjoyed riding before he was married. During the 1930's he was active as a volunteer firefighter with the St. Paul Fire District in Irondequoit. He was also one of the original directors of the first "Blue Shield" plan in Monroe County and a Trustee of Highland Hospital. During World War II, in order to save gasoline, he went back to riding a motorcycle, this time a Harley Davidson. His wife and children often rode with him, sometimes two at a time (one in front and one in back).
After retiring from the Court of Appeals, he continued to practice law for the next sixteen years in loose association with his son Eugene under the firm name of Van Voorhis & Van Voorhis. During that time he argued a number of significant cases including Hurd v. City of Buffalo (34 N.Y. 2d 628 [1974]) and Waldert v. City of Rochester (44 N.Y. 2d 831 [1978], appeal dismissed 439 U.S. 922, 58 L.Ed. 2d 315 [1978]), which resulted in decisions holding the real property taxes of the Cities of Buffalo and Rochester in excess of their constitutional limit. He was appointed in 1968 by the United States District Court, District of Connecticut as special master to determine the right, title, and interest of the New Haven Railroad in the Grand Central Terminal Properties in the bankruptcy reorganization of that railroad. He was also appointed and served as one of three distinguished arbitrators in the arbitration proceedings to determine whether the federal government through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation was obligated to pay the investment insurance claim of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation upon the nationalization of its telephone operations in Chile by the Allende government.
On November 25, 1983, Judge Van Voorhis died of complications arising out of a chronic septicemia, or as one of his doctors put it, maybe from just old age. He is interred in Rochester's Riverside Cemetery in a family plot which includes his parents and wife.
Judge Van Voorhis' daughter Emily in 1963 married Edward Ridgway Harris, a native of Rochester, New York, who for many years worked as a mathematician and computer scientist for IBM in Rochester, Minnesota. They have four children: Cornelia Kurschner of Grand Marais, Minnesota, who is a teacher and artist with three children; Edward Talcott Harris of Atlanta, Georgia, an actor and producer without children; the Rev. Jonathan Harris of Roanoke, Virginia, an Episcopalian priest without children; and Stephen Harris of Belleview, Washington, a computer scientist with two children.
His daughter June Allis married Louis D'Amanda in 1954. D'Amanda, also a native of Rochester, New York, graduated from Cornell Law School and later worked for and became a partner in the Rochester, New York law firm of Chamberlain, D'Amanda, where he concentrated on negligence litigation. They have four children: Dorothy Hayes of Irondequoit, New York, who has ten children and four grandchildren; John Francis D'Amanda of Pultneyville, New York, who has three children and is now a partner in Chamberlain, D'Amanda, Gale Fox of Irondequoit, New York, and is a former member of the United States Equestrian Team, with three children; and Christopher D'Amanda of Pittsford, New York, a teacher and ceramic artist, who has three children.
In 1961, his son Eugene married Heide Bussebaum, a native of Frankfurt, Germany. They had five children: John Van Voorhis of Washington, D.C., a computer scientist who has two children; Charles Van Voorhis, a partner in the architectural firm of Durland and Van Voorhis of New Bedford, Massachusetts, who has four children; Norman Van Voorhis of Pittsford, New York, a teacher with four children; Louise Gleason, of South Miami, Florida, a licensed physical therapist with two children; and Linda Lyon Bowen, of Webster, New York, a teacher with three children. Eugene's wife died in 1996. Eugene is currently of counsel to the law firm of Harris, Chesworth, O'Brien, Johnstone, Welch and Leone, LLP. in Rochester, New York.
This biography appears in The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals: A Biographical History, ed. Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007). It has not been updated since publication.
Sources Consulted
Certain unpublished articles and papers of John Van Voorhis, including:
Address to New York Law School Alumni Luncheon, February 4, 1966. Paper entitled "Wicked Secular World" presented to the Fortnightly club in 1981.
Miscellaneous records and files of the law firms of John Van Voorhis & Sons and Van Voorhis & Van Voorhis.
Reading Law in a Common Law Office, John Van Voorhis, a paper he wrote c.1967.
Review of Professor Alan F. Westin's book Privacy and Freedom, Athenaeum Press, New York, 1967.
Personal interviews with the late Hon. John Van Voorhis, his mother, the late Allis S. Van Voorhis and numerous other family members and friends.
Published Writings Include:
The Place of Law in Life Especially the Laws of Private Property, 5 Whittier L. Rev. 483 (1983).
Frivolous Attacks Can Undermine Judiciary, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, May 31, 1977.
Expert Opinion Evidence, 13 N.Y.L.F. 651 (1967).
Tribute to Chief Judge Charles S. Desmond, 52 Cornell L. Rev. 351 (1966-1967).
Note on the History in New York State of the Powers of Grand Juries, 26 Alb. L. Rev. 1 (1962).
Cardozo and the Judicial Process Today, 71 Yale L. J. 202 (1961-1962).
Some General Observations Concerning Insurance Law, 27 Ins. Counsel J. 271 (1960).
Broad Fields of the Law, 44 Cornell L. Q. 469 (1958-1959).


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Events Calendar
Check our events calendar to see when Storytime in Hands-on-History is offered.
Check our events calendar to see when Storytime in Hands-on-History is offered.
Children are invited to listen to tales from books about the Washingtons and Mount Vernon! Our staff makes the stories come alive with pictures from the books and puppets! Afterward, participants can discuss the story and ask questions about George and Martha Washington.
Story Time is designed for children ages 3-8. Parental supervision is required. Books and story themes vary.
George Washington is born at Pope's Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia
George Washington's father moves his family to Little Hunting Creek Plantation, which will later be called Mount Vernon
George Washington's father moves his family to another of his properties, Ferry Farm, near Fredericksburg, Virginia
George Washington's father, Augustine Washington, dies
George Washington considers entering the British Navy, but his mother will not give permission for him to go
George Washington receives an appointment as a public surveyor for Culpeper County, Virginia.
George Washington sails to Barbados with his older half-brother, Lawrence Washington, who is ill with tuberculosis. While there, George Washington contracts smallpox
George Washington is sent into the Ohio Valley to take a message from the governor of Virginia to French military forces, demanding that they leave.
George Washington is appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the Virginia militia; defeats the French and their Indian allies at Great Meadows. He is involved in a skirmish, which results in the death of a French diplomat and starts the French and Indian War; surrenders Fort Necessity. Is very sick and surrenders his commission; begins renting Mount Vernon from the widow of his half-brother, Lawrence Washington.
Washington serves as a volunteer aide-de-camp to General Braddock during a disastrous campaign against the French; becomes commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces.
Washington begins his service in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He will serve until 1775.
George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis, a young widow with two small children
George Washington and a friend from the days of the French and Indian War go to see their western lands on the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers
In 1772, Annapolis artist Charles Willson Peale visited Mount Vernon where he recorded the first known likeness of George Washington. Washington chose to be painted in his Virginia militia uniform from the French and Indian War with marching orders in his pocket, even though he had resigned from the military some 14 years prior.
George Washington presides over the meeting, which produces the Fairfax Resolves, promoting a boycott of British goods and the right of self-government; is chosen by and represents Virginia as a delegate to the 1st Continental Congress in Philadelphia
George Washington is chosen as a delegate to the 2nd Continental Congress; while there, he is selected to command the Continental Army; goes immediately to take command of the army at Cambridge, Massachusetts; begins a siege of the city of Boston
Washington's Continental Army is defeated on the Brooklyn Heights by Lord William Howe's British and Hessian forces. Washington and the remainder of his army escape during the night to Manhattan.
Washington's ragtag army crosses the icy Delaware River on Christmas night 1776. On the morning of December 26, 1776 the Continental Army attacks the Hessian garrison at Trenton. Washington's fast moving forces capture most of the 1,500 man garrison.
After the lengthy 1777 campaign, Washington led his 11,000 man army to winter quarters in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The hard winter and scant supplies greatly depleted his army through disease and cold. During this challenging period Washington faced many serious political threats both inside and outside his army.
Washington and Gen. Rochambeau's French forces receive the surrender of Lord Charles Cornwallis' army at Yorktown - the last major battle of the American Revolution.
George Washington resigns his military commission in Annapolis, Maryland - affirming his belief in civilian control of the military. He returns home to Mount Vernon on Christmas day.
George Washington is president of the Potomac Company, seeking to improve transportation on that river
George Washington is chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention; He signs the new Constitution
George Washington is unanimously elected 1st president of the United States; travels to New York for his inauguration on April 30th
George Washington is again unanimously elected to serve a second term as president of the United States
The Whiskey Rebellion breaks out in western Pennsylvania; Washington leads troops to the area to quell this revolt against paying taxes to the federal government
George Washington retires as president; leaves Philadelphia to return to Mount Vernon


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Note: this tutorial was written for Word 2003 and has not been updated.
The following tutorial proposes several "best practices" for increasing the accessibility and usability of Microsoft Word documents—and, ultimately, the HTML and PDF files created from them. By practicing these "universal design" techniques, your documents will become better organized, more navigable, and accessible to a larger audience.
Following the steps of this tutorial, you will modify a "working document" to make it more accessible by adding structural headings, lists, alternative text descriptions of visual information, table headings, captions, metadata, and a navigable table of contents.
Technical Requirements
This tutorial requires Microsoft Word 2003. Depending on the document format you plan to convert to, you will also need one or more of the following:
If converting to HTML
- A web browser (preferably the current version of Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer)
- Adobe Dreamweaver version 8 or higher (optional)
If converting to PDF
- Adobe Acrobat (Standard or Professional) version 7 or higher.
Most of the steps which follow apply equally to HTML and PDF conversion. Differences will be clearly noted.
Useful Keyboard Shortcuts
The following keyboard shortcuts are provided to help you navigate Word documents with greater speed and efficiency. They offer an important reminder that some people, either by preference or necessity, navigate the computer without using the mouse.
|Key Combination
|Go to beginning of document
|Select All
|Apply style
|Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow/Left Arrow
|Select entire next/previous word
|Find and Replace ("Hunt")
|Ctrl+Alt+Heading Number
|Apply heading level for heading levels 1–3
|Apply the Normal style
|Normal view
|Outline view
|Print view
|Alt+Shift+Arrow keys
|Move (in all views)
|Demote/Promote in outline view
|Invoke context menu (same as right-click)
For more keyboard shortcuts (and there are a lot of them!), see Microsoft's List of keyboard shortcuts for Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290938).
Open the Working Document
Before you begin the tutorial, you should open one of the working documents. Choose Working Document #1 if you wish to complete all of the lessons in the tutorial. If you wish to skip the first exercise, which describes using outline view to organize and apply styles, choose Working Document #2.
If you chose Working Document #2, skip ahead to Section 4, "The Image: Formatting for Accessibility.
Use Outline View to Organize and Apply Styles
About Outline View
Outline view provides a convenient way to assign text to one of nine heading levels. Once your document contains headings, you can easily reorganize it by dragging headings (and all of the information subsumed under them) to new locations in the outline. The amount of information moved in this way can be as small as a sentence, or as large as a book chapter (See "About viewing a document as an outline" in the Microsoft Word 2003 Help documentation for more information).
When you open outline view, a new set of tools appears on the menu bar (see Figure 1 below). The buttons allow you to promote or demote headings (move left and right), reorder headings (move up and down), expand and collapse the outline in various ways, and show/reveal text formatting.
About Headings and Styles
Word's headings are assigned through the application of "styles." Styles are typically thought of as a part of visual formatting, but they can also impart structural organization. Document structure, in the form of headings, paragraphs, and lists, is an essential component of accessibility.
Word allows full customization of each style, including the nine levels of headings. Text attributes such as font, size, paragraph indents, tabs, color, and more can be modified to suit every requirement. So, if you don't like the default appearance of Word's headings, you can easily change them.
For more information about modifying styles, refer to the Microsoft Word help documentation.
Creating the Level 1 Heading
Let's begin the tutorial by adding headings and subheadings to the working document to create some organizational structure.
To apply the Heading 1 style, make sure you have Working Document #1 open, then follow these steps:
- Switch to outline view: View > Outline (Alt+Ctrl+O).
- Place the cursor in the first sentence that reads: "Example of Organization with Styles: Heading 1 is the Top Level of a Structured Document."
- Click the "Promote to Heading 1" button on the outline toolbar (or use the keyboard command Shift+Tab). Text will be assigned a style of Heading 1, and will show as Level 1 in the outline (see Figure 2).
- To see what heading styles will look like, click the "Show Formatting" button on the outline toolbar.
Creating the Level 2 Headings
To apply the Heading 2 style, follow these steps:
- Place your cursor anywhere within the first line that reads "Heading 2...".
- Click the "demote" button or press the Tab key. Note that after assigning the first Heading 2, subsequent level 2 headings will need to be moved back to the left using the "promote" button(Shift+Tab).
- For each remaining Heading 2, move the cursor to that line of text and click the "promote" button (Shift+Tab) to apply the level 2 heading style (see Figure 3).
Creating the Level 3 Headings
To apply the Heading 3 style, follow these steps:
- Place your cursor anywhere within the first line that reads "Heading 3:...".
- Click the "demote" button (Tab key) to assign the Heading 3 style. Like the level 2 headings, subsequent level 3 headings will need to be moved back to the left using the "promote"button (Shift+Tab).
- For each remaining Heading 3, move the cursor to that line of text and click the "promote" button (Shift+Tab) to apply the level 3 heading style (see Figure 4).
Creating the Level 4 Headings
To apply the Heading 4 style, follow these steps:
- Place your cursor anywhere in the first line that reads "Heading 4:..."
- Click the "demote" button (Tab key) to assign the Heading 4 style.
- Move the cursor to the second Heading 4 and click the "promote" button (Shift+Tab) to apply the level 4 heading style (see Figure 5).
- Save your document (Ctrl+S).
Creating a Bulleted List
Lists, both bulleted and numbered, comprise another important structural category in electronic documents. A list structure works like an outline to organize information. Lists in Word transfer well to both HTML and PDF.
To assign the List Bullet style to the list of points under the second Heading 2, follow these steps:
- Open the Task Pane for Styles and Formatting: Choose Format > Styles and Formatting, or click the Styles and Formatting button on the toolbar.
- From the drop-down list labeled "Show," choose "Available Formatting" (see Figure 6).
- Select all four points under the second Heading 2.
- With the text selected, choose "List Bullet" from the list of styles in the Task Pane (see Figure 7).
Collapsing and Expanding the Outline
To see the power of Word's outline tools, change the "show level" settings to "Show Level 4" (See Figure 8). You should see each of the document's headings, but not the supporting paragraphs, chart, or table. Experiment by changing the view to level 3, then to level 2. You can also collapse and expand headings by double-clicking on the plus and minus signs to the left of each heading.
For more information about Word's headings and styles, see Organize and Add Style in the module Microsoft Word 2003, Universally Designed.
Updating the Working Document
To synchronize your work with users who may have skipped the previous section about using outline view to organize and apply styles, it is recommended that you open Working Document #2 to complete the following lessons.
If you wish to save Working Document #1, choose File > Save As... and select a destination for the file.
The Image: Formatting for Accessibility
Now that you have added structure to the document, it's time to add another essential component of accessibility: alternative text descriptions of images.
Alternative text is added to an image to provide a textual alternative to visual information. It is important to remember that some users won't see your web page, they'll hear it! Your challenge, then, is to imagine perceiving the content of your document through your audience's ears.
Adding Alternative Text to the Image
To add an alternative text description to an image, follow these steps:
- Switch to Print Layout view: Choose View > Print Layout (Ctrl+Alt+P).
- Locate the graphic containing icons and labels for Microsoft Word, HTML, and Adobe PDF.
- Double-click on the image to call up the Format Picture dialog box.
(Alternatively, you can select the image and choose Format > Picture... You can also access the "Format Picture..." dialog box by right-clicking on the image.)
- Click on the "Web" tab, and locate the field labeled "Alternative text" (see Figure 10-a).
- Enter the following description of the image: "This tutorial refers to three document formats: Microsoft Word, HTML, and Adobe PDF" (Figure 10-b).
- Click OK.
How to Describe an Image
Alternative text should describe the meaning of an image rather than just its appearance. For example, when writing the alternative text description of a photograph of signs hanging on laboratory doors, it is important to concentrate on what the image means:
"Each laboratory has safety policies posted on the door."
A good description will convey your intent for including the image on the page.
The Chart: Formatting for Accessibility
There are several things you can do to improve the accessibility of charts and information graphics. For example, you can:
- Add alternative text to explain a chart's contents when, for whatever reason, it can't be seen by your readers.
- Increase text size to ensure legibility.
- Add patterns to background colors to make data more easily discernable in black and white.
- Add a caption, which gives the chart a title and provides a text alternative to visual data.
Adding Alternative Text to the Chart
To add alternative text to the chart, follow these steps:
- Switch to Print Layout view (Ctrl+Alt+P) if not already in that viewing mode.
- Right-click on the chart and choose "Format Object..." from the context menu. The Format Object dialog box appears (see Figure 11).
- Click on the Web tab, and in the box labeled "Alternative Text," enter the following: "Percent of attempted tasks completed in East, West, and North quadrants, per quarter of last year."
Remember, the purpose of alternative text is to describe the meaning of the chart in case readers can't see it.
Formatting the Legend
To set the text of the legend to a legible size, font, and style, follow these steps:
- Double-click on the chart to bring up the datasheet (see Figure 12).
- Position the cursor over the legend area, and double-click on the legend to bring up the Format Legend dialog box.
- Click on the Font tab, then select the desired size, making sure that it is easily readable. For this exercise, set the text size to 12 points (see Figure 13).
- Click OK.
Figure 12: Edit the Data Sheet
Double-click on the chart to bring up the datasheet. This is the editing mode for both data and visual formatting.
Formatting the Data Series
Note that the blue bars in the chart are a solid color, while the red and green bars contain a pattern as well as color. The patterns help readers identify each data series, even when the document is viewed or printed in black and white.
To add a pattern to the blue bars, follow these steps:
- With the datasheet still open, position the cursor over the tallest blue bar near the middle of the chart.
- Double-click on the bar. The Format Data Series dialog box will appear.
- Locate the "Fill Effects" button below the color tiles, and click on it. The Fill Effects dialog box will appear.
- Click on the "Pattern" tab.
- Select the "wide upward diagonal" pattern (see Figure 14).
- Click OK to close both dialog boxes.
Adding a Caption
To add a caption to the chart, you must first close the datasheet. Do this by clicking in an area of the document outside of the chart.
Now, continue with the following steps:
- Right-click on the chart (or press Shift+F10) and choose "Caption..." from the context menu. The Caption dialog box will open (see Figure 15).
- Click on the "New Label..." button. This will allow you to change the default label, which is currently "Figure 1" (see Figure 16).
- Enter the text for a new label: "Tasks completed per quarter of last year". The label can contain up to 40 characters and spaces.
- Click "OK" to close the New Label dialog box.
- If you wish to change the default numbering system, click on the "Numbering..." button. Note that numbers are appended to captions when the are created. The numbers are automatically incremented, so that each new "figure" is assigned a unique label.
- If you opened the Numbering dialog box, click OK to close it.
- From the "Position" menu, select "Above selected item" (see Figure 17).
- Click OK.
Figure 15: Adding a Caption
Word can add captions to charts, images, tables, equations, and other objects. Right-click on the object and choose "Caption."
Figure 16: Caption Label
A caption label, like "Figure 1," is added automatically to each new caption you create. To change the default label, click on the "New Label..." button.
Figure 17: Select Position: Above or Below Object
Choose the position—above or below the selected object—where you want captions to appear.
Do you use captions frequently?
If you routinely use captions, you may want to have Word automatically insert them each time charts and images are added to your document. In the Caption dialog box, click on the "AutoCaption..." button and check off the file types that will receive captions. For more information about captions, see the Microsoft Help documentation.
The Table: Formatting for Accessibility
Specifying a Table Heading
Table headings help readers understand how tables are organized into columns and rows. While many authors try to indicate a heading row by changing its appearance (e.g., font and background color), a change of this type provides little or no information about the structure of the table. A document that relies entirely on visual formatting will, when converted to HTML or PDF, lack the structural information needed by readers who use assistive technology. Fortunately, Word offers a setting for table headings that does indicate table structure: "Heading Rows Repeat."
To specify a table heading row, follow these steps:
- Select the table row that contains the column labels. The selection must include the first row of the table.
- With the row selected, choose Table > Heading Rows Repeat. This setting toggles on or off. A checkmark in front of the command indicates that it is on (see Figure 18).
For more information about table headings, see the tutorial "Specifying Table Headings in Word 2003."
Adding a Table Caption
Just as captions can be added to charts and images, so can they be added to tables, where they provide the same informational and organizational benefits.
Follow these steps to add a caption to the table:
- With the entire table selected, right-click (or press Shift+F10) and choose "Caption..." from the context menu.
- Click on the "New Label..." button. This will allow you to change the default label of "Figure 1."
- Enter the new Label text: "How Word Styles Transfer to HTML and PDF." The label can contain up to 40 characters and spaces.
- Click "OK" to close the New Label dialog box.
- From the "Position" menu, select "Above selected item." (Refer to previous fgures 15, 16, and 17 under "Adding a Caption.")
- Click OK.
Document "Title" and Other Metadata
The term metadata is commonly defined as "data about data." If that definition leaves you scratching your head, consider this familiar example: a book search at your local library. If you think of the book as a set of data, then the library record for that book—consisting of title, author, subject, publication date, etc.—contains metadata. Metadata is the information about the information contained in the book. To locate the record for the book, you will need to search for keywords in the library's catalog of metadata.
In Word, metadata are called "document properties." They can be accessed by choosing File > Properties. Document properties include title, author, subject, and keywords. These pieces of information transfer easily to other file formats, PDF in particular.
Unfortunately, the only property that transfers seamlessly to HTML is "title," although the other properties will appear in the HTML code as comments—i.e, information that is coded to be ignored by the browser. The properties will look something like:
<o:Author>Thomas Jefferson</o:Author>
If you are familiar with HTML coding, you can convert the commented properties to HTML meta tags with little effort. If not, you can add just the "title" property in Word and use HTML editing software, like Dreamweaver, to add the remaining metadata.
Adding Metadata
To add metadata (document properties) to a Word document, follow these steps:
- Choose File > Properties.
- If it is not already selected, click on the Summary tab (see Figure 19).
- Enter a Title for the document (*see note below).
- Click OK.
- Save your document (Ctrl+S).
*Note: When the document is converted to HTML of PDF, its title will be used for identification by web browser software and search engines. It is therefore recommended your title be descriptive, and that you place unique identifiers at the beginning and any repeating information at the end. For example, the title "Faculty Information - Civil Engineering Department - Colorado State University" will yield a more useful bookmark or search result than "Colorado State University Department of Civil Engineering - Faculty Information" (italics added to emphasize the essential information).
Figure 19: Word's Document Properties
Word's "document properties" translate to "metadata" in the HTML and PDF formats.
For more information about adding and editing metadata in web documents, see the following modules:
- HTML, Universally Designed
- Adobe PDF, Universally Designed
Removing Personal Information
There may be times when you don't want to attach your personal information to a document. Thankfully, Word provides an option to remove personal information as documents are saved. If you choose this option, Word removes file properties (Author, Manager, Company, and Last saved by), as well as personal information associated with comments (names, date, and time), email headers, and version tracking.
To remove personal information from a Word document, follow these steps:
- Choose Tools > Options, and click on the "Security" tab.
- Select the "Remove personal information from file properties on save" check box (see Figure 20).
- Click OK.
Once you save the file, all personal information will be deleted.
Create a Table of Contents
Rare is the document that cannot benefit from a table of contents. Word creates tables of contents based on the heading styles it finds in the document. Because we have organized the Working Document around four heading levels, we are ready to let Word automatically generate a table of contents for us. However, we first need to decide how we intend to use the finished document. Do we want to print it directly from Word, or is our goal to convert it to HTML or PDF?
A printed document typically requires page numbers for each table of contents entry. In HTML, on the other hand, hyperlinks are generally more useful than page numbers. If creating a PDF is our goal, it may be preferable to skip Word's table of contents altogtether in lieu of the "bookmarks" that will be created automatically during conversion to PDF.
See the module Adobe PDF, Universally Designed for more information about creating bookmarks.
To create a table of contents in the working document, follow these steps:
- Position your cursor in the document where want like the table of contents to appear.
- Choose Insert > Reference > Index and Tables... (see Figure 21).
- Click on the tab labeled "Table of Contents" in the dialog box that appears.
- If you plan to print the document in Word, make sure the "Show page numbers" option is checked (Figure 22-a). If you plan to convert it to HTML, make sure the "Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers" option is checked and "Show page numbers" in unchecked (Figure 22-b).
- Click OK.
- Save your document (Ctrl+S).
Note that styles for table of contents headings can be modified from the Index and Tables dialog box. Click on the "Modify..." button, then select the "TOC" heading level you wish to change (Figure 22-c). Again, click "Modify..." and change the font, paragraph settings, and any other characteristics needed to created the appearance you want.
Figure 21: Insert Table of Contents (TOC)
To insert a table of contents, choose Insert > Reference > Index and Tables.
Figure 22: TOC Settings
Depending on how you intend to use the document, you may want to show or hide page numbers (a), or replace page numbers with hyperlinks (b). You can also change the formatting of styles associated with each heading level (c) so that your table of contents looks just the way you like it.
Preserve the Contents of Headers and Footers
When a multipage Word document is converted to HTML, it generally becomes one long page. Headers and footers are therefore left behind. If you wish to preserve the contents of headers and footers, you will need to move any text and graphics they contain to the body of the document.
Note that Adobe Acrobat preserves every aspect of your Word document, including page breaks, headers, and footers. The following technique therefore does not apply to documents that will be converted to PDF.
Follow these steps to preserve header and footer content when converting to HTML. Let's begin with the footer:
- Double-click on the footer to open it.
- Select all of the text (Ctrl+A), then copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C). (See Figure 23.)
- Close the footer by clicking the "Close" button on the Header and Footer toolbar.
- Insert the cursor at the very bottom of the document on the last line.
- Paste the text (Ctrl+V).
- Save the document (Ctrl+S).
Now, let's consider the header. In the working document, the header contains two images, the ACCESS Project logo and the Colorado State University logo. To preserve these images in the HTML conversion, you will repeat the same process used for the footer text. In other words, you will double-click to open the header, select an image, close the header, and paste the image into the main body of the document. Repeat for the second image.
Convert to HTML
Choosing a File Format
Word offers three options for converting documents to the HTML format:
- Single File Web Page (.mht, .mhtml)
- Web Page (.htm, .html)
- Web Page, Filtered (.htm, .html)
Although each option has its advantages and disadvantages, the ACCESS Project recommends "Web Page, Filtered." Why this option? The explanation requires a little understanding of how word creates web pages. The word "filtered" provides a clue.
By default, Word inserts a great deal of esoteric HTML code into the web pages it creates. It does this to preserve as much of the original formatting as possible, in case you want to re-open and edit the file in Word. Unfortunately, most of this "bloat code," as it's sometimes called, is ignored by the web browser and leads to unnecessarily large files. Even worse, the extra code makes it very difficult to edit the document in an HTML editor. Which brings us back to the word "filtered." By filtering out this additional code, your web pages become smaller and easier to work with. Be aware that some formatting may be lost in this streamlined HTML format.
NOTE: To help maintain the original appearance of Word documents, you may wish to investigate an inexpensive software program called the Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard (http://www.virtual508.com/) . The Wizard does a good job of preserving the details of a Word document, including charts and tables, while producing web pages that are highly accessible.
There is another reason we think you should choose the "Filtered" option, especially if you plan to work with the web page in an HTML editor like Adobe Dreamweaver. When converting to HTML, Word saves graphics and charts contained in the document to a separate folder. With the Filtered option selected, Word saves images in standard file formats: GIF and JPEG. By contrast, the default "Web Page" option produces some non-standard file formats, along with a separate header and an XML file list. Incorporating these disparate elements into your website may prove difficult.
And what of the first option, "Single File Web Page"? This option produces a page that can be viewed only in Microsoft Internet Explorer or Word. Although this format may be good in theory, it has yet to be adopted by other software applications. In many ways, it bears more resemblance to a self-contained PDF file, without offering PDF's advantages.
Saving as Web Page
To convert the working document to HTML, follow these steps:
- Choose File > Save As (or File > Save as Web Page).
- From the "Save as type" drop-down list, choose "Web Page, Filtered" (see Figure 24-a).
- Notice the "Page title," as it is displayed above the "File name" textbox. The title is the label of the page when it is viewed on the Web; it is what appears in a list of bookmarks or favorite locations. To change the title of the new HTML document, click the "Change Title..." button (Figure 24-b).
- Enter a new file name, or accept the default name supplied by Word.
- If necessary, navigate to a new location before saving the document.
- Click Save. Because you selected the "Filtered" option, Word warns you that saving in this format will remove Office specific tags (see Figure 25).
- Click "Yes" to create the filtered web page.
Figure 24: Save as "Filtered" Web Page
To preserve HTML accessibility, choose the "Save as Web Page, Filtered" option (a). If necessary, you can change the web page title (b) that will appear in the browser window.
Cleaning up the HTML code
As mentioned earlier, Word adds a great deal of additional code to the HTML pages it creates. This code is ignored by all applications other than Word and Internet Explorer.
Following are two methods for removing the superfluous code. One involves Adobe Dreamweaver, the other an online application called HTML Tidy.
Using Adobe Dreamweaver
To "clean" the code in Dreamweaver, follow these steps:
- In Dreamweaver, open the HTML page created by Microsoft Word.
- Choose Commands > Clean up Word HTML... (Figure 26).
- In the Clean Up Word HTML dialog box, select some or all of the checkbox options (Figure 27-a).
- Click "OK."
- When the process is complete, a dialog box will alert you to the changes made to the HTML code (Figure 27-b).
Figure 26: Dreamweaver's "Clean Up HTML" Command
Dreamweaver provides a clean-up option just for Word-generated HTML code.
Using HTML Tidy
To "clean" the code in HTML Tidy, follow these steps:
- Close Word, then navigate to your new HTML document.
- Open the document in your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, or other).
- Choose View > Source. A new page will open showing the HTML code for the page (Figures 28-a and 28-b).
- Select all of the the source code (Ctrl+A), then copy it (Ctrl+C).
- Navigate online to http://infohound.net/tidy/
- Paste (Ctrl+V) the code into the textbox labeled "HTML" (see Figure 29-a).
- Check the first option labeled "Clean" (Figure 29-b). You may also check additional options.
- Click the "Tidy!" button (Figure 29-c).
- Once the process is complete, a new screen will appear with two links at the top. Choose "Download Tidied File" (see Figure 30).
- Choose "Save" or "Save to Disk," depending on the web browser you're using.
In Microsoft Internet Explorer, follow the instructions when asked to specify a name and location for the new HTML page. In Firefox, the page will be saved to a default location, specified in application preferences (Tools > Options > Main > Downloads). Once the page has been downloaded in Firefox, it can be opened from the Downloads window (Tools > Downloads). Click on the "Open" link to the right of the downloaded file.
Figure 28: Viewing Source Code
Behind every web page (a) is a good deal of HTML source code (b). Choose View > Source to reveal the source code of an HTML page. This is where you can see the tags that provide structure to the page.
Figure 29: HTML Tidy
Options available on the HTML Tidy input page. Paste HTML source code into text box (a), check the "Clean" checkbox (b), and click the "Tidy!" button.
Viewing the Final Document
View the "cleaned" document with Internet Explorer or Firefox. If formatting changes occurred that compromise the document's usefulness, you might consider converting the original with the Illinois Accessible Office Wizard.
Remember, the goal in designing web publications is not to achieve absolute control over what the viewer sees. Rather, the goal is to make documents flexible so that they can be viewed in any number of ways, using different types of technology. To reach the largest possible audience, you should anticipate the diverse needs of your readers.
Validating Code
Finally, always remember to validate your HTML code, and validate your Cascading Style Sheets as well. Code validation takes only a minute, but it can spare you, and your readers, the frustration that comes when documents can't be viewed properly.
Convert to PDF
Converting a Word document to the Adobe PDF format requires that you have Adobe Acrobat (Standard or Professional) installed on your computer. Once Acrobat is installed, a new menu, "Adobe PDF," appears on the Word menu bar. To increase the accessibility of your PDF documents, always use this menu when converting to PDF.
Following are the steps you can take to create an accessible PDF from your Word document.
Checking Settings for PDF Bookmarks
PDF documents contains a navigation pane called Bookmarks, which often performs the role of a table of contents. Like the table of contents in Word, Bookmarks are based on Word's headings. You control which heading levels will be included in bookmarks when the document is converted from Word to PDF.
To view or change settings for conversion of Word's headings to PDF bookmarks, follow these steps:
- Choose Adobe PDF > Change Conversion Settings (see Figure 31). The Acrobat PDFMaker dialog box will appear.
- Click on the "Bookmarks" tab.
- Verify that the "Convert Word Headings to Bookmarks" checkbox is selected (see Figure 32-a). Be default, all heading levels are selected, but you can uncheck the boxes for levels you do not wish to include (Figure 32-b). (You can also create PDF bookmarks from Word's styles, although this option can produce some unexpected results.)
- Click OK to save changes.
Figure 31: PDF Conversion Settings
To control which heading levels are included in the bookmarks, choose Adobe PDF > Change Conversion Settings.
Converting to PDF
To convert the document from the Word format to PDF, follow these steps:
- First, save the document: File > Save (Ctrl+S).
- Choose Adobe > PDF > Convert to PDF (see Figure 33).
- In the "Save Adobe PDF File As" dialog box, verify or change the file name and location of the new PDF file.
- Click "Save."
Figure 33: Convert to Adobe PDF
When converting a Word document to PDF, always use "Adobe PDF" menu which is added to Word when Acrobat is installed. Creating a PDF in this way creates a more accessible PDF document.
Acrobat PDFMaker will indicate the progress of the conversion, which may take some time depending on the size and complexity of the document. When PDF creation is complete, the new document will open in Adobe Acrobat.
Note that "Adobe PDF" may also be a choice in the Print dialog box once Adobe Acrobat has been installed. Unfortunately, PDFs created using the Print option are "untagged," making them largely inaccessible to users of assistive technology.
See the module Adobe PDF, Universally Designed for more information about creating accessible PDF documents.
Checking Your PDF
Once the PDF has been created, you'll want to check it for completeness, accuracy, and accessibility. You will also want to improve its accessibility by making a few simple changes.
Let's look specifically at two of the features we added in Word: metadata and bookmarks.
To check the metadata for the PDF document, follow these steps:
- With the PDF document open in Acrobat, choose File > Document Properties (Ctrl+D). (See Figure 34 below.)
- Click on the "Description" tab (Figure 35-a).
- Verify that Word's "document properties" have transferred to the PDF (Figure 35-b). If you want to add more descriptors, such as copyright information, click on the "Additional Metadata" button (Figure 35-c).
- Click on the "Advanced" tab.
- Under "Reading Options," set the Language to "English US." This tells screen reader technologies how to interpret and pronounce the text (for example, as English, not Spanish). (See Figure 36.)
Figure 34: View PDF Document Properties
PDF metadata can be viewed and edited by choosing File > Document Properties (Ctrl+D).
Figure 35: View and Edit Specific Properties
In the Document Properties dialog box, click on the "Description" tab (a). Verify that properties (or 'metadata') added in Word were transfered to the PDF document (b). Information can be edited in any field. To add additional metadata, such as copyright information, click on the "Advanced" button (c).
To check the bookmarks for the PDF document, follow these steps:
- Click on the Bookmarks tab. Bookmarks will be displayed in the Navigation pane (Figure 37).
- Review the organizational structure of bookmarks. The organization should match the outline in Word.
You can also add, edit, and remove bookmarks, as needed:
- To create a bookmark, choose Edit > Add Bookmark (Ctrl+B). (Figure 38-a.) If you select some text from the document prior to creating the bookmark, that text will automatically become the bookmark's target (i.e., its linked destination) and label.
- To edit an existing bookmark, first select it, then choose Options > Properties. Alternatively, you can right-click on the bookmark and choose Properties (Ctrl+I). (Figure 38-b.)
Overall Accessibility
Acrobat offers two accessibility checks, "Quick" and "Full," both of which help identify potential barriers for readers using assistive technology. To check the accessibility of a PDF, follow these steps:
- Choose Advanced > Accessibility > Full Check (see Figure 39).
If accessibility problems are found, you can fix them by following the instructions provided in the Accessibility Report. In many cases, the simplest solution may be to return to Word or the original authoring application, fix the problem, then recreate the PDF. For example, missing alternative text for images can usually be resolved in this way.
Congratulations! You have just created a universally designed web document in either HTML or PDF. The accessibility and usability features you added to the document in Word have paid dividends in these new file formats. By adding structural headings, lists, alternative text descriptions of visual information, table headings, captions, metadata, and a navigable table of contents, you have transformed the "working document" into a publication that more people can access using a wider range of technologies.
The following related modules may also be of interest:
The following tutorials are available on the Microsoft website.
- Tables I: Create and format basic tables
- This course, the first in a series on tables, will teach you how to add tables to your Word documents and show you some handy uses for them.
- Tables II: Use tables to simplify complex page layouts
- In this course, the second in a series of three, you will learn key best practices for managing tables effectively, as well as how to use tables with confidence to simplify most any page layout.
- Tables III: Manage financial tables and tables from Excel and the Web
- In this course, the last in a series of three, you will learn key best practices for some common advanced table tasks, including managing tables that originate in Excel or on the Web and formatting financial tables.
- Create a Chart
- Tips for creating charts in your Word documents


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Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – November 10, 2010
Geocaching for Windows Phone 7
Discover Groundspeak's official Geocaching Application for the new Windows Phone 7 Operating System. Windows Phone 7 devices are now available in North America and many European and Asian countries. The Geocaching for Windows Phone 7 Application is available in English, with plans to support multiple languages in the near future.
Features include:
• Instant, direct access to Geocaching.com's database of worldwide geocaches
• Search by current location, address or GC code
• Access geocache details, including description, photo gallery, attributes, recent logs, hint and inventory
• Log geocache finds and post notes in the field
• Download active Pocket Queries (Premium Member feature)
• Filter geocaches that you and 4 of your closest geocaching partners have already found (Premium Member feature)
View screenshots and check out more application features here.


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Message Board
Michael LaRocca Message Board
Talk about the novels, new and used books that LaRocca has written!
Author LaRocca's Book Reviews
An American Redneck In Hong Kong
Ten years after my mother died (14 years after my brother's suicide), I went to Hong Kong for a "one-month vacation" and wound up marrying an Australian lady and teaching English in China. A collection of true and humorous dog stories, cat stories, hog farming stories, and Asian travel stories....
Vigilante Justice
Someone believes he can solve the drug problem by killing all the users. When one of the victims is the brother of Gary Drake, a cop with HIV, he becomes so obsessed that he loses his job on the police force and sacrifices a potential romance to seek vengeance. Is he driven by guilt, justice, or revenge?...


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In her first interview since getting a ring put on it by movie mogul, George Lucas, Mellody Hobson opened up to the Tom Joyner Morning Show about her love-at-first-sight moment with Lucas. Mellody is the financial expert who contributes most of the show's money talk on her segment, Money Mondays. As the president of Ariel Investments and chairman of DreamWorks Animation, Mellody's knowledge on money is golden.
Must Read: SHE WORKS: Arisha Williams Is A Techie & Social Media Genius
Before giving the listeners all they need to know about the fiscal cliff, Tom Joyner's cohost, Sybil Wilkes got all girl talk with Hobson and asked her about her recent engagement to the man behind Star Wars. Mellody explained that Lucas had the ring for a good six months, even though she knew right away that he was the one.
Check out the full chat Here!
More On Mellody Hobson & Other Female Bosses:
Engaged! 12 Super Fly Photos Of George Lucas & Mellody Hobson
Viola Davis, Tamar Braxton & More Explain What "Having It All" Means To Them! [VIDEO]


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Works with any South African Bank
SnapScan is accepted at more than 50,000 merchants across South Africa!
Complete our simple sign-up process online. We'll get you set up in no time!
We charge a small transaction fee of 3% (excl. VAT) for the payments you accept, and a once-off sign-up fee of R250. There are no recurring service or hardware costs.
Your customers get a fast, easy payment option wherever they are.
Use our daily, weekly or monthly transaction reports to reconcile your total payments. We also offer referencing that's customisable to suit your exact business need.
Link your SnapCode to a cell number to receive SMS confirmation of a payment. We can also integrate with your point of sale solution, and offer online access to your payment details, in real time.
We settle all accounts on the following business day, excluding weekends and public holidays.
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"10 African Startups that rocked 2014" - CNNRead article
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"the only successful startup to have made mobile payments relevant in the country" - VentureBurnRead article
"We're such big fans of SnapScan at Stuff" - StuffRead article


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Win a £250 Amazon voucher
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CHEYENNE, Wyo.—Western environmental groups say they're alarmed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a plan to end federal protections for gray wolves in areas where the animals no longer exist.
The groups say ending federal protections would keep wolves from expanding their range back into states that could support them, including Colorado and California.
The federal agency intends to announce this spring whether it will propose a blanket delisting of wolves in the lower 48 states. Wolves in the Northern Rockies and around the Great Lakes, where reintroduced populations are well-established, are already off the Endangered Species List.
The prospect of the national delisting has prompted members of Congress on both sides of the issue to lobby the Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe.


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High-Aspect-Ratio Micromachining of Titanium: Enabling New Functionality and Opportunity in Micromechanical Systems Through Greater Materials Selection
Additional materials available (4)
Licensed according to this deed.
Published on
Traditionally, materials selection has been limited in high-aspect-ratio micromechanical applications, due primarily to the predominance of microfabrication processes and infrastructure dedicated to silicon. While silicon has proven to be an excellent material for many of these applications, no one material can meet the needs of all applications. This is especially evident in biomedical microdevice applications, where the intrinsic brittleness of silicon limits its utility, thus illustrating the need for development of viable alternatives. Titanium is particularly promising in this regard, due to its toughness, biocompatibility, and fatigue resistance. However, lack of sufficient fabrication capability has limited its use in micromechanical systems thus far.
Recently, we reported the development of novel micromachining processes that now enable realization of this promise. These processes, based on plasma etching techniques derived from microelectronics manufacturing, provide for the first time, the capability for fabrication of complex, micrometer-scale, high-aspect-ratio structures in titanium. As such, these processes extend the state of the art in titanium micromachining and do so in a manner that is inherently scalable to low-cost/high-volume manufacturing. The focus of this talk will be to detail these processes, their capabilities, and their use in the fabrication of micromechanical devices for biomedical applications.
Sponsored by
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Researchers should cite this work as follows:


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Superhet needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 114 designs submitted by 38 freelance designers.
VRAXO Ltd. will sell Iceguard products from Nelson EasyHeat http://www.easyheat.eu in Ireland
We are 3 old geezers with electrical industry background. Unexpectedly cold weather last winter burst many domestic water pipes, leading to horror for dwellers, loss and hassle. It was a big unexpected cost to the Insurance Industry. We felt that selling a dedicated product, from which we may branch out later into other 'solutions', was a good idea. We founded VRAXO ltd - no significance, just, we think, a memorable name, and got the sales rights for Nelson Easy Heat products of which Iceguard is the main product for us. So we are unknown as a company in the industry, we want something stronger than appears on the Nelson websites.
1. Eventually nervous householders who will not wish to repeat the horror of having a pipe burst - flooding the house, destroying furniture, fittings, even the wiring. 2. Insurance companies may be persuaded to give an insurace charge break if Iceguard is fitted. 3. Initially we plan to sell to and through registered electricians only, so they are the 3rd part of the target market.
We have registered vraxo.com and will attempt to sell and book orders mainly over the web.
A good creative logo. Striking. Memorable. A reasonable fit with the product and application - not a picture of a tap (the European term) or faucet (US/Canada). Nor Christmassy. Not fussy. Simple. The Nelson material attached is therefore NOT an illustration of what we are looking for.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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Warm the hearts of your guests with these delightful "LOVE - The Key To Happiness" stickers! Stickers come with an endearing statement in blue and white on a yellow sticker. Use them to celebrate weddings, anniversaries, bridal showers, and so much more!
Features and Facts:
Processing TimesThis item is shipping out of our Montanna warehouse. Processing time generally takes 3-5 business days. For countries other than the United States and Canada, up to 6 additional business days are required to process your orders. Please visit our International Orders page for more information.
Transit TimesTransit times generally take 1-6 business days when shipping to the United States or Canada. To view the transit time map click here. We have 3 options for international orders, Priority mail (3-4 weeks transit time), Express Mail (1-2 weeks transit time), and DHL Global Express (4-5 business days). If you are unsure if your items will arrive by your event date or you have any questions regarding transit times, please feel free to contact us by phone, email or live chat.
Please include the your event date or the latest day you are able to receive your order by in the additional information box located on the billing information page.