Maddie

Did Madeleine Mc Cann's parents have anything to do with her disappearance? I personally think they did. Although they may not have been directly involved in her disappearance, they certainly helped. Honestly what sort of parents leave their twins aged two and little girl aged three in an apartment on their own in the Algarve. Kate and Gerry Mc Cann didn't just leave their children for two minutes to go out to the shop they left them for an hour to have dinner in a restaurant with their friends. There defence was that the tapas bar was only a hundred meters away from their apartment. That may be so, unfortunately for Maddie that hundred meters was just too far. When the case first broke I thought that maybe they had killed her by accidentally overdosing her on tranquilisers to make her sleep. Then I realised they wouldn't have had much time to remove her body. When investigations revealed no hard evidence that they were involved in her disappearance everybody resigned to the fact that they were innocent. However I honestly believe that they are far from innocent and that they should be charged with gross neglect of their children and that the social services should think about removing their twins away from their care before something happens to them too. You may say that's too harsh but I feel really strongly about the abuse and neglect of children. You need a licence to drive a car it's my opinion that you should need a licence to have children too. Regardless of whether they did it or not, they left their kids unattended and the worst thing in the world happened. With all the money they have they wouldn't pay for a babysitter that the resort could provide. Some people long for children and can't have any and others just abuse and neglect them. At the end of the day the Mc Canns neglected their children and they should go to jail for that alone. As for Maddie, if she is still alive she is one very frightened possibly hurt little girl who wont understand whats happening to her or where her mum and dad are or why they left her and haven't come back to get her. I couldn't imagine any child going through that. For more information visit the Find Maddie helpline . If you don't agree with me just look at the following video and tell me how her parents could put her in that danger by leaving her alone and not be to blame.

Web standards

I have to admit I've never really thought about websites in great detail before this course. Ignorance is bliss! However after attending a lecture by Roisin Mulligan a lecturer in the college who is blind I sat up and realised the complexity of it all. Roisin showed us how she uses a computer and navigates around a website using specialised software called Jaws , it really got me thinking. Some websites were quite easy for her to navigate around but others such as Sky sports were virtually impossible. Even I who has all of my senses couldn't really make head or tail of their website. It was so busy, there was far too much information all on one screen. I truly think that Roisin is amazing, she hasn't let her disability stop her in any way. However, after witnessing how difficult it was for her to navigate around some sites, I really do think that web standards is an important issue. Whatever way you look at it, if a website can't be accessed by everybody it is a form of discrimination. It is not as if they can use the excuse that people with sight difficulties cant read a website anyway. That is actually not the case as proved by Roisin and the ability of jaws software. Therefore it is my opinion that it should be a legal requirement for all websites to be accessible to everybody regardless of their disabilities. I sincerely hope that all the students who are studying computers and website design in our college are taking note of these web standards as they are the future technicians and website designers of the world and the accessibility of websites for all including the disabled is in their hands. For the rest of us I hope that each and every one of us is grateful for everything we have and we realise how lucky we are not to have a disability such as blindness that could affect our every day life. Roisin is an inspiration to us all.