93 posts tagged “accessibility”
2008
The alt=“” attribute from Ian Hickson. In case you were wondering how it all ended, Hixie has a mammoth summary post explaining the facts and the potential alternatives.
Capital Radio’s London Guide. Worth pointing out: the search / map interface on this page is one of the best examples of progressive enhancement I’ve ever seen. Try disabling JavaScript and see what happens. It seems like most developers just can’t be bothered with this kind of attention to detail these days, which disappoints me.
This Week in HTML 5—Episode 1.
It looks like the most controversial aspect of the HTML 5 spec has been addressed - now, instead of omitting the alt attribute for user generated content that has no relevant information available, sites are advised to provide an indication of the kind of image expected surrounded by braces, for example alt="{uploaded photo}".
Microformats and accessibility: the soap opera that never ends. “Be sure to tune in next week, when we’ll drown a leading accessibility expert to see if she’s a witch.”
Removing Microformats from bbc.co.uk/programmes. “Until these issues are resolved the BBC semantic markup standards have been updated to prevent the use of non-human-readable text in abbreviations.”
2007
google-axsjax (via) “The AxsJAX framework can inject accessibility enhancements into existing Web 2.0 applications using any of several standard Web techniques”—including bookmarklets and Greasemonkey. The enhancements conform to W3C ARIA, supported by Firefox 2.0 and later.
Why Accessibility? Because It’s Our Job! “A chef must care about health, a builder must care about safety, and we must care about accessibility.”
Ignorance and inspiration. I’m pretty gobsmacked at the levels of ignorance about web accessibility out there—it’s not that hard people! I’m obviously more out of touch with mainstream developers than I thought; I was under the impression that people had generally got the message.
Google Maps, HTML version. Google’s mostly undocumented accessible version of Google Maps. Robin Christopherson demonstrated this yesterday at FOWA.
The longdesc lottery. Mark Pilgrim is now writing for the WHATWG blog. Here he makes the case for replacing the longdesc attribute with a better solution, based on ten years of developer ignorance and misuse. As always with that site, check the comments for a microcosm of the larger debate.
html4all. New mailing list / advocacy group focusing on accessibility issues relevant to HTML 5. This is something that the core HTML 5 group have taken a lot of criticism for, although it’s unfair to say that they don’t care about accessibility (they are however challenging a lot of sacred cows).
I've actually been using the latest version of JAWS recently, as part of my work on HTML5. From a usability point of view it is possibly the worst software I have ever used. I'm still horrified at how bad the accessibility situation is. All this time I've been hearing people worried about whether or not Web pages have longdesc attributes specified or whatnot, when in fact the biggest problems facing blind users are so much more fundamental as to make image-related issues seem almost trivial in comparison.
Why the Alt Attribute May Be Omitted. “The benefit of requiring the alt attribute to be omitted, rather than simply requiring the empty value, is that it makes a clear distinction between an image that has no alternate text (such as an iconic or graphical representation of the surrounding text) and an image that is a critical part of the content, but for which not alt text is available.”
WCAG Samurai. Anonymous Samurai, headed up by Joe Clark, publish their errata for WCAG 1.0 (with two independent peer reviews). Recommended as a better alternative to WGAC 2.0.
hAccessibility. The use of the abbr element in hCalendar causes screen readers to read out an incomprehensible number instead of a date.
New Dutch accessibility law. Sounds extremely forward thinking, designed by people who really understand the field. Just one problem: the guidelines are only available in Dutch!
2005
The state of accessibility in the real world. Screen readers are tricker beasts than you may have imagined.
Greasemonkey for personalized accessibility. Why Greasemonkey is the perfect tool for client-side accessibility enhancements.
Gecko Info for Windows Accessibility Vendors (via) “This FAQ explains how makers of Windows screen readers, voice dictation packages and magnification software can support Gecko-based software”
2004
JavaScript and accessibility. Matt May is seeking JavaScripters to help build a library of accessible scripts.
WCAG and the Myth of Accessibility. How learning disabilities remain mostly uncatered for.
Gmail accessibility. Mark Pilgrim: “The only way Gmail could be less accessible is if the entire site were built in Flash.”
How To Sell Accessibility. Acts as a guide to selling standards as well.
Simple tricks for more usable forms
My second article for SitePoint has been published: Simple tricks for more usable forms. It examines a whole bunch of CSS and Javascript tricks for improving the usability of web based forms without impairing their accessibility to clients that don’t support those technologies. The article has already had some useful feedback on the forums, including the valuable observation that auto-selecting the contents of a form field when it receives the focus can have a negative effect on the usability of Unix browsers, where mouse buttons are frequently used for coping and pasting.
2003
GAWDS now inviting new members
The Guild of Accessible Web Designers is a world wide organisation of web designers and developers committed to helping each other, and promoting the message that accessible web design is ’good for business’
. I’d describe the organisation in detail here, but the official site does a far better job than I could. If you’ve been following the web accessibility community in any detail You’re likely to recognise a number of the names on the registered members list; I’ve been following GAWDS developments for a while and its shaping up to be a great resource for accessibility minded designers. I’ve also contributed an article on Writing good ALT text which hopefully provides some useful advice on a frequently misunderstood topic.
XHTML and Accessibility in ASP.NET Whidbey (via) A definite improvement, but __VIEWSTATE still gives me the willies
Too much accessibility
Tom Gilder is right on target with his latest rant about sites that add accessiblity features without thinking about their consequences. Accessibility frequently involves adding new markup but you can definitely have too much of a good thing.
Further reading on the RNIB redesign
There’s been a flurry of blogger activity concerning the RNIB redesign over the weekend. isolani created an XHTML/CSS redesign independantly of mine, while Tom Gilder took mine as a starting point and made several improvements. Ben Meadowcroft has posted an open letter summarising the concerns felt by him and others over the way the redesign has been implemented. Meanwhile, Julie Howell (the RNIB’s Good Web Design campaign co-ordinator and a well respected member of the Web Accessibility community) has replied on Tom Gilder’s blog promising to collate feedback and pass it on to the web team (Julie herself was not involved in the redesign). It’s good to see they’re listening, but I really wish they would hurry up and fix their broken links!
The new RNIB site in CSS
Just to show it can be done, here’s the new RNIB site design (as mentioned earlier) re-done with a CSS layout. It’s something of a first draft—I’ve only tested it in IE6 and Firebird on Windows and it still has a few glitches here and there, but as a proof of concept it works pretty well. Here are a few notes on the implementation:
[... 550 words]RNIB redesign a disappointment
Accessify: RNIB redesign does not go far enough examines the RNIB’s much hyped new accessible web site and finds it sorely lacking. While it includes basic accessibility features such as alt attributes and skip-navigation links it suffers hugely from out-dated development practises and unnecessary markup bloat. Here’s a prime example, taken from the left hand column of the front page of the site:
[... 385 words]