I couldn't believe this form Microsoft's own accessibility guidance for the latest mac offerings: "Hear most menu commands, options in dialog boxes, and other elements on your computer screen. VoiceOver does not work with the contents of the main document window or the ribbon. For example, VoiceOver does not read your text in a document."

Now the bad news: MS Office for Mac still does not fully work with VoiceOver. VoiceOver will read the toolbars and their content, and says that it is "interacting with document pane view" but that's all. VoiceOver cannot read the content of the document pane, thus the product is still not accessible.

Another nail in Flash's coffin

Another nail in Flash's coffin

Maccessibility is devoted to connecting, compiling, and providing easy access to the best resources for blind, visually impaired, and other disability groups using Apple products. It is maintained by a dedicated group of visually impaired volunteers, who are Apple enthusiasts themselves.

A single illustration of the myriad of techniques a web designer must take on board in order to create accessible websites.

The Before and After Demonstration is a multi-page resource that shows an inaccessible website and a retrofitted version of this same website. Each web page includes inline annotations that can be activated to highlight some of the key accessibility barriers or repairs. Each web page is also accompanied by an evaluation report to inform the developers on the level of conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Progressive Enhancement is a powerful methodology that allows Web developers to concentrate on building the best possible websites while balancing the issues inherent in those websites being accessed by multiple unknown user-agents.

Open letter by the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs outlining his reasons for Flash being dropped from IOS and the necessity for standards in software/web development.

Accessibility guide for users

I come across articles and recommendations that tend to confuse usability with accessibility. The objective of this post is to establish the link between the two terms while outlining their differences. In order to do so, it is important to first understand what is web site usability and web site accessibility.

The 10 most general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are more in the nature of rules of thumb than specific usability guidelines.

Although accessibility is related to the issues of usability and coding standards, it is possible for a site to be considered usable and standards compliant but NOT accessible (and vice-versa). Below are some definitions, and situations where distinctions may arise.

Interesting discussion about the differences betweens Apple and Microsoft's built in screen readers and the reasons for the various strengths/limitations of each platform.

This attribute seems to be required by Xerte if embedding images where the embed functionality is not available from the "optional properties" menu. (Why use this instead of "Alt"? - When screen reading a Xerte object the the Alt tag seems to get ignored but "title" tag gets read aloud)

25 Ways to Make Your WordPress Website More Accessible

Formats and Guidance UKAAF has developed a number of guidance documents that will be particularly useful for service providers and transcribers of accessible formats. The UKAAF guidance documents are free to download in doc, docx and PDF formats and are listed on this page under the format that they relate to. To obtain an electronic version, simply select the UKAAF guidance document you wish to access and you will then be taken to the UKAAF Guidance download page where you can download it. Hardcopy versions of UKAAF's guidance documents in print, large print, synthetic audio and braille are available to purchase (14 day delivery). UKAAF members benefit from being able to purchase these at a reduced rate. To enquire about purchasing accessible format versions please contact admin@ukaaf.org.

Sigil is a multi-platform EPUB ebook with the following features: