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Sandra Earl

Introduction to screen readers and screen magnifiers | 456 Berea Street - 0 views

  • And that leads me to three great videos posted on the Yahoo! User Interface Blog: In Introduction to Screen Readers, Yahoo! engineer Victor Tsaran talks about who will be likely to use a screen reader, how screen readers work, and how they can be used to interact with the computer desktop and to browse web sites. In Introduction to Screen Magnifiers, Karo Caran shows how the screen magnifier ZoomText is used to make the computer desktop and web sites readable to people with reduced vision. And finally, in From the Mouth of a Screenreader, Doug Geoffray from GW Micro (Window-Eyes vendor) talks about the history of screen reading software and how they analyse what is displayed on the screen in order to speak it to the user.
Vernon Fowler

HTML5 Accessibility Chops: When to use an ARIA role | The Paciello Group Blog - 0 views

  • The situation for new HTML5 elements is different and likely to remain so for some time. It will be years before New HTML5 elements get robust accessibility support implemented across browsers and platforms. This is particularly so for non interactive elements such as the new HTML5 structural elements because  accessibility APIs in general do not have defined roles for many non interactive elements. In this case it is recommended to add the appropriate ARIA roles to elements that are meant to convey meaning but are effectively meaningless due to lack of implemented accessibility support. For example, adding role=navigation to a nav element fills the gaps in support for HTML5 semantics as ARIA  is more robustly  supported by most modern browsers and assistive technology:
  • <nav role=”navigation”>
  • Authors/developers can safely assume that any element that has been around since HTML 4.0 is already accessibility supported in browsers that support accessibility. So they do not need a default implicit role added.
Vernon Fowler

Responsive Design is Too Responsive? - 0 views

  • When you use browser zoom in Webkit browsers (Chrome and Safari), all elements on the page increase in size and start overlapping content. This is because WebKit browsers zoom to make the content bigger but the width of the browser remains unaffected, which means it doesn’t trigger responsive style sheet elements or address layout issues.
  • This is an accessibility issue as users with vision deficiencies use browser zoom to navigate websites. If they use Google Chrome they will have a lot of issues accessing content.
Vernon Fowler

How Can I Validate (X)HTML + ARIA? | The Paciello Group BlogThe Paciello Group Blog - 0 views

  • The DTD I have used is the HTML 4.01 loose DTD with ARIA attributes added
  • A way I have developed to do this is by creating a bookmarklet that takes the innerHTML of a document (without the DOCTYPE) and adds the custom DOCTYPE to it and then sends it to the W3C validator: HTML4.01-loose+ARIA Checker (add as a favorite to try it out)
Vernon Fowler

The Same, But Different: Breaking Down Accessibility, Universality, and Inclusion in De... - 0 views

  • One way to put a name to this activity is to say that we are going up the mountain — in other words, moving upward is our goal. Another is to refer to reaching the summit — the destination to which we aspire. The former says, in effect, “We are gradually making our way up the hill.” The latter says, “We’re not done until we get to the top.”
  • Inclusive design is the practice of going up the mountain — we can always look for ways to include more people and situations to our designs, even if the result only gets us a few steps up the trail at a time.
  • I would go so far as to say that it’s the scope of that task — the seemingly infinite nature of including everyone — that is too big of a challenge. We aren’t all born to be mountain climbers. But together we can get a little farther up the hill, if we try.
  •  
    My post on the @adobe blog is up. It's about how I distinguish inclusive design from accessibility, and why you still need to go back and learn about universal design. https://t.co/OsjUp57F29 #a11y #inclusivedesign Great article on the nuances between A11y, Inclusive Design and Universal Design. Thanks @mattmay The Same, But Different: Breaking Down Accessibility, Universality, and Inclusion in Design https://t.co/QJIXT7y96T via @adobe
Vernon Fowler

HTML5 Accessibility Chops: section elements | The Paciello Group Blog - 0 views

  • The following table illustrates support and interaction features for a number of structural HTML elements. The information is based on support for these elements by the JAWS screen reader.
  • Recommended ARIA role mappings for HTML5 section elements
  • <header role=”banner”>
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • <nav role=”navigation”>
  •  
    "banner"
Vernon Fowler

Examples of 'skip links' on some bank sites | The Paciello Group Blog - 0 views

  • Currently browsers do not support keyboard navigation via landmark roles, so for keyboard users who do not also use assistive tech, a visible skip link is needed.
Vernon Fowler

WebAIM: Blog - 10 Easy Accessibility Tips Anyone Can Use - 0 views

  • add the appropriate landmark role attribute (role="main", role="navigation", or role="search". If your site uses HTML5 <main> or <nav>, add the role to these elements.
  • Sighted keyboard users generally navigate through the links and form fields on a web page using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys on the keyboard. To help ensure they can visually identify which link or form field they have navigated to, you can add the following to your CSS file: a:focus { outline:1px solid red; background:yellow; } The colors may need to be customized to fit your site design, but they should be fairly distinctive. To take this tip one step further, you can search your CSS files for a:hover and in each instance change it to a:hover, a:focus. This will ensure that keyboard users get the same visual highlighting when they navigate to items as mouse users get when they hover over an item.
  •  
    "Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). To celebrate and to help promote accessibility, here are 10 simple accessibility tips that most anyone can implement today into their web site's HTML and CSS to make it more accessible."
Vernon Fowler

On Alt Text ∙ An A List Apart Blog Post - 0 views

  • Any web designer or developer with her heart in the right place knows that, to be accessible, every image requires an alt text. Except when it doesn’t.
  • In this case, then, it is better to use the null alt (alt=”“), and that is what we did in the A List Apart redesign.
Vernon Fowler

Creating an Accessible Infographic | Access Matters Blog - 0 views

  • Screen readers are very literal and, as such, tend to read out numbers in a list with no particle words or punctuation.
  • Using a CSS technique to position text off the screen, it’s simple to add some particle words (such as “from” or “to”) for screen reader users. In the case of a range of numbers, the dashes can be presented using graphics and not part of the text content of the page. For example, in the second data point shown in the image below, instead of a screen reader announcing “twenty-six percent fifty-five sixty-four” it would be “twenty six percent fifty-five to sixty-four.”
  • Another example is implied headings. Sighted users can understand quickly from images that a data set title should be “gender” but if the heading doesn’t appear in the design, it should be added and visually hidden using CSS.
Sandra Earl

E-Access Blog » Blog Archive » Organisation in the Spotlight - W3C: Global St... - 0 views

  • One major new piece of work undertaken by WAI is the EC-funded WAI-AGE Project (http://www.w3.org/WAI/WAI-AGE/), a look at the implications of an ageing population for web access, given the older people are more likely to have disabilities and may also be less familiar with new technologies. “Demographics worldwide are dramatically changing at the moment,” says Andrew Arch, who works with Abou-Zahra on WAI-AGE. “The proportions of older to younger people are changing as well as the numbers. We’re living longer, and we haven’t got the support behind us. “Lots of things have got to change in governments and organisations - with an ageing workforce, you have to keep learning to stay accessible.”
  • The WAI-AGE project is partly aimed at finding out whether there are any significant new pieces of work needed to ensure web accessibility for an older population, Arch says. “We’ve looked at what research and user observation has gone on over the decade. There is a pretty big overlap between older people and others with disabilities - sight starts to decline, motor dexterity - and individually these overlap. But with older people there is often a lack of recognition that there is a disability there. For example some people might just say they can’t remember so well, rather than that they have a cognitive impairment. Or people won’t see failing eye-sight as a disability, it’s just ‘part of growing old’. But they are disabilities, and often multiple disabilities.”
  • Having gained a grasp of current research the project returned to guidelines such as WCAG 2.0 to see if any changes might be needed. “A large proportion of the needs of older people are met by the new guidelines, but other things might need to feed into the guidance we will issue on implementing the guidelines, for example guidance on how people prepare content for older people.,” said Arch. “Many older people have not grown up with computers, and may not realise their capabilities, for example that you can magnify text in your browser.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • This argument is a development of the age-old mantra from the accessibility sector that people with disabilities want to use the web in the same way as everybody else - “it is a human right recognised by the UN,” says Abou-Zahra. But he recognizes that businesses in particular will also  be interested in the additional business benefits, especially in the current financial climate.
  • “With commercial organisations the return on investment is often an important argument. Well, a few years ago, companies might have said ‘how many older people are online?’ but with demographics changing they know the answer. And with the current surge in mobile phone use there is another incentive, since accessible sites work better on mobile phones.”
  • Another change of style will be a greater separation between the core guidelines and references to specific technologies such as Javascript or browser types, Abou-Zahra says.
  • “WCAG 1.0 was too  technology-specific. Back then HTML was more dominant, and there was less use of multimedia, but today we have a flurry of technologies such as Ajax, so the first lesson we learned is don’t write for a specific technology. Also, in the days of WCAG 1.0 we had to exclude Javascript because it was not sufficiently standardised and  assistive technology could not handle it consistently, but now that has largely changed so you need to include it, to look at how any technology should be accessible. The requirements - such as tagging images with text - needs to apply to any technology you are using.
Sandra Earl

E-Access Blog » Blog Archive » People With Impaired Vision 'Less Likely To Be... - 0 views

  • The RNIB report finds people over 55 are three times more likely to have seeing difficulties as those in the 16-24 age bracket, which is a greater increase with age than with other kinds of disabilities.
  • In addition, the report finds that people who are disabled with seeingdifficulties are less likely to be employed (48 per cent) than those with other kinds of disability (50 per cent); this compares to an overall employment rate of 75 per cent among people of working age. For people with more than one disability, the employment rate drops to 38 per cent, however for people with ’seeing difficulties’ that do not constitute a disability the rate is much higher at 83 per cent. The unemployment rates are 8 per cent for disabled people as a whole but 13 per cent for those disabled by visual impairment. In contrast, the report also found that a higher than average proportion of visually impaired disabled people are employed in high-level positions.
Sandra Earl

E-Access Blog » Blog Archive » Call For Research Into Elderly Access To Mobil... - 1 views

  • “Many of the commonly-used techniques of requirements capture for mobile technologies are inappropriate for use with older people, for a variety of reasons,” it says. “These may be related to problems associated with age, cognitive complexity and motivation. The result is to restrict the potential of mobile technologies to provide support to older people.”
Sandra Earl

BBC Internet Blog - 0 views

  • We considered a few approaches, but decided to grow our new widget out of Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR. This is firstly because these tools met our requirements to work cross-platform and deliver the desktop experience we wanted, and also because they linked up with in-house skills in the team which manages them, making them simpler to manage.
  • BBC Future Media & Technology's pilot widget application BBC LiveUpdate uses the Adobe AIR runtime, which is dependent on users downloading and installing a plugin to their desktop, but which unfortunately does not currently support screenreaders (or other software which relies on the Microsoft Active Accessibility layer for assistive technologies). We're working with Adobe to make tools built with AIR more accessible than current products wherever possible and are committed to delivering accessible services. As this is a beta product, there are also other limitations in how much we have been able to establish accessibility support in the following areas:Colour contrast cannot be alteredText size cannot be alteredLacks consistent alt textLacks Title attributesIs not entirely tabbable.
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