Skip to main content

Home/ Web Accessibility/ Group items tagged links

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Vernon Fowler

WCAG 2.1 is Coming-and Here's What You Should Know Right Now - Siteimprove - 0 views

siteimprove.com/...what-you-should-know-right-now

forms usability buttons inclusivedesign errors navigation accessibility mobile touch

shared by Vernon Fowler on 09 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Expect the new WCAG standards to emphasize a mobile experience that matches what users might expect from a traditional browsing session. This will likely include making your site’s touch screen functions more compatible with assistive technology. 
  • The new standards are expected to raise that level to 400% to help users with low vision navigate sites more smoothly.
  • WCAG 2.1 will likely seek to place limits on where and when pop-ups and similar advertising can appear. 
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • For users with motor skill issues, clicking on incorrect links and buttons is a common problem. WCAG 2.1 will likely require improvements in navigation technology that makes it easier both to find the right link and to correct actions if the wrong link is clicked. 
  • Vernon Fowler on 09 Apr 18
     
    Considering how massively the online landscape has changed in the past decade, it's amazing that international standards for web accessibility haven't been updated since December of 2008. That's about to change. After soliciting and assessing recommendations from the public, the international Web Accessibility Initiative is set to announce version 2.1 of its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in the middle of this year. As that update draws nearer, there are a few key changes website owners may want to start planning for. (Keep in mind that all WCAG 2.1 changes are tentative.)
Vernon Fowler

WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker - 0 views

webaim.org/...contrastchecker

accessibility contrast webdesign tool standards color colour colors colours text links DIG252 WEB300 checker

shared by Vernon Fowler on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • WAVE can analyze contrast ratios for all page elements at once.
  • Colorzilla is an excellent tool for extracting the color value from any page element.
  • You can append ?fcolor=0000ff&bcolor=ff0000 (where the fcolor value is the foreground color and the bcolor value is the background color) to the URL of this page to analyze colors directly from a link or URL (link example).
Vernon Fowler

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

webaim.org/...10-easy-accessibility-tips

accessibility html css tips and tricks

shared by Vernon Fowler on 13 May 13 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • Vernon Fowler on 13 May 13
     
    "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

WordPress › WP Accessibility « WordPress Plugins - 0 views

wordpress.org/...wp-accessibility

accessibility wordpress cms plugin

shared by Vernon Fowler on 07 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Remove the target attribute from links
  • Remove redundant title attributes
  • Add post titles to standard "read more" links
Sandra Earl

Designing and Developing mobile web sites in the real world, part 2 - Opera Developer C... - 0 views

dev.opera.com/...d-developing-mobile-web-site-1

accessibility mobile opera best practices reading

shared by Sandra Earl on 12 Oct 10 - Cached
  • In tandem with the launch of their 3G mobile website, Siminn also launched a slightly lighter version of the same site - a 2G-optimized mobile presence to serve less powerful phones. Both sites are anchored to the same reservoir of information, but the 3G site makes less-restricted use of CSS, images, and other coding ornamentations.
  • The only distinction Siminn makes concerning the dimensionality of the user-experience is whether the device is 2G or 3G enabled. As stated before, 2G devices are sent to a slightly lighter version of the 3G site
  • This is exactly what Siminn are doing. By detecting the type of phone, they are presenting the customer with the most appropriate version of the page – either the 3G enhanced or the more basic design.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • e chose not to try and replicate the entire Icelandair website, but rather to cleave from it four or five of its most crucial elements.
  • This page contains the only form on the mobile site. In general, forms should be avoided because form input via a mobile device can be a tricky endeavor. However, there are certain coding practices that can simplify form input. For example, if your form field should only accept numeric input, then you should make use of the -wap-input-format property of WAP CSS. The Apple iPhone will automatically set the input to numeric if the name of the input element is set to certain values - phone or zip for example.
  • Mobile users only need to be shown news items that have some inherent urgency.
  • Much like your desktop browser recognizes a mailto: link as an email address, mobile devices recognize tel: links and phone numbers.
  • Do not assume that just because the UA string is not in your enumerated list of “Accepted strings”, it is not possible to view the site.
  • This is where you build in progressive enhancements to the website experience.
  • WURFL is an open source list of known phones and their capabilities. This can be put into a database and when a mobile device visits the your site you can sniff the UA, look-up the capabilities of that device (including screen-dimensions, default browser, etc) and serve them the best possible experience.
  • The RDF vocabulary is a standard across many mobile devices. Vendors that use this approach allow mobile sites to keep up-to-date with any new devices, without having to keep their own database of device types.
  • ou can find more details about standards support in Opera Mini/Mobile 4 here: Designing with Opera Mini 4 in mind JavaScript support in Opera Mini 4
  • There are a few basic coding items to avoid in the mobile web space. Chief among these, at least for now (now being 10/2007), is client-side scripting.
  • While it's tempting to try and port that elegant bit of AJAX from your conventional web to your mobile web, you will only create headaches for yourself.
  • ome browsers do support various levels of JavaScript, but as a developer you should not expect it to work across all devices.
  • retty heavy processor hog, so continuous scripting can drain a battery fast
  • mobile browser support for stylesheets varies greatly.
  • keep things simple.
  • most mobile devices default to their own font sizes and families regardless of styling. Thus, when working on the Siminn project we made no attempt to influence font size or family. In cases where we wanted a larger font, we simply relied on the generic XHTML heading elements.
  • he inclusion of font-size=smaller in the body tag worked as a kind of global reset for font sizes in every device we tested. With this little bit of code we were able to sufficiently reduce the default font size and thus more faithfully reproduce the design that we had been tasked with coding.
  • XHTML-MP - the mobile web subset of XHTML - is fully supported on most modern devices.
  • You can't read 2 books and several articles about mobile web development and cover everything. Much of the effort is trial and error. When starting out, emulators are a good way to get a rough idea of how the site will work. It gives you some feel for the navigation, architecture and flow of the site, but the look and feel varies from the emulator to the real device. The best thing you can do is get a few real phones to test on. I'm sure between yourself, co-workers and a few friends, you can manage to test your site on a good cross-section of the phones out there. Finally, there is some help. The W3C mobile web initiative does have a checklist to see how well your site is doing and so does dev.mobi - if you take heed of these two lists, your site should give a quality experience to most customers.
Sandra Earl

WebAIM: Accessibility of AJAX Applications - Accessibility Issues - 0 views

webaim.org/ajax

accessibility AJAX ARIA WebAIM

shared by Sandra Earl on 12 Oct 10 - Cached
  • AJAX is
  • a smorgasbord of web technologies put together to allow dynamic client-server interactions to occur in web applications without requiring pages to reload or refresh.
  • AJAX uses the following:
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The XHTML and CSS elements can be dynamically modified to display new information or styling. These changes are typically done using the Document Object Model.
  • XHTML (or HTML) and CSS to create an interface and visually style information.
  • JavaScript is used to manipulate the interface elements and is also used to establish a communication with a web server through XMLHttpRequest. This allows data (typically in XML format) to be transmitted between the client and the web server without requiring page reloads or refreshes.
  • standard type of client-server interaction
  • A web page interface is presented. User information is collected (via forms, links, etc.). The user submits information (submits form, activates link, etc.). The server processes submitted information. A new web page interface is sent to the user.
  • With AJAX, all of these steps can be handled in one interface.
  • The types of web applications and interactions allowed by using AJAX has given rise to the term "Web 2.0"
  • AJAX allows feature-rich, dynamic web applications which use server-side processing without requiring the traditional "submit data — retrieve web page"
  • allows more streamlined applications that require less processing and data transmission
  • higher levels of interactivity
  • current solution to these problems is to either provide a non-AJAX alternative to your application or to allow your AJAX application to continue to function if JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest are not supported. Such a requirement may be very difficult to achieve
  • Another issue with AJAX is how the application interface is updated. When updates to the interface occur, it may not be visually apparent that a change has occurred. The problem is even more troublesome for screen reader users. Screen readers typically read in a linear fashion. When changes happen in the interface, the screen reader user may not be aware of the change and the new content will likely not be read.
  • to allow dynamic interface changes to be accessible, the application must alert the user that a change has occurred, allow direct access to the new content, and then allow continued functionality of the web application. This process, while difficult to achieve, especially for screen reader users, is possible to achieve in many AJAX applications.
Vernon Fowler

WebAIM: Keyboard Accessibility - Tabindex - 0 views

webaim.org/...tabindex

DIG252 keyboard accessibility navigation focus html

shared by Vernon Fowler on 20 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • tabindex="0" and tabindex="-1" have special meaning and provide distinct functionality in HTML. A value of 0 indicates that the element should be placed in the default navigation order. This allows elements that are not natively focusable (such as <div>, <span>, and <p>) to receive keyboard focus. Of course one should generally use links and form controls for all interactive elements, but this does allow other elements to be focusable and trigger interaction.
  • A value of 0 indicates that the element should be placed in the default navigation order. This allows elements that are not natively focusable (such as <div>, <span>, and <p>) to receive keyboard focus.
  • A tabindex="-1" value removes the element from the default navigation flow (i.e., a user cannot tab to it), but it allows it to receive programmatic focus, meaning focus can be set to it from a link or with scripting. This can be very useful for elements that should not be tabbed to, but that may need to have focus set to them. A good example is a modal dialog window - when opened, focus should be set to the dialog so a screen reader will begin reading and the keyboard will begin navigating within the dialog. Because the dialog (probably just a <div> element) is not focusable by default, assigning it tabindex="-1" allows focus to be set to it with scripting when it is presented.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • A value of -1 can also be useful in complex widgets and menus that utilize arrow keys or other shortcut keys to ensure that only one element within the widget is navigable with the tab key, but still allow focus to be set on other components within the widget.
Vernon Fowler

How To Force Subtitles In An Embedded YouTube Video - 0 views

www.makeuseof.com/...btitles-embedded-youtube-video

captions accessibility video youtube default inclusive embed

shared by Vernon Fowler on 14 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • To enable subtitles by default, you will need to use &cc_load_policy=1 parameter
  • 3. Linking to Videos with Captions If you want to share a link to the video for viewers to see captions by default, you need to add this code at the end of the URL string: &yt:cc=on
  • &yt:cc=on
    • Vernon Fowler
      Vernon Fowler on 11 Oct 18
       
      If there aren't any existing URL parameters, instead of appending &yt:cc=on you may need to use /?yt:cc=on For example https://youtu.be/GUfCPMCMORM/?yt:cc=on
Vernon Fowler

WebAIM: Keyboard Accessibility - 0 views

webaim.org/keyboard

accessibility testing keyboard

shared by Vernon Fowler on 02 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Long lists of links or other navigable items may pose a burden for keyboard-only users.
  • The following best practices can facilitate efficient keyboard navigation: Provide a "skip to main content" link on the page. Use a proper heading structure. Provide ARIA landmarks or HTML5 structural elements (<main>, <nav>, etc.)
  • Vernon Fowler on 02 Jun 17
     
    "when testing with a keyboard, you are not just trying to interact with the page successfully, you also want to ensure all interactions are predictable. This requires an understanding of common keyboard interactions."
Vernon Fowler

WebAIM: To ARIA! The Cause of, and Solution to, All Our Accessibility Problems - 0 views

webaim.org/...aria-cause-solution

accessibility aria

shared by Vernon Fowler on 16 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • this role is often used extraneously (<button role="button">)
  • aria-label can also override other important information such as link text
  • aria-expanded This can tell screen reader users that activating a button or link will cause content to expand and collapse below (e.g., an accordion), and also whether it is currently collapsed or expanded.
Vernon Fowler

A List Apart: Articles: Now You See Me - 0 views

www.alistapart.com/...now-you-see-me

css webdesign accessibility usability content javascript class

shared by Vernon Fowler on 28 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • visibility: hidden; Element is hidden from view, but is not removed from the normal flow (i.e., it still takes up the space it normally would) Content is ignored by screen readers display: none; Element is removed from the normal flow and hidden; the space it occupied is collapsed Content is ignored by screen readers height: 0; width: 0; overflow: hidden; Element is collapsed and contents are hidden Content is ignored by screen readers
  • if you want to ensure users have access to content (even if it isn’t displayed visually in the current interface), the final option (positioning content offscreen) is really the way to go.
  • Screen readers have access to the content
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • position: absolute; left: -999em;
  • but links may “focus” oddly and negative indent may not prove long enough to fully hide content
  • limited to text and inline elements
  • Content is removed from the normal flow and shifted off the left-hand edge; the space it occupied is collapsed
    • Vernon Fowler
      Vernon Fowler on 17 Mar 13
       
      This is usually my desired effect.
  • If you don’t want your hidden content to be read by a screen reader, those defaults may work for you
  • how profoundly your choice of hiding mechanism can influence the accessibility of your content to assistive technologies like screen readers
Vernon Fowler

Accessible forms using WCAG 2.0 | Web Usability - 0 views

usability.com.au/...ccessible-forms-using-wcag-2-0

forms accessibility html

shared by Vernon Fowler on 10 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The label element is not used for the following because labels for these elements are provided via the value attribute
  • This technique inserts new content into the DOM immediately following the element that was activated to trigger the script. The triggering element must be a link or a button, and the script must be called from its onclick event. These elements are natively focusable, and their onclick event is device independent. Focus remains on the activated element and the new content, inserted after it, becomes the next thing in both the tab order and screen-reader reading order. Note that this technique works for synchronous updates. For asynchronous updates (sometimes called AJAX), an additional technique is needed to inform the assistive technology that the asynchronous content has been inserted.
Vernon Fowler

WebAIM: Alternative Text - 0 views

webaim.org/alttext

accessibility resources alt text images logos figure markup html

shared by Vernon Fowler on 27 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Alternative text should not: be redundant (be the same as adjacent or body text). use the phrases "image of…" or "graphic of…".
  • Identifying the logo as actually being a logo (alt="Acme Company Logo") is not typically necessary.
  • If the fact that an image is a photograph or illustration, etc. is important content, it may be useful to include this in alternative text.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Decorative images do not present important content, are used for layout or non-informative purposes, and do not appear within a link. In almost all cases, spacer and decorative images should have null alt text (alt="").
  • In current practice on the web, many such images are given descriptive alternative text even though the images don't seem to provide useful content. Option C (alt="") would probably be most appropriate in this case because the image does not convey relevant or important content.
  • Alternative text should: presents the CONTENT and FUNCTION of the image. be succinct.
  • Decorative images still need an alt attribute, but it should be null (alt="").
Sandra Earl

untitled - 0 views

www.iheni.com/e-shifts-on-desktop-and-mobile

mobile accessibility reading best practices standards

shared by Sandra Earl on 12 Oct 10 - Cached
  • The upsurge in VoiceOver could be explained in part by iPhone now providing VoiceOver support; all of a sudden there is a very real reason to switch to Mac if you can use a screen reader you are familiar with on both your desktop and mobile.
  • The upsurge in VoiceOver could be explained in part by iPhone now providing VoiceOver support; all of a sudden there is a very real reason to switch to Mac if you can use a screen reader you are familiar with on both your desktop and mobile.
  • It’s good to also see the free, open source NVDA on the up. They’ve worked hard to include WAI-ARIA support and are becoming a key tool for web developers when testing.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • We’re still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that’s the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into. On desktop we have IAccessible2, MSAA and UI Automation (amongst others) but on mobile users are tied into one platform often only supporting one browser (such as iPhone, Blackberry RIM and others) so while desktop has opened up we find ourselves in a 1990’s type impasse with users left with little room to choose on mobile. Opera works well with VoiceOver but we have no way of telling if it works on the iPhone as it’s not supported. My hope is that with more users there’ll be more momentum behind breaking this stand off and opening up the market and ultimately giving users not only choice but portability between platforms.
  • It’s good to also see the free, open source NVDA on the up. They’ve worked hard to include WAI-ARIA support and are becoming a key tool for web developers when testing.
  • « Yay factor! Going global with standards and BBC Click on web accessibility Make video accessible, localised, mobile and searchable by captioning » Screen reader software usage shifts on desktop and mobile Nov 4th, 2009 by iheni WebAim released their 2009 Screen Reader Survey last week, a follow up from last years Screen Reader survey. Very good reading it makes too but of particular interest are results around screen reader choice on the desktop and increased screen reader access on mobile. For years it’s felt like screen reader users have mainly used IE on the desktop in combination with the major screen readers Jaws by Freedom Scientific and WindowEyes by GW Micro. It’s not that other platforms don’t support screen readers (we have Orca on Linux, VoiceOver on Mac) it’s just that IE seems to have dominated. As such what types of content and web technologies users can and can’t access has very much been driven by what the three software vendors Microsoft, Freedom Scientific and GW Micro have supported. This has made access to the open web a bit lopsided cutting down on choice for the end user, competition and by extension innovation. SVG is an example of a web technology that has possibly suffered by not being supported by IE and in turn by Jaws and WindowEyes. What’s interesting to see in this year’s survey is that Jaws and WindowEyes – while still the most used – have some stiff competition at snapping at their heels from open source, free screen readers (NVDA and  SAToGo ) and VoiceOver which is available with Mac: JAWS 75.2% Window Eyes 23.5% VoiceOver 14.6% System Access or System Access To Go 22.3% NVDA 25.6% While this year’s stats show little shift for Jaws and WindowEyes usage overall there is a significant leap forward for NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) and VoiceOver: Of the 1121 respondents, 74% use JAWS, 23% use Window-Eyes, 8% use NVDA, and 6% use VoiceOver. While several other screen readers were reported, these were the most prominently reported. The upsurge in VoiceOver could be explained in part by iPhone now providing VoiceOver support; all of a sudden there is a very real reason to switch to Mac if you can use a screen reader you are familiar with on both your desktop and mobile. This could also explain the increase of screen reader users on mobile reported this year with 53% of survey respondents with disabilities confirming they use a screen reader on a mobile device. This is up from 12% last year (although last year’s survey doesn’t distinguish disabled from non-disabled users). I wonder how much this is to do with the ‘iPhone Factor’ but also can’t help thinking that social networking has done for the mobile web what Kylie Minogue did for Agent Provocateur – everybody wants some. And for me at least 2009 feels like the year that we all sat up and paid attention to the potential of mobile for people with disabilities. We’re still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that’s the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into. On desktop we have IAccessible2, MSAA and UI Automation (amongst others) but on mobile users are tied into one platform often only supporting one browser (such as iPhone, Blackberry RIM and others) so while desktop has opened up we find ourselves in a 1990’s type impasse with users left with little room to choose on mobile. Opera works well with VoiceOver but we have no way of telling if it works on the iPhone as it’s not supported. My hope is that with more users there’ll be more momentum behind breaking this stand off and opening up the market and ultimately giving users not only choice but portability between platforms.
  • We’re still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that’s the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into.
  • Sandra Earl on 12 Oct 10
     
    "We're still faced with one massive problem with mobile access however and that's the lack of an open, cross platform accessibility API that mobile screen readers can hook into."
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 45 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page