Disability and the concept of accessibility can be confusing. Awkward. Uncomfortable. The first step to true understanding is usually awareness. Awareness helps you get over those feelings: awareness that issues exist, awareness that there are solutions to those issues, and awareness that what we do as web professionals can have a profound impact on someone else’s life.
We often get asked about how we integrate accessibility into our processes. It’s fairly straightforward for us, because we’re already doing it. But what about people that want to start adding accessibility into their mix? How should they go about adding in pieces? One Step at a Time.
Organizations grow over time. Their understanding of accessibility and their attitude towards it change too. Have you seen these five stages of accessibility where you work?
Accessibility and user experience are not black and white. Here we take a look at some shades of grey, and user scenarios that we need to take into account when we’re testing web sites and applications. We need to test for correct cases, incorrect cases, and moving efficiently from the incorrect state to the correct state.
I was interviewed by Paul Boag for the Boagworld.com podcast that just went live (Season 2, episode 6, Aug 31, 2011). Paul asked me quite a few questions. In the resulting episode, he mentions that he felt a bit of pressure as I asked him some pretty blunt questions about his practice with providing audio transcripts for his podcast.
We have lots of rules to follow in web design and development and we need to know which ones to break and when. Validation is one of the “rules” that I’m giving you permission to break, when you add ARIA to your applications.
HTML5 has many new elements and features. One of these is block links—we have the ability to wrap a link around block level elements. Here we take a look at the impact that this can have on accessibility.
Full keyboard functionality is a must-have for accessibility. Here’s how we solve one of the problems with keyboard access for embedded YouTube videos.
What is appropriate alternative text for an image? You can’t really tell until you see the image in context. In our first screencast we look at how appropriate and accurate alt text can actually be counter to the objectives that we have when we look at that image in context.
You may have heard that display:none is bad for accessibility and that you should use off-left positioning instead. It isn’t about using display: none; or off-left positioning. It isn’t just about screen reader users. It’s about making an interface work for everyone with efficient keyboard access for everyone that needs it—sighted or not.