Five Stages of Accessibility
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?
Posts written by Derek Featherstone
Accessibility Testing: Correction Scenarios
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.
Aim for the Stars: Pragmatism and Transcripts
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.
Knowing when to break the rules
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.
Accessibility and HTML5 Block Links
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.
Keyboard Accessible YouTube Controls
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.
Images in Context
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.
Better for Accessibility
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.
Will we ever get required fields right?
I see forms all the time that make me wonder if we’ll ever see people noting required fields in a form correctly. I bet you do too. Timing is everything, and yesterday—just as an article of ours was published at A List Apart called ARIA and Progressive Enhancement where we look at required fields in detail—I saw an example of a form that just makes me cringe.
Hands-free for now
My right hand is out of commission from doing too much yard work over the weekend. A sure sign I’m getting old, and a reminder that this can happen to anyone. I’m using Dragon Dictate for the Mac as a temporary solution. Hopefully it doesn’t last too long.