Technical debt is also possible in accessibility and can easily grow when re-using code or components.
Year: 2020
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Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law on 26th of July 1990. And it has improved accessibility for other countries too.
Do not think that alternative text is a set and forget thing. Picture can mean different things in different contexts, so the alternative text must respect that.
Design is art, I agree, but not every new page should be a independent piece of art, consistency is king. Easier to make accessible, easier for the user to use.
Starting soon lowers the costs on the end. And minimizes potentially unneeded dialogs that should already be a part of the design process from before.
I have done some quick practical testing and research about cookie consents accessibility, usability and also some testing with search engines – on some websites in Europe, to see what are consequences of cookie consents for users, owners and search engines.
A lot is written on Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration and I think they should also include accessibility. Maybe we should define Continuous Accessibility as a part of them as well.
Relying on semantic text highlighting alone can be dangerous as screen readers use to ignore special emphasizing tags to prevent clutter to their users.
It is interesting to compare accessibility errors from a million of popular websites and see if and how are they improving or deteriorating compared to previous year.
At first glance not very much, but when we research the details and difficulties of some user groups then it is not difficult to understand that content must be readable to be understood.
I use zoom as well, and it is a perfect example of accessibility feature that is beneficial for everyone, especially in this demographics with population getting older and older…
This API is just an interface that assistive technologies and user agents use to communicate. It is important to know that there are differences between vendor solutions so testing is a bit more complex but crucial.
They say that sometimes you can not see the forest for the trees. But in web development you really should think about the forest of multiple trees to understand how it connects.
Mobile accessibility is also a part of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and has been updated in WCAG 2.1. Using a screen-reader on mobile is quite an experience. If developers made apps accessible…
Sometimes a short checklist is all we need to get our minds set and that we do not forget about important things. This is my short(er) version for designers and developers…
Public sector websites published before 23 September 2018 must be compliant by 23 September 2020.
Search engines are actually screen readers if we simplify them so accessibility is extremely important for search engine optimization as well.
Public sector in the European Union requires accessibility statement within Web Accessibility Directive, but that does not mean that you should not have such a statement even if you are not a part of public sector or even if you reside outside EU.
Beside content accessibility guidelines we must also be aware of authoring tool accessibility guidelines that your editor tools, for example content management system, should adhere to
My reflections on the process. And yes – testing early is a requirement. Developers should also use screen-readers to test their components, templates etc.
Short reminder about what is semantics and some practical examples of it before we explain the importance of semantics for accessibility and search engine optimization.
When more and more services move online, then they must be accessible, otherwise they exclude.
Wouldn’t it be nice if computer would just make a perfect alternative text for us when we include the image? While there are some services promising this – they should be manually checked and corrected! But in the future…
User is the sun in our galaxy – so let’s make sure we gravitate towards user needs first. But yes, reality can be cruel before decision makers are aware of the benefits that accessibility brings to users and businesses.
After researching on the net I’ve decided to pour some thoughts of mine on the brilliant WCAG-EM report tool for web accessibility evaluation
We can all benefit from textual descriptions of images and other primarily visual elements in digital content. Therefore we must always remember the need for alternative texts…
Let’s try to spread the good word about inclusion and equality on the web. I’ve tried to do my part too.
We know about browser inconsistencies but we must be aware of screen-reader inconsistencies as well. Additional burden that should be understood.
When you build a popular browser and learn developers about web technologies you must not forget about accessibility. And Mozilla is doing an amazing work.
User agents are sometimes going beyond their own guidelines and helping to improve accessibility with smart accessible defaults.