A little knowledge is a dangerous thing proverb goes also for accessibility. When we are motivated to implement newly acquired knowledge after a training we can quickly start overusing techniques and can even make our product less accessible.
Posts
WCAG 2.2 is here, when do we get it into legislation, like Web Accessibility Directive and European Accessibility Act? Well EN 301 549 seems to be updating in 2025, according to work item schedule it may come in early 2026. Unless ETSI adds WCAG 2.2 sooner it seems that we will have to wait quite a long time.
Without data we just have opinions. Having a lot of data in different formats can take time to process and sometimes also mean we can’t really compare state of accessibility if countries use different methodologies. If all countries had same data set or even better, central registry it would make data more accessible. And we could save time and money.
Municipality avoided paying fines after vendor of e-learning app fixed issues with 4 success criteria out of 6 tested (all A level). I found some interesting facts that seem to reveal procurement and especially awareness problems and I also offer some potential solutions.
Happy to present my accessibility awareness building article at the DIGIN 2023 conference, organized by European Center for Accessibility (AccessibleEU). Short overview of other contributions and a thought about how this professional event could be even better.
9 new success criteria and one less in WCAG 2.2. Removing 4.1.1 from WCAG 2.2 impacting WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 as well (can’t fail 4.1.1 anymore). Even if three new WCAG 2.2 success criteria are on level AAA I don’t see reasons to not implementing them as they bring much value!
My first academic article called General Strategies for Improving Accessibility of E-commerce was accepted on a Slovenian Digital Inclusion conference. It was an interesting experience writing it and in this post I reflect on some important things.
Brief reflection on 3 years of WAD in EU and short version of attending WAD anniversary event which was really worth attending.
Concentrating on WCAG alone can feel like accessibility is always binary. When thinking about all the success criteria of the WCAG we can quickly conclude that there is not a single medium sized website in the world that conforms totally. A reflection on perfectionism, conformance and reality.
Sustainability and accessibility are absolutely interconnected. Recent sustainability guidelines, although still in draft version, are quite often referring to accessibility, so I wanted to expose parts where accessibility is beneficial to sustainability.
Sometimes best practices are passed as WCAG requirements and that can make accessibility more difficult for some people to implement. We need to understand what WCAG actually requires and what it does not before we try to impact other people.
I just received mail from IAAP that my certification is prolonged based on my activities that generated enough Continuing Accessibility Education Credits (CAECs). I like that we need not only to pass the exam but to also remain active to maintain it. There are some downsides of certifications, but still way more positive effects in my opinion.
4 years went fast. A small self-reflection about the blog and a bit about the future of it.
Sometimes we expect code to work in a specific way. Here is another example how we need to test it to be certain. Status messages are so important that they even got their own WCAG success criteria, but make sure your code really works.
Some brief thoughts on how to make a small business more accessible, at least digitally. Don’t take it as a project, it is a program, a journey.
Advertising is big money. Making your ads inaccessible is expensive. In this post I summarize some common accessibility issues that are present in online adverts.
WCAG 2.2 seems to be around the corner, document is currently a Proposed recommendation. But what does that actually mean?
Digital transformation – as we move from paper to spreadsheets and then to smart applications for all parts of our business needs, we have the obligation to make our future digital business accessible from the start.
Keyboard only users (or users of keyboard based assistive technologies) depend on seeing focus indications at all times and if they can’t see them, they are left to guessing where they are. With soon-to-come WCAG 2.2 focus must be at least partially visible at all times, simply put.
I try to reflect on practical best practices to make an online business more accessible. Most of advice is very tactical and some is a bit strategical. Hope at least some of it can improve the accessibility of your business.
Inert is still useful and although we are slowly getting native dialog we can still benefit from using inert when we don’t strictly use dialogs or modals.
Found an interesting study that should encourage business owners to do something about poor accessibility of their websites and mobile apps. Hopefully somebody will think about how much people their business is potentially missing.
We have well known robots.txt, a bit less known humans.txt and seemingly very important security.txt. Is it also time for accessibility.txt? A uniform info about how accessible the site claims to be and how to contact people that can help us if we experience problems?
Autocomplete and correct keyboard layout when filling out forms are simple and powerful helpers to make less errors when filling out forms. They benefit everybody, but they are even more appreciated by people with different disabilities. Web support is there for years, but what about native mobile applications?
European Accessibility Act is around the corner. 100 weeks is not a lot in terms of conformance and compliance. Especially considering banking, e-commerce and transport services that will be a part of EAA. What to do? Start now!
I don’t like the fact that EN 301 549 is provided in PDF format. It’s way simpler to process HTML. And when I did some parsing I figured out I could also check how exactly does EN 301 549 goes beyond WCAG for web and mobile applications. Quite a lot is the short answer.
I am honored to be a part of a group of experts that will provide some feedback to European Union on accessibility and Web Accessibility Directive. This post is a summary of my ideas that will be in the article with some additional thoughts and context.
Shifting left, that is considering accessibility earliest possible, should be a concept in our school system as well. Basics of accessibility thought earlier in our lives is probably the only sustainable way to make our societies more inclusive and our products and services more accessible.
Just a quick brainstorm when checking a design wireframe for potential accessibility issues, finding low level problems that may be solved way earlier than we may think. Maybe even before designer became a designer and before developer became a developer?