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What does aria-hidden=true actually do to interactive elements?

Everybody knows that we must not use aria-hidden on interactive elements. But why is that a problem? I decided to check for myself, so that I can explain it better the next time I will be asked.

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Support for aria-errormessage is getting better, but still not there yet

I like the idea behind aria-errormessage and hope it will soon get enough support to make error messages more accessible and establish itself as best practice. NVDA support is coming soon, but beware potential iOS bug and lack of TalkBack support…

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ARIA role=”application” and mobile screen readers

There are some limited resources on ARIA role application, but I missed more information for mobile screen readers and just quickly checked the situation on Android and iPhone. It seems that support is not there, besides some small quirks. Be even more careful with role = application!

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Browser’s accessibility tree and screen-readers speech log aren’t always sincere

Accessibility tree in browser and screen-reader’s speech logs are extremely valuable tools when we want to check how HTML, CSS and ARIA translate to assistive technologies like screen-readers, no doubt about that. But please make sure to go through to the end – do listen to your screen-readers and in different combinations with browsers. As sometimes that’s the only way to find out about real problems.

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Operating systems, browsers, screen-readers, automatic analysis tools can all have bugs that make accessibility even more difficult

The journey from content creator to end user is quite long. At least in terms of different software that needs to deliver. And as we all know – software has bugs. And sometimes even so called features that can actually be called bugs as well. So please test and if we find a problem – report it, so that we improve the accessibility one step at a time.

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Screen-readers work differently with different browsers and combinations can have bugs

Sometimes it’s simple to make a feature with JavaScript but not so simple to make it consistent for all those screen-reader and browser combinations. In this post I describe how I tried to update some live regions and the order in the DOM was not respected. Solution was simple, but it’s easy to forget about it when it works visually.

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Native mobile app support for headings

Mobile native applications are often with no headings. Sometimes even have visual headings but are missing on the semantics. Screen-reader users can and also like to navigate via headings, so we should be responsible and use them. They are supported on both iOS and Android.

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Introduction to accessible navigation for single page applications

Navigation between pages is so natural for us that we don’t even think about it. And obviously it can also be forgotten when using newer technologies like Single Page Applications. Although a decade old, some are still not really accessible as navigation is not announced to screen-reader users. Let’s check what works and maybe have a conclusion.

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My plans for Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2022

Global Accessibility Awareness Day number 11 is soon here. It’s my third one and this time I have a bit different plans for it. An online mobile screen-reader app, analysis of Slovenian accessibility and ask me anything session instead of webinar.

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2022 WebAIM’s Million report on accessibility – my comment

Some improvements can be detected and I also added some thoughts of mine about the parts that are not very obvious. Interestingly – e-commerce is almost worst – and that really is a surprise when we think about how much do they invest into ads and SEO, just to get some new users.

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Visual and semantic heading levels can be different – but…

Is it okay to give a heading level 2 the style of level 3 but keep the semantics of level 2. Well yes – but as often with accessibility – it depends. It’s not up to developers to set it in stone and it is for designers and content providers to decide when appropriate. Content is once again crucial.

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Some common web accessibility issues caused by developers

Some accessibility issues originate in code. And when design is being recreated with code it may seem to work but when thinking about accessibility we may notice that it only works for some users and not for others. I’ve decided to describe some common accessibility fails that are on developers.

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Making videos accessible is not easy and needs good planning

Everybody seems to publish videos online and that is not so strange with modern mobile phones all around us. But to make a video accessible we need to invest some time and effort, otherwise we risk that some people will never get to our messages in the video. I try to summarize the basics and also provide some resources that can go beyond.

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Accessible content is so much more than code

Sometimes people claim that accessibility is the responsibility of development and code. I disagree. It is a team effort and it can only succeed when whole team knows what to do. Content is king and if we start and end with content it can make the teams accessibility efforts much more effective.

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Alternative text for images on the web – best practices for developers

The more I know about alternative text for images the more I understand the complexity of it. There are differences between users and content creators about decorative and informative image objectives and developers should never decide if image will be decorative or not. HTML standard includes a lot on this as well and should be read by more people for better accessibility and better web in general.

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User experience is beyond visual and must also cover vocal

Vocal user interfaces come to my attention when playing around with my phones voice assistant. I treat screen-reader as a vocal user experience as well. They are not very related though and that came as a surprise for me. But voice assistants have giant impacts for everybody, not only from accessibility perspective but in general when thinking about humans interacting with computers.

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Accessible Rich Internet Applications on mobile devices

I wanted to describe the importance of ARIA for mobile devices. Especially when we have to be careful with ARIA and maybe just accept the fact that native HTML element can be much better choice. Sometimes graphical design should embrace the limitations that styling native HTML elements bring.

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Developers should test with screen-readers

Every (front-end) developer should add screen-reader to their tools. Screen-reader experience can really help us make products more accessible and also be better at our coding. Combinations of screen-readers and browsers can get over complicated, so it is important to think if code we write is supported for majority.

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Making three dimensional web user interfaces accessible

Some thoughts about accessibility of three-dimensional web user interfaces and what are our options to cover user needs. HTML canvas can be enriched with either sibling DOM or fall-back markup and if we think of single-dimensional interfaces then we can also make three-dimensional interfaces accessible.

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Screen-reader users don’t tab through your site

I organized an accessibility workshop for our front-end and full-stack developers, user interface and user experience designers and others involved in digital production. This post will concentrate on screen-reader (SR) users way of navigation because it may surprise non-screen-reader users quite a lot.