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WCAG may seem perfectionistic, but accessibility isn’t

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.

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Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) certified for another three years

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.

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Status messages on page load – how to notify screen-reader users about important messages when the page loads

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.

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WCAG 2.2 brings more bad news for sticky elements and more good news for users

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.

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Identify Input Purpose (WCAG 1.3.5) on mobile applications

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?

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WCAG is part of EN 301 549 but EN 301 549 goes way beyond WCAG

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.

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Accessibility of municipal websites in Norway after Web Accessibility Directive – usage of accessibility overlays

Are accessibility overlays common on Norwegian municipality websites? Short answer is no, luckily. But when they are they really messed up the site. Not only accessibility-wise but also on mobile devices / smaller screens / when zooming in.