Colin Hughes describes how his muscular dystrophy can make it difficult to use remote controls. He now uses Alexa to control thermostats, lights and blinds with his voice. Taking inspiration from a video showing how a garage door can be opened/closed with a cheap wireless switch, Colin retrofitted his front door to be voice-powered for £150. This contrasts with a £5000 quote he received from a company, highlighting the financial burden people with disabilities are put under. His command of ‘open sesame’ has to be regularly changed in case passers by figure out how they can enter his home.
PDF from TheUniversity of Texas. Tips include: don’t require people to turn on their webcams (anxiety, physical tics etc); read screen shared contents and any chat content aloud; use Show/Hide Non-video participants to hide names and profile pictures if recording; do not force mute participant audio (required for deaf students to pin the sign language interpreters); post materials before or after class for students to review.
The WCAG does not define a minimum font size for the web: just that fonts should be resizable and of a sufficient contrast. Contrast should be 4.5:1 for small text, 3:1 for larger text (defined as text that is a minimum of 18 point or 14 point with bold), though different screen densities and alphabets mean the pixel size will vary. Browser font sizes are accessible by default, so avoid using px and instead make your font sizes relative to the base font size (usually 16px) using rem/em. About 3% of users change their default font size in the browser settings, and some will override the font-family too (e.g. to OpenDyslexic, which increases readability for users with dyslexia).
iOS 13 brings ‘Voice Control’, which allows you to use commands like ‘swipe left’ or ‘scroll up’, open apps or take pictures. You can also dictate text messages or notes, and delete text you’ve typed without having to touch your phone. It’s also highly customisable: you can set up shortcuts for inserting your email rather than saying it out loud, or have Voice Control perform custom gestures, e.g. touch-and-hold. This article explains how to set that all up.
A Forbes article about three nurses with disabilities, and the opportunities the current pandemic has afforded them. Andrea Dalzell interviewed for 76 hospital jobs and was rejected from them all once they realised she was in a wheelchair. The desperate plea for nurses since March has now meant employers look past her disability, and she’s found a job. All three nurses in the article strongly state that they work as effectively as other nurses.
On a semi-related note, #DisabledAndCute is trending on Twitter. I came across this image in a New York Times article, showcasing an ‘accessible party dress’ on manikin positioned in a wheelchair, amongst other manikins. It’s not something you usually see and I liked that the visibility of wheelchairs in social/fun settings is being normalised.
Fashion and Textiles Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum
Did you know that you can subscribe to dai11y, week11y, fortnight11y or month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
A Forbes article about three nurses with disabilities, and the opportunities the current pandemic has afforded them. Andrea Dalzell interviewed for 76 hospital jobs and was rejected from them all once they realised she was in a wheelchair. The desperate plea for nurses since March has now meant employers look past her disability, and she’s found a job. All three nurses in the article strongly state that they work as effectively as other nurses.
On a semi-related note, #DisabledAndCute is trending on Twitter. I came across this image in a New York Times article, showcasing an ‘accessible party dress’ on manikin positioned in a wheelchair, amongst other manikins. It’s not something you usually see and I liked that the visibility of wheelchairs in social/fun settings is being normalised.
Fashion and Textiles Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum
Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
iOS 13 brings ‘Voice Control’, which allows you to use commands like ‘swipe left’ or ‘scroll up’, open apps or take pictures. You can also dictate text messages or notes, and delete text you’ve typed without having to touch your phone. It’s also highly customisable: you can set up shortcuts for inserting your email rather than saying it out loud, or have Voice Control perform custom gestures, e.g. touch-and-hold. This article explains how to set that all up.
Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
The WCAG does not define a minimum font size for the web: just that fonts should be resizable and of a sufficient contrast. Contrast should be 4.5:1 for small text, 3:1 for larger text (defined as text that is a minimum of 18 point or 14 point with bold), though different screen densities and alphabets mean the pixel size will vary. Browser font sizes are accessible by default, so avoid using px and instead make your font sizes relative to the base font size (usually 16px) using rem/em. About 3% of users change their default font size in the browser settings, and some will override the font-family too (e.g. to OpenDyslexic, which increases readability for users with dyslexia).
Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
PDF from TheUniversity of Texas. Tips include: don’t require people to turn on their webcams (anxiety, physical tics etc); read screen shared contents and any chat content aloud; use Show/Hide Non-video participants to hide names and profile pictures if recording; do not force mute participant audio (required for deaf students to pin the sign language interpreters); post materials before or after class for students to review..
Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
Colin Hughes describes how his muscular dystrophy can make it difficult to use remote controls. He now uses Alexa to control thermostats, lights and blinds with his voice. Taking inspiration from a video showing how a garage door can be opened/closed with a cheap wireless switch, Colin retrofitted his front door to be voice-powered for £150. This contrasts with a £5000 quote he received from a company, highlighting the financial burden people with disabilities are put under. His command of ‘open sesame’ has to be regularly changed in case passers by figure out how they can enter his home.
Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
Welcome to your monthly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton. I hope you enjoy these a11y articles I’ve collated and summarised for you. (Psst – if you find these emails too long, consider switching to shorter, more frequent updates). Now on with the show!
Scott Vinkle explains how pages marked up with microdata helps the ‘Reader Mode’ in browsers to find and arrange content. For example, <img src="source.jpg" alt="" itemprop="image" /> determines the image that will be displayed in Reader Mode. Reader Mode is a useful feature for many, especially for people with dyslexia, as it removes distractions such as navigation, animations and ads.
Adrian Roselli writes about accessiBe, a company (whose article I’ve shared before) that offers an add-on for sites to automatically make them ‘accessible’. Adrian presents a scathing review of their practices, including that they incorrectly interpret WCAG, are cited in accessibility lawsuits and attempt to spoof automated checkers.
Mattel, the manufacturer behind the Barbie brand, started producing Barbies with wheelchairs in February 2019. They’ve now released a ‘Dreamhouse’ dollhouse that has a button-operated lift, big enough to accommodate the wheelchair. It’s a great step forward in seeing a full range of diversity from a young age.
Anne Spencer Ross tested almost 9000 apps and found that a quarter were missing labels for >90% of their icons. ‘Floating action buttons’, representing the most important action on the screen, lacked labels in 92% of cases. The tools used to build apps can greatly affect their accessibility: 100% of screen elements coming from Unity and 53% of screen elements from Cocos2dx were completely unusable. And Education apps made up 7% of apps overall but 19% of completely unusable apps.
An excellent resource by CSS-Tricks. I learned that the download attribute on links instructs the browser to download the resource; that links can have a rel attribute that define the relationship to the target (e.g. rel="author"); that you can chain link styles (a:focus:hover {}); and that if you wrap a lot of content inside a single <a> tag, the entire contents are read to the screen reader before it announces that it is a link (so don’t do it!).
Hidde de Vries writes about the Accessibility Object Model proposal for JavaScript, which allows devs to hook into the accessibility tree (like Service Workers are able to hook into the network). It should make code easier to test, and HTML less verbose, since you would operate on the element directly, e.g. el.ariaExpanded = true. This can make canvas-based applications more accessible too, without having to maintain DOM node equivalents that are only for your screen reader users.
Macular degeneration is a common eye disease affecting 200 million people worldwide. It can lead to complete blindness. Scientists are working on a new treatment utilising gene therapy and near-infrared light. Early tests on human retinas show that ‘near-infrared light exposures reactivate the human retina’s visual circuitry’.
Researchers at Bayreuth University, Germany, are working on a speaker system that uses acoustic force and ultrasound to recreate traditional braille writing in midair. The system known as HaptiRead comes at a very poignant time as people are worried about touching surfaces during this coronavirus pandemic. The technology could be built into displays such as ATMs, and is powerful enough to be felt on the user’s hand up to 70cm away. Read more in the academic paper.
Adam Laki shares five common a11y fails to avoid. 1: don’t remove underlines on links. 2: don’t remove outlines on focusable elements. 3: don’t remove textarea resize functionality. 4: don’t open links in new browser windows. 5: don’t use fixed font-size. There are caveats to each tip, so the article is worth reading in full.
An interesting video by SightlessKombat, a blind gamer describing how they rose to the top tier of players by relying on their hearing. By turning up the volume of the ‘heads up display’, they could listen carefully to the pitch changing as each punch forms part of a ‘combo’, informing decisions that help land the most damage. SightlessKombat also talks of the demotivation of not being able to see his opponents’ rankings, nor how many points he would gain from each fight.
For the week of the 6th July, London’s infamous advertising billboard at Piccadilly Circus was turned upside down to raise awareness of the challenges raised by social distancing for the blind and partially sighted. RNIB said “the usual methods of navigating around public spaces rely on human contact, guidance and touch, all of which are no longer considered safe”. Adverts appeared 180° rotated, alternating with text “The world has been turned upside down, especially for people with sight loss”.
Audio descriptions are added to films in order to recreate the visual experiences happening onscreen. Disney+ has received an Achievement Award in Audio Description from the American Council of the Blind (ACB) for their commitment to adding audio description tracks to original programming. Disney+ has already added audio descriptions to their modern catalogue including The Mandalorian, and is now working through older classics like Cinderella.
An article from May, but on a subject that still dominates. The introduction of mask wearing to reduce coronavirus spread has had a disproportionate impact on the deaf and hard of hearing community, and many of us rely on lip reading more than we know. Demand for Stacie Amschler’s masks has gone as far as Utah, Maryland and Florida, particularly for doctors trying to reach their patients.
This guide from the Government Communication Service has great tips, such as testing the readability of your content (aiming for a 9-year old’s reading age), avoiding use of bit.ly links, avoiding baking in text overlays into your video and ensuring voiceovers are at least 20db louder than background music. There are also platform-specific alt text advice for Twitter and LinkedIn.
A List Apart article by Olu Niyiawosusi, drawing attention to the 40% of the world’s population that still does not have access to the internet. More locally, only 37% of people living in social housing in the UK are online. This further divides the world, as those shopping in person tend to overpay compared to online, and those without digital skills are three times as likely to be in low-income bands. We must continue to offer non-online options for vital services, and attempt to reduce the barrier to becoming digital by building inclusive, accessible sites.
American shoes and accessories seller Zappos have started allowing customers to purchase single shoes, or shoes in different sizes. The pilot program, which claims to be the first of its kind, allows amputees and people with physical disabilities to purchase exactly what they need.
Whew, that was a long newsletter! Did you know that you can subscribe to smaller, more frequent updates? The dai11y, week11y and fortnight11y newsletters get exactly the same content. The choice is entirely up to you! Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
Researchers at Bayreuth University, Germany, are working on a speaker system that uses acoustic force and ultrasound to recreate traditional braille writing in midair. The system known as HaptiRead comes at a very poignant time as people are worried about touching surfaces during this coronavirus pandemic. The technology could be built into displays such as ATMs, and is powerful enough to be felt on the user’s hand up to 70cm away. Read more in the academic paper.
Adam Laki shares five common a11y fails to avoid. 1: don’t remove underlines on links. 2: don’t remove outlines on focusable elements. 3: don’t remove textarea resize functionality. 4: don’t open links in new browser windows. 5: don’t use fixed font-size. There are caveats to each tip, so the article is worth reading in full.
An interesting video by SightlessKombat, a blind gamer describing how they rose to the top tier of players by relying on their hearing. By turning up the volume of the ‘heads up display’, they could listen carefully to the pitch changing as each punch forms part of a ‘combo’, informing decisions that help land the most damage. SightlessKombat also talks of the demotivation of not being able to see his opponents’ rankings, nor how many points he would gain from each fight.
For the week of the 6th July, London’s infamous advertising billboard at Piccadilly Circus was turned upside down to raise awareness of the challenges raised by social distancing for the blind and partially sighted. RNIB said “the usual methods of navigating around public spaces rely on human contact, guidance and touch, all of which are no longer considered safe”. Adverts appeared 180° rotated, alternating with text “The world has been turned upside down, especially for people with sight loss”.
Audio descriptions are added to films in order to recreate the visual experiences happening onscreen. Disney+ has received an Achievement Award in Audio Description from the American Council of the Blind (ACB) for their commitment to adding audio description tracks to original programming. Disney+ has already added audio descriptions to their modern catalogue including The Mandalorian, and is now working through older classics like Cinderella.
An article from May, but on a subject that still dominates. The introduction of mask wearing to reduce coronavirus spread has had a disproportionate impact on the deaf and hard of hearing community, and many of us rely on lip reading more than we know. Demand for Stacie Amschler’s masks has gone as far as Utah, Maryland and Florida, particularly for doctors trying to reach their patients.
This guide from the Government Communication Service has great tips, such as testing the readability of your content (aiming for a 9-year old’s reading age), avoiding use of bit.ly links, avoiding baking in text overlays into your video and ensuring voiceovers are at least 20db louder than background music. There are also platform-specific alt text advice for Twitter and LinkedIn.
A List Apart article by Olu Niyiawosusi, drawing attention to the 40% of the world’s population that still does not have access to the internet. More locally, only 37% of people living in social housing in the UK are online. This further divides the world, as those shopping in person tend to overpay compared to online, and those without digital skills are three times as likely to be in low-income bands. We must continue to offer non-online options for vital services, and attempt to reduce the barrier to becoming digital by building inclusive, accessible sites.
American shoes and accessories seller Zappos have started allowing customers to purchase single shoes, or shoes in different sizes. The pilot program, which claims to be the first of its kind, allows amputees and people with physical disabilities to purchase exactly what they need.
Did you know that you can subscribe to dai11y, week11y, fortnight11y or month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
Audio descriptions are added to films in order to recreate the visual experiences happening onscreen. Disney+ has received an Achievement Award in Audio Description from the American Council of the Blind (ACB) for their commitment to adding audio description tracks to original programming. Disney+ has already added audio descriptions to their modern catalogue including The Mandalorian, and is now working through older classics like Cinderella.
An article from May, but on a subject that still dominates. The introduction of mask wearing to reduce coronavirus spread has had a disproportionate impact on the deaf and hard of hearing community, and many of us rely on lip reading more than we know. Demand for Stacie Amschler’s masks has gone as far as Utah, Maryland and Florida, particularly for doctors trying to reach their patients.
This guide from the Government Communication Service has great tips, such as testing the readability of your content (aiming for a 9-year old’s reading age), avoiding use of bit.ly links, avoiding baking in text overlays into your video and ensuring voiceovers are at least 20db louder than background music. There are also platform-specific alt text advice for Twitter and LinkedIn.
A List Apart article by Olu Niyiawosusi, drawing attention to the 40% of the world’s population that still does not have access to the internet. More locally, only 37% of people living in social housing in the UK are online. This further divides the world, as those shopping in person tend to overpay compared to online, and those without digital skills are three times as likely to be in low-income bands. We must continue to offer non-online options for vital services, and attempt to reduce the barrier to becoming digital by building inclusive, accessible sites.
American shoes and accessories seller Zappos have started allowing customers to purchase single shoes, or shoes in different sizes. The pilot program, which claims to be the first of its kind, allows amputees and people with physical disabilities to purchase exactly what they need.
Did you know that you can subscribe to dai11y, week11y, fortnight11y or month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
American shoes and accessories seller Zappos have started allowing customers to purchase single shoes, or shoes in different sizes. The pilot program, which claims to be the first of its kind, allows amputees and people with physical disabilities to purchase exactly what they need.
Prefer longer newsletters? You can subscribe to week11y, fortnight11y or even month11y updates! Every newsletter gets the same content; it is your choice to have short, regular emails or longer, less frequent ones. Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.
