22 Jun

week11y issue 31

Your weekly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Legacy Applications and Accessibility

  • A deque.com blog post describing approaches to finding accessibility issues in legacy code; for example, scanning the codebase for positive tab index values (tabindex="1" etc). An interesting idea is an ‘accessibility JavaScript file’ that you can include on pages to help fix a11y issues without having to modify the legacy code. For example, var contButton = document.getElementById('continue'); if (contButton) { contButton.setAttribute('role', 'button'); // etc }.

Modesto Teen Who’s Legally Blind, Hearing Impaired Becomes Household Name In World Of Bowling

  • Jacob Gaddam is a sixteen year old who bowls like a champion – despite being legally blind and hearing impaired. Watch the video on YouTube (I had trouble getting any video content in the article itself).

My Accessibility-Tinged WWDC 2020 Wishlist

  • The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is running from June 22-26 this year. Steven Aquino shares his hopes for what Apple will showcase, including the ability to zoom in on emoji; brightness slider for the Apple Watch display; and a Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar.

For Mothers Of Black Children With Disabilities, Living With Twice The Fear

  • Kim Kaiser voices the fears she has for her black, autistic 14 year old son. “When an African American person is disabled and can’t process a police command, [the result could be fatal]”. She’s taught her son to to keep his hands out of his pockets, to not carry anything that could be perceived as a weapon, and to put his hands up if approached by police. If questioned by police, he is to immediately inform them that he is on the autism spectrum. The sad reality is that his characteristics “automatically look suspicious to first responders”.

Volunteer scheme that tackles loneliness amongst young disabled people thrives online during pandemic

  • The Sense Buddying scheme matches volunteers and young people with disabilities to spend time together to help combat loneliness, something experienced by 77% of this demographic. Prior to the pandemic, matches did activities in local communities in East London, but now video-chat instead. One testimonial from Saihan Islam reads: “Maria is someone that I can talk to outside of my family which is really nice when I am feeling anxious. She is always really kind and helpful”. You can volunteer by emailing Buddying@sense.org.uk.

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.

22 Jun

dai11y 22/06/2020

Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Volunteer scheme that tackles loneliness amongst young disabled people thrives online during pandemic

  • The Sense Buddying scheme matches volunteers and young people with disabilities to spend time together to help combat loneliness, something experienced by 77% of this demographic. Prior to the pandemic, matches did activities in local communities in East London, but now video-chat instead. One testimonial from Saihan Islam reads: “Maria is someone that I can talk to outside of my family which is really nice when I am feeling anxious. She is always really kind and helpful”. You can volunteer by emailing Buddying@sense.org.uk.

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.

19 Jun

dai11y 19/06/2020

Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

For Mothers Of Black Children With Disabilities, Living With Twice The Fear

  • Kim Kaiser voices the fears she has for her black, autistic 14 year old son. “When an African American person is disabled and can’t process a police command, [the result could be fatal]”. She’s taught her son to to keep his hands out of his pockets, to not carry anything that could be perceived as a weapon, and to put his hands up if approached by police. If questioned by police, he is to immediately inform them that he is on the autism spectrum. The sad reality is that his characteristics “automatically look suspicious to first responders”.

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.

18 Jun

dai11y 18/06/2020

Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

My Accessibility-Tinged WWDC 2020 Wishlist

  • The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is running from June 22-26 this year. Steven Aquino shares his hopes for what Apple will showcase, including the ability to zoom in on emoji; brightness slider for the Apple Watch display; and a Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar.

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.

17 Jun

dai11y 17/06/2020

Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Modesto Teen Who’s Legally Blind, Hearing Impaired Becomes Household Name In World Of Bowling

  • Jacob Gaddam is a sixteen year old who bowls like a champion – despite being legally blind and hearing impaired. Watch the video on YouTube (I had trouble getting any video content in the article itself).

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.

16 Jun

dai11y 16/06/2020

Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Legacy Applications and Accessibility

  • A deque.com blog post describing approaches to finding accessibility issues in legacy code; for example, scanning the codebase for positive tab index values (tabindex="1" etc). An interesting idea is an ‘accessibility JavaScript file’ that you can include on pages to help fix a11y issues without having to modify the legacy code. For example, var contButton = document.getElementById('continue'); if (contButton) { contButton.setAttribute('role', 'button'); // etc }.

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.

15 Jun

fortnight11y issue 15

Your fortnightly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Sa11y – accessibility quality assurance assistant

  • An accessibility quality assurance tool geared towards content authors: Sa11y visually highlights common errors, with contextual information. Try out the demo.

Text link Accessibilty: aria-label and title

  • Deque article testing <a> links with various combinations of title and aria-label. The conclusion is that aria-label is the best supported attribute, and links to the ARIA8 WCAG technique which sites good use cases such as: <a aria-label="Read more about Seminole tax hike">Read more...</a>.

Twitter announces change to default alt text setting

  • Via TwitterA11y: starting May 27th, you no longer need a setting to add alt text to your images on Twitter. Prior to this, it was an exclusively opt-in feature.

Could coronavirus kickstart more accessible tech?

  • In this BBC video, we discover how live captioning enables deaf colleagues to participate in remote meetings in this era of coronavirus. It references an article on bighack.org comparing the best video conferencing software for accessibility, which found that some popular platforms such as Zoom do not provide live captioning.

HTMHell special: close buttons

  • Article by HTMHell picking apart the real-world implementations of the ‘close’ button. Some sites use images or SVGs with no alt text, some use ‘X’ to represent ‘close’ (which is lost on screen readers), some use <div> or <a> elements where a <button> is required. There are a few recommended solutions depending on the visual style you’re going for.

Is it ok to ‘grey out’ disabled buttons?

  • UX Collective article that makes some interesting points: WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 (“Contrast”) does not apply to text that is “part of an inactive user interface component”. However, if providing low-contrast styles for disabled buttons, the author encourages measures such as ensuring colour is not the only affordance, reducing opacity of the primary button colour when disabled rather than opting for grey, adding supporting text, and applying aria-disabled="true" to disabled buttons to support all screen readers.

I Don’t Care What Google or Apple or Whoever Did

  • Adrian Roselli complains that when he raises accessibility/usability issues with clients, their response is “but Google does this”. He then lists several poor UI changes the big companies have made and subsequently U-turned on, such as Google’s form fields without boxes, or Apple’s super thin typefaces in iOS. Heydon Pickering wrote a similar article in January. Both alluded to the fact that you wouldn’t want to replicate these companies’ designs anyway: why make your product look and feel like Google’s?

The Last of Us Part II: Accessibility features detailed

  • A comprehensive article on the PlayStation blog, detailing how The Last of Us Part II comes with three presets for different kinds of disabilities, but every setting can be individually overwritten. Gameplay alterations such as ‘invisible while prone’ allow gamers to enjoy stealth mode they might otherwise not be able to. Directional arrows accompanying subtitles show deaf gamers where the speech is coming from. Every command, including touchpad swipes and controller shake, can be remapped to different controller inputs.

Deaf fitness instructor calls for more accessibility in workout classes

  • India Morse (@youleanmeup) is a fitness instructor on Instagram. She was born deaf, and found that workout classes aren’t visual enough for the deaf community, and Instagram as a platform is lacking live-captions. So she launched Coaching by India; an online coaching app with captions and an interpreter voicing India’s signs, so that is accessible to everyone.

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.

15 Jun

week11y issue 30

Your weekly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

I Don’t Care What Google or Apple or Whoever Did

  • Adrian Roselli complains that when he raises accessibility/usability issues with clients, their response is “but Google does this”. He then lists several poor UI changes the big companies have made and subsequently U-turned on, such as Google’s form fields without boxes, or Apple’s super thin typefaces in iOS. Heydon Pickering wrote a similar article in January. Both alluded to the fact that you wouldn’t want to replicate these companies’ designs anyway: why make your product look and feel like Google’s?

The Last of Us Part II: Accessibility features detailed

  • A comprehensive article on the PlayStation blog, detailing how The Last of Us Part II comes with three presets for different kinds of disabilities, but every setting can be individually overwritten. Gameplay alterations such as ‘invisible while prone’ allow gamers to enjoy stealth mode they might otherwise not be able to. Directional arrows accompanying subtitles show deaf gamers where the speech is coming from. Every command, including touchpad swipes and controller shake, can be remapped to different controller inputs.

Deaf fitness instructor calls for more accessibility in workout classes

  • India Morse (@youleanmeup) is a fitness instructor on Instagram. She was born deaf, and found that workout classes aren’t visual enough for the deaf community, and Instagram as a platform is lacking live-captions. So she launched Coaching by India; an online coaching app with captions and an interpreter voicing India’s signs, so that is accessible to everyone.

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.

15 Jun

dai11y 15/06/2020

Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Deaf fitness instructor calls for more accessibility in workout classes

  • India Morse (@youleanmeup) is a fitness instructor on Instagram. She was born deaf, and found that workout classes aren’t visual enough for the deaf community, and Instagram as a platform is lacking live-captions. So she launched Coaching by India; an online coaching app with captions and an interpreter voicing India’s signs, so that is accessible to everyone.

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.

12 Jun

dai11y 12/06/2020

Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

The Last of Us Part II: Accessibility features detailed

  • A comprehensive article on the PlayStation blog, detailing how The Last of Us Part II comes with three presets for different kinds of disabilities, but every setting can be individually overwritten. Gameplay alterations such as ‘invisible while prone’ allow gamers to enjoy stealth mode they might otherwise not be able to. Directional arrows accompanying subtitles show deaf gamers where the speech is coming from. Every command, including touchpad swipes and controller shake, can be remapped to different controller inputs.

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.

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