A UX Movement article (covered in November) argued that text/background color combinations that fail the WCAG AA contrast threshold can actually be easier to read than those that pass. Geoffrey Crofte has written a counter-article arguing that the methodology of the original article was flawed, proposing his own combo (via useful tool color.review) that is both AA-compliant and is easier to read than the original. It’s worth noting the new contrast rating (4.5) is still lower than the ‘hard to read, but compliant’ original (5.41), but Geoffrey puts this down to context: a black background reverses the perception biases of the original article. Finally, Geoffrey disagrees that color alone can be used to denote state (see myth 6 in the original article), arguing that the toggle token example is difficult to read if no tokens are toggled by default.
Geoffrey’s proposed color contrast scored highly with users and has a AA rating for contrast
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.
A UsableNet article that is full of optimism for the future: Jason Taylor predicts that a rise in a11y-related lawsuits will drive a more proactive approach to building accessible websites. Companies will no longer settle for agency-built sites or CMS templates that are inaccessible, and many will hire a11y experts to ensure compliance. E-commerce sites and the web in general will become more accessible in 2020 as a result.
Article by Adrian Roselli, warning about a responsive typography implementation which cleverly resizes font size according to viewport width, but does not take into account browser zoom (which is an issue for a11y). Adrian compares it with his own CodePen, which does not resize based on viewport width but does cope with browser zooming. He implies that both might be accomplished by using %, em or rem instead of px in the first example, but doesn’t provide a solution. One thing I learned/re-remembered was that we should use pt units for print styles.
A New York Times piece by Sharon Otterman. The newly built Hunters Point Library in Long Island City, New York, is a purpose-built open-plan building with ampitheatre-like seating throughout. But it has only one elevator, which is a bottleneck at peak times: parents and minders struggle to get their prams upstairs in time for “toddler story time”. Stair-based child seating areas were also deemed unsafe and have since been blocked off, to be reopened again after a refit. Disabled adults were encouraged to ask staff to fetch specific books rather than be able to freely browse the aisles accessible only by staircase. A physical embodiment of what can happen if we design for visual splendor over function.
A research team at Harvard University have successfully ‘reprogrammed’ the inner ear cells of mice to divide and become hair cells, which are used for hearing. Previous research had already accomplished cell regeneration, but this was the first time in ‘fully mature’ ears. Whilst a cure for deafness is a long way off, this is a promising foundation for further research that could also serve as a model to regenerate “other tissues such as in the retina and central nervous system” – perhaps curing many other conditions!
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 research team at Harvard University have successfully ‘reprogrammed’ the inner ear cells of mice to divide and become hair cells, which are used for hearing. Previous research had already accomplished cell regeneration, but this was the first time in ‘fully mature’ ears. Whilst a cure for deafness is a long way off, this is a promising foundation for further research that could also serve as a model to regenerate “other tissues such as in the retina and central nervous system” – perhaps curing many other conditions!
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.
A New York Times piece by Sharon Otterman. The newly built Hunters Point Library in Long Island City, New York, is a purpose-built open-plan building with ampitheatre-like seating throughout. But it has only one elevator, which is a bottleneck at peak times: parents and minders struggle to get their prams upstairs in time for “toddler story time”. Stair-based child seating areas were also deemed unsafe and have since been blocked off, to be reopened again after a refit. Disabled adults were encouraged to ask staff to fetch specific books rather than be able to freely browse the aisles accessible only by staircase. A physical embodiment of what can happen if we design for visual splendor over function.
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.
Article by Adrian Roselli, warning about a responsive typography implementation which cleverly resizes font size according to viewport width, but does not take into account browser zoom (which is an issue for a11y). Adrian compares it with his own CodePen, which does not resize based on viewport width but does cope with browser zooming. He implies that both might be accomplished by using %, em or rem instead of px in the first example, but doesn’t provide a solution. One thing I learned/re-remembered was that we should use pt units for print styles.
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.
A UsableNet article that is full of optimism for the future: Jason Taylor predicts that a rise in a11y-related lawsuits will drive a more proactive approach to building accessible websites. Companies will no longer settle for agency-built sites or CMS templates that are inaccessible, and many will hire a11y experts to ensure compliance. E-commerce sites and the web in general will become more accessible in 2020 as a result.
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!
Sony are releasing a $30 attachment for the DualShock 4 controller which slots into the back and provides two extra large buttons. These can be mapped to any of the other buttons on the controller, and could be a (literal) game changer for disabled users who may struggle to use the controller standalone. It’s not being marketed as an accessibility aid, but as a tool for power users to level up their gameplay. Indeed, non-disabled users could find the tactile buttons improve their gaming performance.
Aside: It’s highly unusual for Sony to release something like this so late in the PS4 lifecycle, which suggests these might work with the DualShock 5 when it comes out.
The Epilepsy Foundation has filed a criminal complaint with the U.S. Attorney and the Office of the State’s Attorney in Maryland, against a number of Twitter uses who maliciously posted seizure-inducing content on its feed. This happened during November: National Epilepsy Awareness month. A similar attack happened in 2016 against journalist Kurt Eichenwald, which purportedly triggered a seizure.
Aside: around 3% of people with epilepsy can be triggered by exposure to flashing lights or certain visual patterns.
An article of two halves, by a11y expert Becky Gibson. The first half gives guidance for performing your own a11y audit. It recommends WAVE as a starting point, followed by the Web Developer extension for validating document structure and numerous bookmarklets for additional automated tests. This is followed by manual keyboard and screen reader testing – checking for WCAG 2.1 AA violations (as opposed to WCAG 2.0, which was released in 2008 and has little guidance for mobile) – and finally, testing responsive design and zoom/magnification. The second half highlights Vision Aid for specialising in training blind individuals as testers, and argues the business case for this (‘native’ screen reader users will spot problems more quickly and catch some issues that other testers might not).
Around 1 in 10 males have some form of colour blindness – a much higher rate than that in women. It’s a genetic trait typically passed down from the mother. You can conduct Ishihara tests at home (online) to determine colour blindness. There is no cure but there are ways you can manage the condition, e.g. by labeling things rather than relying on colour alone.
The first official braille UNO deck is going to the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind. Some students have played it before but have needed to have teachers adapt existing sets by hand braille-ing them. The braille deck looks identical to the non-braille deck, but has some non-intrusive dots in the corner of each card. It makes you question why games companies don’t make their products braille-friendly by default.
Article by Liam O’Dell, highlighting that a lot of political campaign videos lack captions, making them inaccessible to the 11 million people in the UK (1/6 of the population) with deafness or hearing loss (not to mention that 85% of all videos on Facebook are watched without the sound on). This has triggered the #NoCaptionsNoVote campaign, where deaf people threaten not to vote for parties who don’t provide captions. Liam draws attention to the closure of the Access to Elected Office Fund, which affects deaf candidates standing to become MPs, who now have to fund their own costs such as interpreters. Finally, some but not all parties have published their policies in British Sign Language.
In September 2018, GDS Accessibility Expert Anika Henke filed a bug report with Mozilla, suggesting that words are incorrectly merged together in screen readers when using word-wrap: break-word with a small width. For example, “posted on” is pronounced “postedon” if its container is so small that each letter is on its own line. The root cause was actually a 4 year old bug to do with trimming whitespace, which Firefox has fixed in its latest version (Firefox 71). You may be interested in alphagov/reported-bugs to see all bugs GDS has reported in browsers, operating systems and assistive tech. Meanwhile, well done all who take the time to report, debug and fix these far-reaching issues!
Article by Sarah Higley, exploring how best to denote the state of a Play/Pause video button for screen reader users. Most ‘toggle buttons’ for a binary state should have an aria-pressed attribute with value “on” or “off”; screen readers communicate this ‘state change’ more quickly than a change in property (such as aria-label). Sarah argues that the play/pause button, however, is the exception to the rule and should only change the aria-label (from “Play” to “Pause”), as changes in state don’t make sense in this context (“play button off”). Most importantly, avoid changing both or you’ll confuse your users (“play button, on” vs “pause button, off”).
An article highlighting the regularity of bugs and missing features encountered by screen reader users on the Facebook apps and site, with a strong message that there is an under-investment in accessibility development on Facebook and Instagram. A feature for adding colourful backgrounds to posts meant all posts were read out as “Awesome Text Status” for a week. Facebook’s attempt at automating alt text has met a muted response; “image may contain child” doesn’t allow screen reader users to participate. There are options to provide alt text on uploaded images, and forms for flagging accessibility issues, but both are criticised as being too hard to find. Some users have created Facebook groups to share images of text they want transcribing by sighted volunteers. There’s something to be said about the ‘move fast and break things’ ethos and what that means for disabled users.
Google have created functionality for the Pixel 4 phone, which they’ve dubbed Live Caption. Like the auto caption feature on YouTube videos, this overlays text on your phone screen – when enabled – showing Google’s interpretation of the audio. The text overlay can be moved independently as demonstrated in this gif, and the captioning works independently of the audio source, so you can watch any video or audio in your browser or apps and be able to get captions. It works entirely locally, so doesn’t use any cell data and stays private on your phone. Google are hoping to roll this out to other Android manufacturers “in the coming year”.
An opinion piece by Barry Rueger, who for context is “well past sixty”. He makes several suggestions that are widely recognised as universally good practices, such as improving website load speed and ensuring good grammar and spelling. Others are more subjective: that older people prefer text and ignore videos in search results, or that they hold onto old, slow machines for longer. Barry makes the case for black text on white backgrounds; a controversial subject as several user groups find this harder to read (there are some comments below the article to that effect). Finally, an interesting point about the success of Amazon being down to its website’s consistency; “we know the site, and we know that we can do our shopping quickly and painlessly”. He suggests resisting the urge to reinvent your website unnecessarily.
A recent article by UX designer, Alex Chen. It debunks the myth that accessible designs have to be ugly designs, giving real-world examples of websites (GOV.UK gets a mention here) and products (RX protein bar packaging) that are both accessible and aesthetically pleasing. That aside, Alex asserts that the two are not of equal importance; an interface change may not look quite as visually pleasing to one person, but another person is now able to use it. Some people concentrate their efforts on the ‘normal’ use case, neglecting designing the ‘edge cases’ for disabled people, but that is an ableist practice; “edge cases [should] refer to scenarios, not humans”. There’s a final point about disabilities disproportionately affecting people of a certain race or class, and that we have an opportunity to start to level the playing field for all.
Article by accessiBe, analysing mostly small US websites. They used automated tooling with AI to avoid false positives, e.g. avoid failing a non-compliant form if it’s never actually in view. 98% of sites failed WCAG 2.1 AA compliance with their menus alone (there are quite stringent requirements around using ESC and arrow keys to navigate the menu, which requires JavaScript rather than just good HTML markup). The next big fail was popups (89%), where most have no accessibility built in whatsoever, breaking the experience for keyboard users. 83% failed on buttons, mostly for not using <button> or role="button" markup. 76% failed on icons (often social media icons with no off-screen text). 71% failed on forms; most that passed were from ready-made systems such as Shopify.
Aside: I chose this article to coincide with the International Day of People with Disabilities. This is an occasion “to educate the public on issues of concern, to mobilize political will and resources to address global problems, and to celebrate and reinforce achievements of humanity.” It’s also a good opportunity to remind teams in the UK public sector of their responsibility to make sites conform to WCAG 2.1 by September 2020.
Article by psychologist Dr Nancy Doyle, highlighting that companies are increasingly attempting to improve their inclusivity, but are nervous about using the wrong language. “People with disabilities” vs “disabled people” represent two different models – the first being ‘people-first’ (we are people, not conditions) and the latter being the ‘social model’ (we are disabled by a non-inclusive society). Nancy advises following a consensus where there is one: for example, the term “autistic person” is commonly used as they see it as their identity, not something they have. Where there there isn’t a consensus, we should use multiple terms interchangeably, ideally with a brief explanatory footnote at the end of written communication so that people can see that you have thought about your choices.
Use aria-label when you can’t use generic <label>, and aria-describedby for supplementary info, such as to associate error messages with their corresponding inputs. Use role="heading" and aria-level="2" instead of <h2> if you can’t use the element (for SEO reasons, etc). Whenever there is a visible status message on the page, it must be announced to users, e.g. with role="status" or role="alert". Use role="search" for landmarking a region responsible for search – there is no HTML5 element for it.
Aside: this article links to the incredibly useful aria practices document, which shows recommended implementations for common components like breadcrumbs and carousels.
A ‘how-to’ guide from accessibility expert Julie Grundy. It describes the drawbacks of the native <select> element – the lack of autocomplete, the inflexibility around what can appear inside each <option>. Julie talks us through building a custom select, avoiding the accessibility pitfalls that many custom select components fall down at. She starts from a baseline of <input type="text">, with progressive enhancement layered on to turn it into an autocomplete dropdown with keyboard functionality and total screen reader support. It links off to the ARIA 1.1 Combobox with Listbox Popup Example, which is also a good dev resource for this.
A detailed article highlighting the stress of flying as a wheelchair-user, involving being picked up and strapped into an ill-fitting seat while your wheelchair is put in the hold (and subsequently lost or damaged in transit, as happens in a lot of cases). The principle reason cited is one of safety, but a lot of research has been done to show that wheelchair tests are actually more stringent and can withstand more G-force than the airline seats themselves. A new aircraft design is proposed where wheelchairs can be securely fastened into the floor, or an airline seat fitted at the last minute if there are no wheelchair-using passengers. It could be two years before the American Transportation Research Board releases its initial findings to “the feasibility of the restraint system”, bearing in mind the myriad of different wheelchair types and sizes. The final fight would be persuading each airline to adapt and get on board.
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.
Sony are releasing a $30 attachment for the DualShock 4 controller which slots into the back and provides two extra large buttons. These can be mapped to any of the other buttons on the controller, and could be a (literal) game changer for disabled users who may struggle to use the controller standalone. It’s not being marketed as an accessibility aid, but as a tool for power users to level up their gameplay. Indeed, non-disabled users could find the tactile buttons improve their gaming performance.
Aside: It’s highly unusual for Sony to release something like this so late in the PS4 lifecycle, which suggests these might work with the DualShock 5 when it comes out.
The Epilepsy Foundation has filed a criminal complaint with the U.S. Attorney and the Office of the State’s Attorney in Maryland, against a number of Twitter uses who maliciously posted seizure-inducing content on its feed. This happened during November: National Epilepsy Awareness month. A similar attack happened in 2016 against journalist Kurt Eichenwald, which purportedly triggered a seizure.
Aside: around 3% of people with epilepsy can be triggered by exposure to flashing lights or certain visual patterns.
An article of two halves, by a11y expert Becky Gibson. The first half gives guidance for performing your own a11y audit. It recommends WAVE as a starting point, followed by the Web Developer extension for validating document structure and numerous bookmarklets for additional automated tests. This is followed by manual keyboard and screen reader testing – checking for WCAG 2.1 AA violations (as opposed to WCAG 2.0, which was released in 2008 and has little guidance for mobile) – and finally, testing responsive design and zoom/magnification. The second half highlights Vision Aid for specialising in training blind individuals as testers, and argues the business case for this (‘native’ screen reader users will spot problems more quickly and catch some issues that other testers might not).
Around 1 in 10 males have some form of colour blindness – a much higher rate than that in women. It’s a genetic trait typically passed down from the mother. You can conduct Ishihara tests at home (online) to determine colour blindness. There is no cure but there are ways you can manage the condition, e.g. by labeling things rather than relying on colour alone.
The first official braille UNO deck is going to the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind. Some students have played it before but have needed to have teachers adapt existing sets by hand braille-ing them. The braille deck looks identical to the non-braille deck, but has some non-intrusive dots in the corner of each card. It makes you question why games companies don’t make their products braille-friendly by default.
Article by Liam O’Dell, highlighting that a lot of political campaign videos lack captions, making them inaccessible to the 11 million people in the UK (1/6 of the population) with deafness or hearing loss (not to mention that 85% of all videos on Facebook are watched without the sound on). This has triggered the #NoCaptionsNoVote campaign, where deaf people threaten not to vote for parties who don’t provide captions. Liam draws attention to the closure of the Access to Elected Office Fund, which affects deaf candidates standing to become MPs, who now have to fund their own costs such as interpreters. Finally, some but not all parties have published their policies in British Sign Language.
In September 2018, GDS Accessibility Expert Anika Henke filed a bug report with Mozilla, suggesting that words are incorrectly merged together in screen readers when using word-wrap: break-word with a small width. For example, “posted on” is pronounced “postedon” if its container is so small that each letter is on its own line. The root cause was actually a 4 year old bug to do with trimming whitespace, which Firefox has fixed in its latest version (Firefox 71). You may be interested in alphagov/reported-bugs to see all bugs GDS has reported in browsers, operating systems and assistive tech. Meanwhile, well done all who take the time to report, debug and fix these far-reaching issues!
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.
Sony are releasing a $30 attachment for the DualShock 4 controller which slots into the back and provides two extra large buttons. These can be mapped to any of the other buttons on the controller, and could be a (literal) game changer for disabled users who may struggle to use the controller standalone. It’s not being marketed as an accessibility aid, but as a tool for power users to level up their gameplay. Indeed, non-disabled users could find the tactile buttons improve their gaming performance.
Aside: It’s highly unusual for Sony to release something like this so late in the PS4 lifecycle, which suggests these might work with the DualShock 5 when it comes out.
The Epilepsy Foundation has filed a criminal complaint with the U.S. Attorney and the Office of the State’s Attorney in Maryland, against a number of Twitter uses who maliciously posted seizure-inducing content on its feed. This happened during November: National Epilepsy Awareness month. A similar attack happened in 2016 against journalist Kurt Eichenwald, which purportedly triggered a seizure.
Aside: around 3% of people with epilepsy can be triggered by exposure to flashing lights or certain visual patterns.
An article of two halves, by a11y expert Becky Gibson. The first half gives guidance for performing your own a11y audit. It recommends WAVE as a starting point, followed by the Web Developer extension for validating document structure and numerous bookmarklets for additional automated tests. This is followed by manual keyboard and screen reader testing – checking for WCAG 2.1 AA violations (as opposed to WCAG 2.0, which was released in 2008 and has little guidance for mobile) – and finally, testing responsive design and zoom/magnification. The second half highlights Vision Aid for specialising in training blind individuals as testers, and argues the business case for this (‘native’ screen reader users will spot problems more quickly and catch some issues that other testers might not).
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.
Sony are releasing a $30 attachment for the DualShock 4 controller which slots into the back and provides two extra large buttons. These can be mapped to any of the other buttons on the controller, and could be a (literal) game changer for disabled users who may struggle to use the controller standalone. It’s not being marketed as an accessibility aid, but as a tool for power users to level up their gameplay. Indeed, non-disabled users could find the tactile buttons improve their gaming performance.
Aside: It’s highly unusual for Sony to release something like this so late in the PS4 lifecycle, which suggests these might work with the DualShock 5 when it comes out.
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.
