ARIA in CSS Jeremy Keith writes about a technique (prompted by Sara Soueidan) that ‘forces’ you to create accessible experiences. You can use ARIA attributes as CSS hooks to ensure your component only looks/functions properly if said attributes are used in the HTML. Consider this CSS: aria-hidden[‘true’] { display: none }. It ensures you’re properly… [Read More]

How we recruited people with low/no digital skills on Carer’s Allowance A GOV.UK blog from 2015. They wanted to find people on the lowest end of the digital inclusion scale for user research, to ensure a service they were building could be used by anybody. Asking people “How would you rate your computer skills?” wasn’t… [Read More]

Games are being remastered with little thought to accessibility This article came out in June in response to a slew of remastered games being released around May. Many of these games from circa 2010 lacked accessibility features at the time, and haven’t been given any accessibility love in the remaster, lacking basic things like controls… [Read More]

:focus-visible Is Here Matthias Ott writes about the situation where clicking on an element activates its :focus styles – something that can be perceived as ugly. With this new property, you can style elements if they receive keyboard focus, while avoiding styling if they receive focus via mouse click. Example: :focus:not(:focus-visible) { outline: 0 }… [Read More]

frequent11y is 1 year old today! 🎉 Since the first issue of dai11y on 28th October 2019, I’ve published 211 posts covering design, technology, science and ethics in the world of accessibility. I’ve been really enjoying reading so many articles and sharing them with you, and I’ve really appreciated the nice comments and encouragement from… [Read More]

Google Slides – Present slides with captions When you present Google Slides, you can turn on automatic captions to display your words in real time as you speak them (this only works with Chrome devices set to U.S. English). After you click “Present”, click the “CC” button or use CTRL + SHIFT + C (use… [Read More]

Cursor Pro Mouse Highlighter This popped up in my inbox and it looks like a useful tool for people with mild/moderate visual impairments. Through a global toggle in your Mac’s native menu bar, it can be turned on to provide a highlight ‘orb’ around your cursor so that it is easier to keep track of,… [Read More]

The most useful accessibility testing tools and techniques Artem Sapegin describes how he tests a11y as a frontend developer. FastPass mode in the Accessibility Insights browser extension highlights the two most common issues to fix. He also uses axe. For contrast checking, he uses Chrome DevTools’ built-in contrast checker and Spectrum. He manually tests navigating… [Read More]

The new normal — its something of a strain David Banes writes some tips on looking after your eyes now that many of us work from home and don’t have an office-like environment to work in. Some are obvious but need stating: take eye breaks, limit screen time where possible, remember to blink, etc. Try… [Read More]

Alternative Text for CSS Generated Content An Adrian Roselli post about the new “CSS generated content alternative text” syntax, which allows you to specify alt text for CSS background images. For example: .new::before { content: url(“./star.png”) / “New!”; }. Browser support is very patchy and this should not be relied on yet, but it is… [Read More]