Chris Ashton

YouTube Axes Community Captions Feature, Citing Low Usage A feature allowing viewers to contribute subtitles to a channel’s videos will be discontinued on 28th September 2020. YouTube says less than one-thousandth of a percent of channels approved a community captions track in the last month, and only 0.2% of watch time had a community caption track… [Read More]

Making Facebook.com accessible to as many people as possible A Facebook Engineering article describing how the site redesign in React provided opportunities to improve accessibility. Using React Context, heading levels automatically increase as they are nested (i.e. <Heading /><section><Heading /></section> automatically creates a h1 followed by a h2). They use the same mechanism for contextual… [Read More]

Disabled Nurses Find Covid-19 Silver Lining; Hope For More Inclusive Future 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… [Read More]

Control your iPhone with your voice (and leave Siri out of it) 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… [Read More]

Accessible Font Sizing, Explained 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… [Read More]

Accessibility Best Practices for Classes Using Zoom PDF from The University 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… [Read More]

How Alexa has change the life of a disabled person 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… [Read More]