Next-generation spinal implants help people with severe paralysis walk, cycle, and swim “Three men paralyzed in motorcycle accidents have become the first success stories for a new spinal stimulation device that could enable faster and easier recoveries than its predecessors.” “The men, who had no sensation or control over their legs, were able to take… [Read More]

Which accessibility settings do the Dutch really use on their phone? I came across this article via a LinkedIn post by Gareth Ford Williams, which also summarises the article quite nicely. This article looks at how over a million people use their phones in the Netherlands. 43% of users surveyed use at least one accessibility… [Read More]

The crisis is real: Where are the web accessibility professionals? A WebAIM article with some real food for thought. “The number of job listings with ‘accessibility’ in the title grew 78% in the year ending in July [2021] from the previous 12 months”. That’s on top of the 38% increase from the previous year. By… [Read More]

Shirt with magnetic buttons provides independence I came across the above post on LinkedIn about a year ago; a video of a man called Lincoln, who has cerebral palsy, putting on a shirt unaided. The shirt looks like a standard button shirt, but uses magnets for fastening. The typically viral LinkedIn post was lacking in… [Read More]

University Students Create Cutting-edge Wearable Navigation Devices An article from July 2020 that’s been in my bookmarks for… well, you do the math. A group of students from Harvard University have launched a startup called Foresight, a “wearable navigation aid for people with vision impairments”. It connects to the user’s camera, worn in a placeholder… [Read More]

Web Almanac 2021, Chapter 9: Accessibility The Web Almanac is “HTTP Archive’s annual state of the web report”, which started in 2019. It is split into 24 chapters concerning all sorts of topics, such as security, CDNs, SEO, Jamstack, and Ecommerce. We’re going to concentrate on chapter 9 – Accessibility – which in itself is… [Read More]

Standardizing Focus Styles With CSS Custom Properties Stephanie Eckles shares a useful snippet for setting your focus styles consistently: This applies focus styles to all standard interactable elements, and provides hooks for you to customise parts of the outline style where needed, e.g. Some designers like to only apply focus styles when an interactable element… [Read More]

Building The Most Inaccessible Site Possible In this 35m video from Smashing Meets (December 2021), Manuel Matuzović starts off with a simple HTML site that is considered 100% accessible by Lighthouse. He then deliberately breaks its accessibility as much as possible, without Lighthouse noticing. He calls this process “Progressive Degradation”. He wraps all content in… [Read More]

Game Demos Need to Come Back For Many Reasons, Especially for Accessibility Thought-provoking article by Ben Bayliss, describing how game demos were a great vehicle for testing a game’s accessibility before purchasing the game. Demos used to come on a disc bundled with PlayStation Official Magazine (and others), but in the digital era are increasingly… [Read More]

a11ymyths.com (Accessibility Myths, shared by Smashing Magazine) Sergei Kriger debunks 22 myths about accessibility on the web, such as accessibility only being for blind users. I’ve not heard of all of these myths, so some items were added just in keeping with the format, I think, but it’s worth a quick read nonetheless, and as… [Read More]