Olay Designs An Easy-Open Lid—& Shares the Inclusive Design Olay, the beauty products manufacturer, have designed a new lid prototype for its creams, designed to be accessible. It has an “easy open winged cap”, “extra grip raised lid”, “high contrast product label”, and Braille text spelling out “face cream”. The lids are currently only available… [Read More]

Redundantly Redundant a11y Accessibility A really interesting deep-dive by Scott O’Hara, who looks at some ARIA-heavy markup for indicating that an input field is ‘required’. He tests this markup out with VoiceOver and NVDA, and finds that the auditory experience ends up being extremely verbose: “Enter your name, required, Your name, required, edit text. (pause)… [Read More]

After a few days off work, I bring you a button a11y special! Buttons vs. Links Eric Eggert describes the difference between a link and a button: A link changes what the URL in the browser points to; either a new page, or a file to download, or a frame to update the source of…. [Read More]

This is a two-article special, covering accessibility advances by Android and Apple! Google Improving Smartphone Accessibility Two new features are coming to Android smartphones: “Camera Switches“, and “Project Activate”. These features will allow users to use gestures like smiling, raising eyebrows, or looking in a particular direction, to issue a command such as returning to… [Read More]

Accessibility inception: sharing your knowledge (video, 46m) This is a Mischa Andrews talk from #ID24 in November 2017. I’ve had it in my bookmarks for a while, and am so pleased I’ve finally managed to watch it. Mischa talks openly and candidly about how you can effect accessibility change in your organisation, whilst overcoming the… [Read More]

A spooky-themed game for you, just in time for Halloween! HOCUS :FOCUS – A keyboard accessibility horror game. A game that highlights issues caused by missing focus styles, unexpected tab orders, and so on. I completed the game in 1 minute and 16 seconds. Can you beat my time?

Blaming Screen Readers 🚩×5 There is, apparently, a trend going around on Twitter (example tweet): to state something that raises red flags for you, followed by a number of ‘red flag emojis’, i.e. “🚩”. Except that this isn’t a red flag emoji, other than by coincidence. It could just as easily have been yellow or… [Read More]

Accessibility overlays are a hot topic in the a11y world, so it’s worth keeping on top of all legal proceedings in this space. In her blog post below, accessibility consultant Julie Moynat writes a cautionary tale of how an accessibility overlay company have started legal proceedings against her, off the back of a single tweet…. [Read More]

Easy read is hard to get right This is a GOV.UK blog from the Inclusive Design team at UK Health Security Agency. It is about the “easy read” format – something I’d never actually come across before. The format, intended for people with learning difficulties, has a very specific template and definition: wide margins images… [Read More]

Xbox reveals a huge new accessibility feature that puts Sony and Nintendo to shame A clickbait headline, no doubt, but an interesting announcement: Xbox are introducing a classification system to their stores (Xbox.com, PC, Game Pass), ‘tagging’ games with information related to their accessibility. This is to make it easier for disabled gamers to know… [Read More]