a11y-automation.dev A useful reference of a11y fails, describing at a glance whether or not each failure can be linted, tested, or manually tested. For example “Autoplaying media” has a “Linting status” of “Could Exist”, a “Testing status” of “Exists”, and a “Manual testing status” of “Should Exist”.

This frequent11y issue is a Twitter special! I’ve already recently written about how Twitter’s new design has been giving users headaches. But there have been a flurry of other articles about Twitter, so I thought I’d round them up for you. What’s Really Wrong With the New Twitter Font An interview with Frederick Brennan, who… [Read More]

FlickType gives up on accessible iPhone keyboard after ‘abuse’ from Apple “FlickType, maker of the accessible iPhone keyboard that has become popular among those with vision impairment, has confirmed it is discontinuing its app after years of obstacles and “abuse” from Apple’s App Store approval team.” “The announcement comes after FlickType submitted an update to… [Read More]

Google Announces Seismic Change to Docs A WebAIM article talking about the May announcement by Google that it would switch to canvas-based rendering for Google Docs. The “current HTML-based rendering approach” has inconsistencies across platforms, and performance issues, which can be addressed by switching to canvas. Google claims “compatibility for supported assistive technologies such as… [Read More]

HTMHell Issue #12 – crossed out content The good person behind HTMHell describes the two ways to represent crossed out text in HTML: <del></del>, and <s></s>. They clarify in the article that “crossed out” has semantic meaning that doesn’t necessarily have to manifest itself as crossed out text. The <s> element should be used for… [Read More]

Hello! After a week off work, your daily frequent11y newsletter returns… How to use the Accessibility Checker in Microsoft Office Perhaps obvious if you know how, but as someone who has used Office tools a fair bit over the years, I don’t think I’d ever known about the Accessibility Checker! To use in Microsoft Word,… [Read More]

Link shorteners: the long and short of why you shouldn’t use them A blog post by the Government Communication Service. In the old days of social media, URLs used to count towards the character limit, so using a URL shortener was often a necessity. This isn’t the case anymore. Whilst these URL shorteners provide insights… [Read More]

Hyperlegible: an approach to accessible type design (video, 10 minutes) Linus Boman, who I was lucky enough to have as a housemate a few years ago, is a design expert. Here, he talks about the new Atkinson Hyperlegible Font – which he helped to develop – and which is now freely available on Google Fonts… [Read More]

Accessibility of the section element Scott O’Hara writes about the <section> element, designed for representing a group of content that has an “overarching theme”. Headings within each <section> are meant to be scoped semantically within that section (you could in theory put <h1> tags inside each <section>), but in practice, nothing different gets programmatically exposed… [Read More]

Do not assume users turn off CSS or JavaScript I’ve seen this before, but Stefan Judis’ newsletter pointed it out to me again. This is the Government Digital Service’s “service manual” on “Building a resilient frontend using progressive enhancement”. It maintains that we don’t support no-JS / no-CSS browsers for the sake of a minority… [Read More]