iOS 14 review: access all areas? This is another one from the bookmarks that I’ve just gotten around to reading! Colin Hughes reviews the accessibility of iOS 14. He has muscular dystrophy and therefore relies on voice control. Since iOS 11, iPhone users have been able to activate an auto-answer capability for incoming phone calls,… [Read More]

Accessibility devices at CES 2021 reflect growing focus on inclusive tech The entirely virtual CES in January 2021 saw a number of assistive technologies, as companies begin to realise the importance of inclusivity and the money that can be made. Some highlights include: Mantis Q40 – a $2.5k QWERTY keyboard with built-in braille display. Oticon… [Read More]

An opinionated guide to accessibility testing Iain Bean shares his approach to accessibility testing a website: First impressions (on page load) – are there auto-playing videos, etc? There may be a number of obvious a11y issues to fix right off the bat. Tab around the page, checking if every interactable element can be focused, and… [Read More]

EyeMine V2 is here! EyeMine is free eye-control software for the game Minecraft. It allows players to navigate the world, mine resources, fight enemies, and essentially complete every in-game task using just their eyes. The source code is available on GitHub. There is a 4 minute video demonstrating how it works: the screen is split… [Read More]

Adobe unveils ambitious multi-year vision for PDF: Introduces Liquid Mode An Adobe announcement from September 2020, which I’ve somehow only just come across. Adobe Acrobat Reader on iOS, Android and Chromebook now has a ‘Liquid Reader’ mode, which is a button in the UI that processes the current PDF in the cloud and then renders… [Read More]

Modern CSS Upgrades To Improve Accessibility Stephanie Eckles shares some useful CSS tips. I’ve cherry-picked some highlights: The use of max() to ensure that a focus outline is always at least 1px wide, whilst allowing it to be relatively sized with em: button:focus { outline: max(1px, 0.1em) solid red } Use of focus-visible to only… [Read More]

Introducing Editoria11y: Accessibility Autocorrect The folks at Princeton University have released a tool, editoria11y, as a frontend module of JS and CSS (but also a Drupal module, and a WordPress plugin is in the works). The tool aims to catch only editorial accessibility errors, rather than the “ALL the errors” approach used by other accessibility… [Read More]

Chrome now instantly captions audio and video on the web Live Captions, Google’s real-time captioning feature, is available now on Chrome. The technology, which first appeared on Pixel phones in 2019, has captions appearing as a small, movable box at the bottom of the browser. The captions are generated in real time from the sound… [Read More]

Add punctuation to your alt text Eric Bailey reminds us that we should always finish our alt text with punctuation, such as a full stop/period. This makes the screen reader voice pause slightly before announcing the next words in the sequence, which feels a lot more natural. Example code: <img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”A golden retriever puppy… [Read More]

Uber ordered to pay $1.1m to blind woman who was refused rides 14 times Lisa Irving filed a complaint against Uber in 2018, after, on multiple occasions, being denied a ride or being harassed by Uber drivers not wanting to transport her and her guide dog. An independent arbitrator this month ruled in her favour,… [Read More]