Checking Windows High Contrast Mode on a Mac for free Microsoft estimates that 60 million people use Windows High Contrast Mode (WHCM) regularly. The mode is under-tested compared to VoiceOver, which Adrian Roselli claims is over-represented. Marcus Herrmann shares his tips for developers wanting to test WHCM on their Apple machines: Download VirtualBox. Get a… [Read More]

Clubhouse, the Shift to Spoken Social Media, and the Voices That Will Be Silenced Lawrence Weru discusses the Clubhouse app and what it is like as a person with a stutter. The invite-only app can gather over 1,000 people together in “rooms” for voice chats, where you can raise a ‘hand’ to ask to speak… [Read More]

Apple Music Adds “Saylists” to Help People with Speech-Sound Disorders At the end of March, Apple worked with Warner Music to launch the “Saylists” feature on Apple Music. This feature helps users find songs with lyrics and sounds which can be challenging to vocalise if you have a speech-sound disability/disorder (SSD), as one in 12… [Read More]

Today’s dai11y is a Steve Faulkner special, as I’ve had two of his blog posts bookmarked for some time! re-upped: placeholder – the piss-take label Steve confirms that use of the placeholder attribute alone, in absence of a label, fails Success Criterion 3.3.2: Labels or Instructions. The problems with placeholder are summarised nicely in one… [Read More]

Alt text that informs: Meeting the needs of people who are blind or low vision A really interesting article by Microsoft that is not (as I suspected from the headline) your typical “how to write good alt text” article. A recent Microsoft study found that users who rely on alt text want different alt text… [Read More]

Is your CAPTCHA keeping humans out? CAPTCHAs are important for preventing DDoS attacks, as they prevent botnets from accessing processor-intensive parts of websites such as login forms. But they can give false positives, where CAPTCHAs filter out humans, which is particularly bad in the COVID-19 era where it is essential to be able to access… [Read More]

This one is another special two-parter, this time to do with accessible front-end components! A Complete Guide To Accessible Front-End Components A Smashing Magazine article that does a bit too much, in my opinion! It begins with a table of contents, listing common UI components but also media preferences such as dark mode and prefers-reduced-motion…. [Read More]

Today’s newsletter is a two-article WCAG special: WCAG 2.1 Checklist A checklist by Raghavendra Satish Peri, an accessibility evangelist working for Deque. It lists each guideline for WCAG 2.1 A and AA compliance, along with a summary of each and a “Points to Ponder” section, containing useful tidbits like “Always provide alternative options like audio… [Read More]

Automated accessibility testing: Leveraging GitHub Actions and pa11y-ci with axe A blog post describing how to install pa11y-ci to your project and run it automatically with GitHub Actions. pa11y-ci is a Continuous Integration wrapper around pa11y, which is an automated accessibility tool that scans your web pages for issues. You can configure the WCAG standard… [Read More]

3D-printed exoskeleton allows paralysed woman to “walk” An blog post by accessibility consultant Nicolas Steenhout, which has resurfaced recently. It gives his opinion of a CNET article about a paralysed woman whose 3D-printed exoskeleton allows her to “walk”. As Nicolas points out, the $150k exoskeleton holds the woman up, and moves her in a way… [Read More]