Survey of Web Accessibility Practitioners #3 This WebAIM survey, which was previously conducted in 2014 and 2018, is aimed at “everyone that implements accessibility, whether casually or as a primary part of your job”. It is open until January 20th 2021 and its results will be published in the same month. Please take 5-15 minutes… [Read More]

Accessibility Testing is like Making Coffee This article by Madalyn Parker was very popular back in August. Madalyn describes accessibility testing through different coffee brewing methods, with some nice illustrations. French Press is like automated testing: quick, easy, but doesn’t catch all of the grit. Aeropress, like semi-automated testing, is a step up from that,… [Read More]

Under-Engineered Responsive Tables Adrian Roselli describes how to create an accessible table that scrolls horizontally on mobile. You need to put your <table> element inside a <div role=”region” aria-labelledby=”mycaption” tabindex=”0″>, where “mycaption” references the <caption id=”mycaption”> that should be inside the table. The tabindex satisfies WCAG Success Criteria 2.1.1 Keyboard, and the aria-labelledby satisfies 4.1.2… [Read More]

PlayStation 5: The Accessibility Review Pros: The integrated screen reader is available across the PS5 system and comes in multiple languages, which can be adjusted for speed, volume, and choice of male or female voice. There are a number of global settings to accommodate different types of colour blindness. You can set a ‘game preset’… [Read More]

Accessible Game Design / Accessible Player Experiences I came across accessible.games while watching the 2020 Video Game Accessibility Awards. It lists the basic “access design patterns” to follow when developing your games. Examples include “second channel” (such as captioning that alerts you to incoming attacks; not just relying on sound) and “improved precision” (allowing gamers… [Read More]

What would an ethical overlay look like? Karl Groves writes about the ‘overlay widgets’ offered by companies such as accessiBe, and how their claim that including their product on your website will make it fully WCAG compliant is simply untrue. Many a11y issues, such as missing alt text, can only be fixed by a person…. [Read More]

This $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss Saad Bhamla, a bioengineer from India, wanted to buy his grandparents some hearing aids. He was shocked to find that they can cost $500 to $5000 per pair, so set out to build his own. He soldered a microphone to a circuit board, then added… [Read More]

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font A font has been designed to be read more easily by people with low vision. It differentiates commonly misinterpreted letters and numbers, such as capital I and lower-case l, using exaggerated forms including angled spurs and differentiated tails. It comes in four variants (regular, bold, italics, italics bold), supports 27 languages, and… [Read More]

GIFS and prefers-reduced-motion Some people find animations nausea-inducing or distracting. They might well configure their browser to indicate that they prefer reduced motion. This CSS Tricks article highlights a really neat trick from Manuel Matuzović: display a static image by default, or play an animated gif if users have no preference for reduced motion, using… [Read More]

Soccer players’ head injury risk could be reduced with simple adjustments to the ball, study finds Football governing bodies FIFA/NCAA govern the size, weight limit and inflated pressure of footballs. Purdue University engineers have concluded that when footballs get wet, they quickly breach the weight limit, so should be swapped out mid-game. Inflating balls to… [Read More]