Should you use an <h1> in email code? A thorough investigation by Mark Robbins, looking at the state of webmail across a dozen different providers. 60% of screen reader users prefer pages containing just one <h1> with the document title, whereas 33.3% prefer two <h1> headings, for the site name and the title. Given a preference for… [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]

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]

iPhones can now tell blind users where and how far away people are An article from October 2020, but it taught me something I didn’t know: iOS 14.2 allows you to detect whether there are people in view (using your camera), and how far away they are. iOS will say how far the person is… [Read More]

The Automated Accessibility Coverage Report (PDF) Thanks to GDS colleague Anika Henke, who discovered this report via the “Accessibility Testing Coverage: Automation and Intelligent Guided Testing” talk at axe-con. According to the report, Deque’s accessibility testing engine axe-core finds 57.38% of accessibility issues, rather than the “widely accepted belief that automated accessibility testing only provides… [Read More]

Android update adds scheduled texts and improves accessibility Whilst Android 12 will likely be released in September 2021, a first developer preview is out now. One accessibility improvement is that you will be able to make calls, set timers and play music from the lock screen, using Android’s ‘Assistant’. This will benefit those with mobility… [Read More]

Form design: multiple inputs versus one input Blog post by Adam Silver, explaining why splitting inputs can be problematic. A technique often used for credit card numbers and bank sort-codes, I’ve often found such forms quite slick, but hadn’t considered some of their accessibility downsides: Multiple inputs mean users can’t easily paste information in, unless… [Read More]

We begin with some special WCAG 3.0 coverage, in which I’ve read and summarised a two-parter by deque. Part 1: What to Expect From The First Public Working Draft of WCAG 3.0 WCAG 3.0 is designed to be easier to learn than its predecessors. Instead of ‘success criteria’, we have ‘outcomes’. The former concern the… [Read More]

Accessibility in tech improved in 2020, but more must be done A mammoth article highlighting the key accessibility improvements made by the 6 giants of tech: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. There’s a small conclusion at the end, briefly mentioning a few household names that have yet to fix fundamental issues in their… [Read More]

Lists A Jeremy Keith entry from his journal. Lists are helpfully announced to screen readers when they are navigated to (e.g. “List: six items”). However, Webkit browsers such as Safari don’t announce lists if the lists’ bullets have been removed using CSS (just like it doesn’t announce content that has been visually hidden with display:… [Read More]