Is Progressive Enhancement Dead Yet? (video, 8 mins) Another Heydon Pickering ‘Web Briefs’ video, with a somewhat clickbaity title. This isn’t an analysis of frontend strategies in 2021, but a characteristically opinionated explanation of what good vs bad progressive enhancement looks like. In it, Heydon reinforces that: Sites should be functional and have decent layouts… [Read More]
Microsoft Backs Development of Smart Cane for Visually Impaired An interesting idea from London-based startup WeWalk, who have recently joined Microsoft‘s AI for Accessibility program. Their ‘smart cane’ uses ultrasonic object detection to spot hazards such as parked cars, and paired with a smartphone app also features turn-by-turn GPS navigation and taxi-booking facilities. The cane… [Read More]
Death of the PDF? Not quite, but it’s great news for accessibility Danny Bluestone writes about the significance of the change in content design guidance on GOV.UK, which came into effect on 7th December. The updated guidance states “If you publish a PDF or other non-HTML document without an accessible version, you may be breaking… [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]
State-Switch Controls: The Infamous Case of the “Mute” Button An article exploring the design of ‘mute’ buttons on the iPhone ‘call’ screen, on Zoom, and on WebEx. Two of the three use fill colour alone to denote state: the universal microphone icon has a dash through it, regardless of what state you’re in, making it… [Read More]
Interaction Media Features and Their Potential (for Incorrect Assumptions) A really interesting CSS-Tricks article by Patrick Lauke, exploring the Media Queries Level 4 Interaction Media Features. In theory, they enable the detection of things like if the user is using a mouse or a touch screen (@media (pointer: fine|coarse) {), which you could use to decide… [Read More]
The lang attribute: browsers telling lies, telling sweet little lies Manuel Matuzović shares some useful CSS that can alert you to a missing, empty or incorrect page-level lang attribute. For example: html:not([lang]) { border: 10px dotted red; } Manuel explains why setting the right value is important for screen reader support, as well things like… [Read More]
WordPress adds support for video captions and subtitles WordPress v5.6 “Simone” introduces WebVTT support for its videos. This is a big deal considering WordPress powers around 4 out of 10 websites. It means you can upload .vtt files containing subtitles, to enable closed captions on the video. The article gives a nice example of a… [Read More]
State-Switch Controls: The Infamous Case of the “Mute” Button An article exploring the design of ‘mute’ buttons on the iPhone ‘call’ screen, on Zoom, and on WebEx. Two of the three use fill colour alone to denote state: the universal microphone icon has a dash through it, regardless of what state you’re in, making it… [Read More]
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