The most useful accessibility testing tools and techniques Artem Sapegin describes how he tests a11y as a frontend developer. FastPass mode in the Accessibility Insights browser extension highlights the two most common issues to fix. He also uses axe. For contrast checking, he uses Chrome DevTools’ built-in contrast checker and Spectrum. He manually tests navigating… [Read More]
The new normal — its something of a strain David Banes writes some tips on looking after your eyes now that many of us work from home and don’t have an office-like environment to work in. Some are obvious but need stating: take eye breaks, limit screen time where possible, remember to blink, etc. Try… [Read More]
Alternative Text for CSS Generated Content An Adrian Roselli post about the new “CSS generated content alternative text” syntax, which allows you to specify alt text for CSS background images. For example: .new::before { content: url(“./star.png”) / “New!”; }. Browser support is very patchy and this should not be relied on yet, but it is… [Read More]
Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton. This is a longer summary than usual but I wanted to do the article justice. Renting while disabled: ‘Being in a wheelchair means I pay double the rent’ 93% of the UK’s 8.5 million rental properties are inaccessible. It’s up to local authorities to set and… [Read More]
How studying fruit flies might help us prevent age-related hearing loss in humans Fruit flies are prone to age-related hearing loss – just like humans, whose molecular pathways of hearing are very similar – maintaining their sensitive hearing for about 85% of their 58 day lives. The article goes into more scientific detail than I’m… [Read More]
Your fortnightly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton (due to an oversight, I’m publishing this a week late – apologies!): How do the new iOS 14 accessibility features stack up? Deque reviews the new a11y features in iOS 14. It supports widgets on the home screen, e.g. for at-a-glance weather reports, which makes it… [Read More]
webhint.io Webhint is an OpenJS Foundation project backed by Microsoft, that lints your website for accessibility, speed and cross-browser compatibility. It can be installed as a CLI tool, a browser extension, or run directly from the webhint scanner page. I tried it on one of my sites and though it didn’t find any accessibility issues,… [Read More]
Accessible HTML toggle buttons Erik Kroes describes his accessible toggle switch, which makes use of a <button> with role=”switch” and aria-checked=”true” attributes. He chose <button> because “I want something to change instantly which a checkbox really should not be doing. In my experience, checkboxes that change things often clash with WCAG Criterion 3.2.1: On Focus…. [Read More]
Here are a couple of interesting articles focused on accessibility law suits in the USA, but well worth a read wherever you live: Expert witnesses in web accessibility cases (Part 1) and Expert witnesses in web accessibility cases (Part 2). In Part 1, Ken Nakata describes the Daubert standard of expert witness testimony, which requires… [Read More]
Virusdogs On BBC Radio 4 this morning, they were talking about how dogs can be trained to detect coronavirus in humans, and could be used for mass screenings at places like airports and train stations. Each dog takes around 8 weeks to train, and can process 250 people per hour. This initiative is still at… [Read More]
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