Could browsers fix more accessibility problems automatically? Whilst web developers/designers have a duty to make their website accessible, many simply don’t – be it through lack of awareness, skills, resources or empathy. Hidde de Vries proposes that browsers bridge the gap by providing ways of forcing colour contrasts, focus states, text sizes, disabling autoplay and… [Read More]
7 users share their struggles navigating the (sometimes inaccessible) digital world Real users with disabilities sum up their biggest struggles with the digital world. Robert (who has a visual impairment) struggles with date inputs where websites don’t let you enter the date manually, forcing him to navigate an often inaccessible calendar. Rhian, who is autistic,… [Read More]
Why the GOV.UK Design System team changed the input type for numbers Article by Hanna Laakso, explaining why GOV.UK has moved away from using <input type=”number”> for things like credit card / passport numbers. It has big issues in NVDA and Dragon Naturally Speaking, and its native increment/decrement behaviour (triggered by UP/DOWN arrow keys or… [Read More]
Progressive React A surprisingly quick read despite its length: Houssein Djirdeh details several techniques for improving performance and accessibility of React applications. Use pre-rendered or server-side rendered (SSR) React, ideally hydrated in Node ‘streams’ rather than en-masse. Use streams for extracting critical CSS too. Various DevTools profilers help identify unnecessary component re-renders: override shouldComponentUpdate or… [Read More]
The Click-Away Pound Survey 2019 This 32 page report (ironically only available as Word/PDF documents) of last year’s survey has some highlights. There are 7.15 million internet users in the UK that have access needs (an increase of 1 million since 2016), with a spending power of £24.8 billion. Around 70% will click away from… [Read More]
Due to a scheduling error, this is coming out almost two weeks late – apologies! Progressive React A surprisingly quick read despite its length: Houssein Djirdeh details several techniques for improving performance and accessibility of React applications. Use pre-rendered or server-side rendered (SSR) React, ideally hydrated in Node ‘streams’ rather than en-masse. Use streams for… [Read More]
I’m going on holiday next week, so the next edition of week11y will likely be Monday 9th March! Apple debuts ‘head pointer’ accessibility feature in macOS beta, a cursor that follows your eyes Apple have released a feature in macOS Catalina beta, which uses the webcam to follow your head movement, enabling you to move… [Read More]
https://whocanuse.com A little look at the “Who Can Use” tool, which takes a text color and background color and shows the accessibility of that combination for various vision types. For example, a #CF0000 red against a white background has AA compliance for regular vision, but AAA compliance for those with achromatomaly (partial colour blindness). What’s… [Read More]
These are the standards for new government websites A look at the United States Web Design System (USWDS) released in January, designed to improve the usability and accessibility of federal websites. It encourages focusing on user needs, following user experience guidance and using USWDS components, as per its maturity model. The system meets WCAG 2.0… [Read More]
Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities A Microsoft guide to ensuring your PowerPoint is accessible. A lot of the guidance is the same as it would be for the web: use descriptive links, don’t use colour alone to convey information, use a decent size text, provide alt text for images. Some more… [Read More]
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