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]

iPhones can now automatically recognize and label buttons and UI features for blind users iOS 14 has a new feature, “Screen Recognition”, which is built into VoiceOver. It uses AI to detect interactable elements on the screen, even when such elements aren’t properly labelled / exposed to assistive technology. It has the potential to allow… [Read More]

Apologies for the silence last week – I was having an early Christmas with my family! Your weekly frequent11y newsletter returns below: A plan for accessible maps Benjy Stanton describes how he would design a map service from the ground up, considering the needs of all users. Maps are inherently inaccessible – they require digital… [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]

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]

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]

Use feature flags to make your website more accessible Interesting idea from Heidi Waterhouse: allow users of your app to set their preferences for things like font size, contrast, and font family, and persist these preferences in a database [or cookie]. Then, when rendering the page for the returning user, retrieve their preferences and give… [Read More]

ARIA in CSS Jeremy Keith writes about a technique (prompted by Sara Soueidan) that ‘forces’ you to create accessible experiences. You can use ARIA attributes as CSS hooks to ensure your component only looks/functions properly if said attributes are used in the HTML. Consider this CSS: aria-hidden[‘true’] { display: none }. It ensures you’re properly… [Read More]

frequent11y is now 1 year old! 🎉 Since the first issue of dai11y on 28th October 2019, I’ve published well over 200 posts covering design, technology, science and ethics in the world of accessibility. I’ve been really enjoying reading so many articles and sharing them with you, and I’ve really appreciated the nice comments and… [Read More]

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 enforce accessibility targets, but just 5% are requiring developers to construct wheelchair-suitable housing. Finding an accessible home is difficult as property websites lack accessibility… [Read More]