Celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day with GDS GDS is running a conference this Thursday 21st May, with registration closing at 5pm on the 20th. Agenda: 9:30am “An introduction to digital accessibility regulations”, 11am “How to avoid common accessibility statement fails”, 12:30pm “How to carry out basic accessibility checks”, 3pm “Making accessibility accessible: the secret to… [Read More]

Avoid aria-roledescription Adrian Roselli writes about this attribute that describes the role of an element. It overrides what is announced to the screen reader, e.g. <input type=”text” aria-roledescription=”Only numbers allowed”> will read as “Only numbers allowed” instead of “input type text”. This hides meaning and the control type – a confusing experience for the user…. [Read More]

Why to Avoid Accessibility Overlay Toolbars, Pugins & Widgets Accessibility Works article warning against the installation of third-party overlays/widgets that promise to make your site accessible. These tools provide options for customising text size, providing magnifiers, and in some cases a built-in screen reader or alt-text generator. However, they cannot address the 70% of accessibility… [Read More]

Just a short one this week – life has got ahead of me! ~ Chris This Is What Happened at a Captioned Virtual Reality Webinar Meryl K. Evans describes their experience of attending A11yVR meetup, which you can watch. Meryl is deaf and relies on the captions, but being in a VR environment raised several… [Read More]

Google develops virtual braille keyboard for Android, rolling out now Currently, people plug in physical braille keyboards when they want to type, which can be inconvenient on mobile. Google have developed a virtual TalkBack keyboard integrated into Android, which you hold in landscape orientation, supporting both grade 1 and grade 2 braille. Styling yourself when… [Read More]

CSS Can Influence Screenreaders Ben Myers explains that some CSS may have unintended side-effects on assistive technologies. <button style=”text-transform: uppercase”>Add</button>, for example, is read out as the acronym “A.D.D.” on VoiceOver. The line between presentation and content is increasingly blurred with ::before/::after pseudo elements, the output of which is compiled into the same accessibility tree… [Read More]

Accessibility Maze A game developed by The Chang School, Ryerson University (Ontario). It simulates various challenges which are only overcome by good accessible design, providing good metaphors that encourage things like alt text. I don’t want to give too much away as it would ruin the game – it’s extremely well made and only takes… [Read More]

How I disclose my disability during a job search Haley Moss describes the experience of applying for jobs and wondering when and whether to disclose her autism, for fear of being treated differently. Haley suggests disclosure should generally happen only when you realise you can’t perform an essential function of your job because of your… [Read More]

Why videos on GOV.UK use the YouTube video player Anika Henke explains how GDS investigated 20 different video players for their usability, performance and accessibility, by using keyboard only, increasing font sizes and trying it with screen readers. Their conclusion was that the native YouTube player was the best (and more sensible than building their… [Read More]

Stop Using ‘Drop-down’ Article by Adrian Roselli, asking people to stop using ‘dropdown’ in their vocabulary, as it is ambiguous. Do you actually mean a ‘select’ element, or an ARIA listbox, datalist, ARIA combobox, or autocomplete (or several other possibilities)? Adrian describes the subtle differences in each, and doesn’t preach about the use of ‘select’… [Read More]