Your fortnightly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:

Your Image Is Probably Not Decorative

• Eric Bailey explains why most images nowadays need some form of alternative text.
• You can ‘nullify’ images – removing them from the screen reader experience – by adding an empty alt text, i.e. <img alt="" ...>. This should only be used when the image doesn’t convey information that is important to understanding the purpose of the page or view.
• You might nullify your images in the following scenarios:
  • Old layout techniques requiring ‘spacer’ images
  • Where the image repeats content that is already in the page (though this could still be confusing for screen reader users who have partial vision)
  • Supplemental icons (e.g. <button><img alt="" src="icon.svg"> Print</button>).
• Eric also explains how you can provide alt text when using CSS background images (hint: it uses the spacer gif!)

The accessibility stalemate

• Chris Heilmann talks about how the accessibility community holds back the accessibility movement by setting the pedestal too high.
• There are plenty of great talks about accessibility, but, apparently, many speakers don’t release their slides afterwards. Why? Because people “call out any accessibility problems with the materials”. If the content isn’t 100% accurate, or the platform has one or two of its own accessibility issues, then the materials don’t get released and people aren’t able to benefit from them.
• Chris says “I saw many conferences not release any of the materials or videos as they couldn’t caption them or host them on a platform that allows for it.” He says that some people enjoy criticising articles for the platform they are published on, e.g. “Isn’t it ironic that I can’t read your article on mobile best practices on my mobile device?”
• “On the surface, it seems to be valid criticism to call out when [presentations] fail to provide alternatives for each image and video in them. Except, it is a cheap shot and feels like a distraction from the problems the materials talked about.”
• Controversially, he suggests that not all content needs to be accessible. “What do we gain by ensuring that a presentation about how people use screen readers is accessible by a screen reader? Is that the audience? The one who already knows this information?”

From A Colourblind Designer To The World: Please Stop Using Red And Green Together

• A designer with deuteranopia – red/green colourblindness – writes about how the use of green and red in web design is problematic. Namely:
  • Using colour to indicate validation status in forms. Adding other visual indicators such as icons would help to differentiate.
  • Using green and red to indicate primary and secondary actions, e.g. “OK” and “Cancel”. Using fill colour just for the primary action helps to disambiguate.
  • Red and green used to convey meaning in charts – literally unusable for people with colourblindness.
• If you have to use red and green in your design, choose different luminosity (i.e. make either the red or the green darker and saturated). UK traffic lights look quite similar between red and amber, but the green is very distinct because its saturation is different from the other two.
• Colourblindness affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women.

New in ARIA 1.2: ARIA IDL attributes

• Scott O’Hara writes about the new ARIA IDL (Interface Definition Language) attributes, allowing you to set element attributes succinctly in JavaScript via foo.role = 'checkbox' and foo.ariaChecked = false. Until now, we’ve had to use setAttribute, i.e. foo.setAttribute('aria-checked', 'false').
• This is supported in all Chromium browsers, but currently not in Firefox.
• It’s not yet possible to set attributes in this way if they take multiple IDREFs. For example, aria-labelledby="id1 id2 id3" has no new corresponding IDL attribute yet.

Tech platform devises new system to simplify process of booking rail travel for disabled travellers

• Whoosh Media have created a system, “The Real-Time Journey Dashboard”, that allows you to scan QR codes on your train seat, to view information such as location of toilets on the train, as well as a live dashboard demonstrating journey progress and delays.
• “Travelling by train is very often a hazardous lottery for wheelchair users and those with restricted mobility, simply because rail companies have failed to keep up with the way people research their journeys.”
• The article above is light on details – I found more information at Onboard Hospitality:
  • Currently found on Northern Rail and Grand Central Rail, with more operators to follow in the coming months.
  • The system is currently receiving around 1500 scans per day.
  • The system can also be used to report antisocial behaviour to the British Transport Police.
  • The system is not an app, though it’s not clear what it is. Presumably it’s just a website that gets loaded via the QR code.

Move the pointer using head pointer on Mac

• This is a macOS user guide for how to enable the ‘head pointer’ on your Mac, using your built-in camera to follow your head movement and move your cursor. I was pointed to this via Stefan’s Web Weekly newsletter.
• It’s quite effective and worth experimenting turning it on to get a feel for what it is like. You may need to adjust the pointer speed as otherwise the cursor may not move enough in sync with your head.

A day in the life: What it’s like to travel through an airport and on a plane as a wheelchair user

• An interesting read about just what a wheelchair user goes through on a typical flight. These users must be transferred into a narrow aisle chair (designed to be able to fit in the aisle of the plane) and then transferred into an airplane seat. Their wheelchair is put in the hold.
• Going through security is difficult as the wheelchair makes the metal detector check redundant, so these passengers have to have a pat-down, which can slow the process down considerably. TSA PreCheck is an option for American fliers to skip the security check.
• In May, Gabrielle deFiebre travelled from New York to Phoenix on a Delta flight. Her wheelchair was damaged by employees in an incident recorded in a now-viral video. In 2019, airlines damaged more than 10,000 wheelchairs. All Wheels Up is an organisation advocating for allowing wheelchair users to be able to stay in their own wheelchairs during flight.
• deFiebre doesn’t eat or drink much at all on flights, knowing the difficulties of transferring into the aisle chair and then into the cramped airplane bathroom.

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