Welcome to your monthly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton. I hope you enjoy these a11y articles I’ve collated and summarised for you. (Psst – if you find these emails too long, consider switching to shorter, more frequent updates). Now on with the show!

‘Show Me a Sign’ recounts the deaf experience for young readers

• MV Times article from last December, describing Ann Clare Le Zotte‘s new novel “Show me a Sign”, which is now available online. It is set in early 19th century Chilmark, Massachusetts – a town famous for its unusually high percentage of deaf citizens (one in 25 people, vs one in 6000 on the mainland). Everyone could communicate with one another, deaf or not, through Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL). It sounds like an exciting read, centered around a scientist that uses Mary as a “live specimen” in a cruel experiment, tribal/colonial tensions of the time, and an insight into how Mary lives without sound.

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 scrolling) is often unintended. Some browsers also attempt to round the number or add comma separation. GOV.UK now uses <input type="text" inputmode="numeric" pattern="[0-9]*">, which retains the numeric keyboard without compromising usability.

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, shares her frustration with auto-playing videos and poor website load speeds. Sally, who has a mobility impairment, says that increasing font sizes is hard in apps, and that zooming causes its own problems. Kasia needs someone’s assistance when online shopping, as they don’t feel comfortable sharing their bank details on inaccessible sites where it is difficult to know if they’re filling it in correctly. Several complain about CAPTCHA forms that force you to prove you’re not a robot.

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 allowing zoom, even if a developer has explicitly disabled such features. Some browsers do some (but not all) of this already, and what does exist is not easily discoverable.

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’ (which you may have expected from the title).

Thisten

• An interesting site/app: “we transcribe conferences, to make them accessible.” It is an audio-to-text platform that transcribes speaker sessions at conferences, in real-time. Designed to be used whether at small gatherings or at large conferences.

Online Altruists Are Making Reddit More Accessible

• Fascinating article about the r/TranscribersOfReddit community that has over 3,000 volunteers who have transcribed almost 100,000 pieces of content on Reddit. A bot links to all image/video related content that gets posted to any partnered subreddits, and transcribers then ‘claim’ the post by commenting underneath, before manually providing a detailed transcription for that content. Everyone has a different motivation for doing it; it’s worth a read to find out more. You may remember a similar story about Facebook groups dedicated to transcribing.

HTML: The Inaccessible Parts

• Article by Dave Rupert, sharing his frustration and highlighting some cases where native HTML is not as accessible as it ought to be. Inputs of types number, date and search are considered problematic, as are native HTML <video>, role="tablist" for tabs and various HTML5 tags. Dave links off to articles explaining the issues with each in more detail. This is kind of a glossary and is worth a bookmark for referencing.

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 own), though it’s interesting to note that no player was perfect, and they all had issues when changing system colours.

New media queries you need to know

• Article by Kristofer Selbekk, suggesting several up-and-coming media queries you can use to cater for all users. There are some useful boolean ones: prefers-reduced-motion, prefers-reduced-data, prefers-reduced-transparency, prefers-contrast. But there are also some variable ones: light-level to accommodate people in bright sunlight or in bed at night, for example. Finally, a @custom-media keyword is coming, which could be used to script your own media queries, such as @media(--logged-in) or @media(--no-connection).

16 Things to Improve Your Website Accessibility

• Bruce Lawson describes the most common errors sites make & how to remedy them. The main one: too much content, which should be broken up into sections with headings and bulleted lists, and should be in plain English and a legible font. Avoid reCAPTCHA (or use reCAPTCHA v3; a pure JavaScript API that returns a ‘score’) and autoplaying videos/graphics. Use unique text for your links (never just “here”), and make them look like links (don’t remove focus style). Label your form fields, and don’t disable autofill. There are several more tips, so it’s worth a read.

That Time I Tried Browsing the Web Without CSS

• Jon Kantner describes his experience of disabling CSS, for checking accessibility standards like like headings, form controls, visual hierarchies, content order and images existing as <img> rather than background images that get lost. It’s not just theoretical: 12.5% of users who rely on assistive tech use custom stylesheets. The results are predictable: sprites that no longer make sense, unsemantic form inputs, images with no specified widths, and duplicate elements (e.g. both mobile and desktop equivalents existing in the same DOM).

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 disability and need an accommodation. Most accommodations require little to no financial investment, such as allowing you to wear headphones to drown out office noise. How much to disclose, and how you do it, depends on why you’re disclosing it and who you are talking to.

On Voice Coding

• Dusty Phillips shares his experience of using his voice to code, triggered by a carpal tunnel syndrome diagnosis a few months ago. He invested around a thousand dollars in his setup, which includes Dragon Naturallyspeaking, a Windows machine and a high-end microphone. Dusty uses Caster, which is built on top of Dragon, for coding-oriented voice commands. The article describes his configuration in great detail, and there’s a video of voice coding in the comments if you want to see something similar in action.

The First U.S. Web Accessibility Agreement was Signed Twenty Years Ago

• On March 14th, 2000, Bank of America was the first US company to sign an agreement to make its website accessible, referencing WCAG 1.0 (only a few months old at the time). It was the output of a ‘structured negotiation’ between the bank and five blind customers. The bank hired a mutually agreed accessibility consultant, Shawn Henry, to oversee the work. It’s interesting to note that no lawsuit was required, and that digital accessibility in law is now two decades old.

Video game accessibility aided by consultants who say it’s not about compromising game design

• Article about how accessibility consultants are working behind the scenes to create a more inclusive video game industry. A common argument against accessibility adjustments is that they’ll ruin the ‘creative vision’ of the game. In reality, lowering difficulty settings is a cheap and unsatisfying way of ‘achieving accessibility’. It is far better to provide custom control mapping, add subtitles, enable camera snapping, etc. Another myth is that these features are rarely used, however: one third of Uncharted 4 players used the ‘one handed control’ option, and 60% of Assassins Creed: Origins players turned subtitles on.

Whew, that was a long newsletter! Did you know that you can subscribe to smaller, more frequent updates? The dai11y, week11y and fortnight11y newsletters get exactly the same content. The choice is entirely up to you! Curated with ♥ by developer @ChrisBAshton.