week11y issue 33

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

Enhancing ARIA landmarks with aria-labelledby

  • Article by Léonie Watson describing how to use aria-labelledby to distinguish between multiple navigational elements. Example: <nav role="navigation" aria-labelledby="firstLabel"><p>Choose an <span id="firstLabel">aisle</span> to browse</p><ul><li><a href="fresh.html">Fresh foods</a></li>...</ul>.

How Does HTML Microdata Help With Accessibility?

  • Scott Vinkle explains how pages marked up with microdata helps the ‘Reader Mode’ in browsers to find and arrange content. For example, <img src="source.jpg" alt="" itemprop="image" /> determines the image that will be displayed in Reader Mode. Reader Mode is a useful feature for many, especially for people with dyslexia, as it removes distractions such as navigation, animations and ads.

#accessiBe Will Get You Sued

  • Adrian Roselli writes about accessiBe, a company (whose article I’ve shared before) that offers an add-on for sites to automatically make them ‘accessible’. Adrian presents a scathing review of their practices, including that they incorrectly interpret WCAG, are cited in accessibility lawsuits and attempt to spoof automated checkers.

The Latest Barbie Dreamhouse Now Includes A Wheelchair-Accessible Elevator

  • Mattel, the manufacturer behind the Barbie brand, started producing Barbies with wheelchairs in February 2019. They’ve now released a ‘Dreamhouse’ dollhouse that has a button-operated lift, big enough to accommodate the wheelchair. It’s a great step forward in seeing a full range of diversity from a young age.

An app for everything, but can everyone use it?

  • Anne Spencer Ross tested almost 9000 apps and found that a quarter were missing labels for >90% of their icons. ‘Floating action buttons’, representing the most important action on the screen, lacked labels in 92% of cases. The tools used to build apps can greatly affect their accessibility: 100% of screen elements coming from Unity and 53% of screen elements from Cocos2dx were completely unusable. And Education apps made up 7% of apps overall but 19% of completely unusable apps.

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