Your weekly frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:
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 filters, and estate agents are often useless. Habinteg Housing Association are hoping to launch an ‘online accessible property directory’, but it’s unclear from the article what scope it will have. There’s certainly a business opportunity here for someone to build the Rightmove of accessible housing.
- The Equality Act 2010 gives wheelchair users the right to make adaptations to their rented homes, but changes must be ‘reasonable’ (giving room to landlords to say no) and they must intend to live in the property for at least 5 years, making this unviable for many young renters.
- These adaptations cost on average £9,000, with a means-tested Disabled Facilities Grant covering only some of that cost. Life costs £583 per month more on average if you are disabled.
Alternative Text for CSS Generated Content
- An Adrian Roselli post about the new “CSS generated content alternative text” syntax, which allows you to specify alt text for CSS background images. For example:
.new::before { content: url("./star.png") / "New!"; }. Browser support is very patchy and this should not be relied on yet, but it is a promising step as currently background images are not accessible to screen readers nor to sighted users using Windows High Contrast mode. It’s worth noting that the alt text won’t display if the image fails to load, so it’s still generally best to use a normal<img>.
The new normal — its something of a strain
- David Banes writes some tips on looking after your eyes now that many of us work from home and don’t have an office-like environment to work in. Some are obvious but need stating: take eye breaks, limit screen time where possible, remember to blink, etc. Try to reduce glare on your screen by turning lights behind you off, but aim for a softly lit environment. Try to keep your screen at arm’s length from you, with the top of the screen roughly at eye level. Finally, consider installing f.lux (for desktop and mobile) – software that adds a tint to your screen, getting gradually darker as the evening draws in, reducing blue light. It helps reduce eye strain and can also have a positive impact on your sleep.
The most useful accessibility testing tools and techniques
- Artem Sapegin describes how he tests a11y as a frontend developer. FastPass mode in the Accessibility Insights browser extension highlights the two most common issues to fix. He also uses axe. For contrast checking, he uses Chrome DevTools’ built-in contrast checker and Spectrum. He manually tests navigating the site with a keyboard (focus states etc), using a screen reader, and attempting to zoom in 200%. Finally, he checks the site in ‘browser reading mode’ and in dark mode.
- This popped up in my inbox and it looks like a useful tool for people with mild/moderate visual impairments. Through a global toggle in your Mac’s native menu bar, it can be turned on to provide a highlight ‘orb’ around your cursor so that it is easier to keep track of, and a built-in magnifier such that if you hold a particular key while hovered over something, you zoom in slightly. It’s a paid app ($7.99), so a free alternative would be to go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Display -> Cursor and increase the ‘Cursor Size’, though this doesn’t have the highlight orb or zoom functionality.
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