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

A Deep Dive on Skipping to Content

• Paul Ratcliffe describes a “2021-friendly” implementation of a skip link. It looks something like this (note that the text is hidden visually until it is focused – I’ve omitted this from the code below):
  • <a href="#skip-link-target">Skip to main content</a>
  • <a href="#skip-link-target" id="skip-link-target">Start of main content</a><main>the content</main>
• Paul points out that the use of <main> markup means savvy screen reader users can skip straight to the main landmark. For those that rely on skip links instead, he recommends a link in the <header> which refers to a link just above the <main> (not inside it, as it would impact SEO).
• I hadn’t seen an <a> element as the target of a skip link before; Paul says this is to give users feedback that the skip link worked. If the page content is too short, the browser wouldn’t scroll and it could be difficult to show that the focus has moved otherwise.
• Susanna Celso left some comments for Paul before writing a follow-up blog post, arguing that the proposed implementation could confuse users (linking to a link that links to itself, and also stating that you’ve reached the “start of main content” when technically you’re still outside that landmark. Susanna makes the case for linking to the <main> element directly, though concedes screen readers will automatically start reading all of the text in that element, which can be an awkward experience.
• Susanna concludes that the best link target would be a <h1>, provided it’s the first element inside the <main> landmark.
• An interesting and healthy discussion between two clearly knowledgeable developers – worth reading both posts!

Writing great alt text: Emotion matters

• Jake Archibald describes how he was trying to decide what alt text to use for his avatar, which would appear alongside his name, in a list of conference speakers. His (and my) instinct was that it should be nullified (alt="") because it would otherwise be repeating information elsewhere in the page.
• However, in his avatar, Jake is pulling a pose and aiming to inject a bit of humour. It’s not right that screen reader users miss out on that context. So Jake opted for the following alt text: “Jake, cheekily peering from behind a plant”.
• Léonie Watson has written about this in her blog post, Text descriptions and emotion rich images. Context matters. Developers sometimes worry that descriptive alt text will make the page too ‘noisy’, but as Léonie points out, screen reader users will skip over large swathes of the page in the same way as sighted users would.
• This seems to be a bit of a trending topic at the moment; I recently covered a similar article by Eric Bailey which concludes that most images nowadays are not purely ‘decorative’ and do require alt text.
• Jake adds that “if you’re trying to do the right thing, you’re almost certainly improving the experience for real people”. Most of the time, your alt text won’t be worse than no alt text at all.

Twitter’s new design to get fix after headache complaints

• BBC article from 16th August. Highlights:
  • “Twitter is making changes to its new redesign, after users complained of headaches and discomfort.”
  • “Unveiled only last week, the redesign mainly involved high-contrast colours and a custom-designed font, Chirp.”
  • Its aim was to “improve content consumption and clean up ‘visual clutter’. But many, especially with accessibility needs, found it confusing, hard to read and uncomfortably bright.”
  • Users have reported the font being smaller and denser, so are having to strain their eyes more to read.
• Twitter Accessibility have confirmed that fixes are on the way.

It is time to ditch the title “Evangelist” from Accessibility

• Ronise Nepomuceno explains why she hates the term ‘Accessibility Evangelist’:
  • It reinforces the idea that accessibility is a ‘nice to have’ that can be deprioritised
  • It has its roots in tech in the 1980’s, when Apple put together a team to ‘evangelise’ developers to develop for the Macintosh platform without the financial incentive compared with their competitor IBM. Ronise feels this is exploitative.
  • It has religious connotations: “they think we are coming for them, to judge for their sins and condemn them all to eternity in Hell”.
  • “It is also essential to respect the boundaries between Digital Accessibility and Disability Rights. They are two different things”.
  • Ronise points out that the term is applied in other parts of tech, e.g. “Cloud Evangelist”.

What people should know BEFORE writing articles or creating products about accessibility

• Sheri Byrne-Haber writes about getting disabled users involved in your product development early on. It is possible to build a product that is technically accessible but is inefficient and unusable in practice. “You cannot retrofit lived experience”.
• Some products don’t support an intersectionality of disabilities. Sheri gives the example of an accessibility overlay that offered profiles for motion sensitivity, and for vision loss, but not for both at the same time.
• Language is important when it comes to writing about accessibility. Terms that are out of favour include “suffering”, “wheelchair bound”, “high / low functioning”, stigmatizing the individuals being labelled and “conveying nothing about the strengths that individual might possess”.
• Sheri bemoans the use of “headcounts” to make disability inclusion decisions. “How many people is this going to benefit?” is irrelevant; accessibility is a civil right.
• Sheri ends with this: “Accessibility is a program, not a project”. If you work from a checklist, or are working to an end date, that is a warning sign.

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