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Adrian Roselli
AI-Powered Virtualization Process RTFM

All Posts Tagged: accessibility

My Gratuitously Signaling Watch

In early 2016 I bought myself the Eone Bradley (nobody is sponsoring this post and the link is not an affiliate link). I first saw this watch at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, some on the wrists of people with little or no vision, and had admired it since then.…

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Tags: accessibility, design, usability

ARIA Grid As an Anti-Pattern

First I will cover what an ARIA grid is per the ARIA specification, and then I will discuss two patterns proposed by the ARIA Authoring Practices. ARIA 1.1 Data Grids Layout Grids As Defined The Provided Examples 1. Simple List of Links 2. Pill List For a List of Message…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, ARIAbuse, rant, standards, UX

#accessiBe Will Get You Sued

Disclaimer: This post and the headline is my opinion. I provide facts throughout to inform that opinion. I say this because accessiBe managed to get $40 million in two rounds of funding from K1 Capital and I am guessing some of that money will be allocated to attorney fees. I…

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Tags: accessibility, overlay, rant, standards, UX

How Not to Deploy a Twitter Feature

Twitter announces a new feature is rolling out for iOS, the ability to record audio tweets. It demonstrates this with an uncaptioned video of its Twitter avatar making bird noises: Tweets with audio are rolling out on iOS and we only have one thing to say about it pic.twitter.com/CZvQC1fo1W Twitter…

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Tags: accessibility, rant, Twitter, UX

Disclosure Widgets

A disclosure widget is a simple control whose sole purpose is to hide or show stuff. Native HTML has one built in via the <details> and <summary> elements. Until recently, if you wanted to use it in modern browsers you needed to use a polyfill. In most cases it was…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, html, pattern, standards

Avoid aria-roledescription

HTML has all sorts of built-in features that, when used correctly, are accessible, will localize, and which just work. For example, if I want a button, I use <button>, and a screen reader will announce it as button. For users in other languages, they will hear whatever is their word…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, ARIAbuse, browser, rant, standards, UX

Web Sites as ‘Public Accommodation’ under a Pandemic

When an organization receives an accessibility complaint about its web site, a common defense is that there are physical places available for a customer / constituent / user to complete transactions. With a brick-and-mortar available, the web site is simply an added service and so is exempted from Title III…

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Tags: accessibility

Chrome 80/81 Bug: Accessible Name Calculation

The good:Chrome 80 rolled out on 19 February 2020, and with it came a pile of fixes for how elements with CSS display properties have their semantics exposed in the accessibility tree. These huge accessibility bug fixes featured prominently in my CSUN talk this year (starting at slide 36). The…

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Tags: accessibility, Chrome, html

CSUN 2020: CSS Display Properties versus HTML Semantics

While originally I was scheduled to attend CSUN to present two talks one talk, I ended up not attending (my father won A Major Award so I joined him instead). I gave my talk remotely in my scheduled slot (during my father’s award dinner). While I would have loved to…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, css, html, slides, standards

Role-up

transitive verb [ ‘rōl əp ] roled-up, roleing-up, roles-up Definition of role-up To use an ARIA role on an HTML element to change its semantics and/or force it to accept an accessible name (via aria-label, aria-labelledby, or even aria-describedby). To add ARIA roles everywhere without understanding, often via framework or…

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Tags: accessibility, ARIA, ARIAbuse

Block Links, Cards, Clickable Regions, Rows, Etc.

Whether you call them cards, block links, or some other thing, the construct of making an area of content clickable (tappable, Enter-key-able, voice-activatable, etc.) is not new. While hit area size is mostly a usability issue, marketers often want a larger click area around their calls to action (CTAs) to…

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Tags: accessibility, css, design, html, pattern, tables, usability, UX

Link Targets and 3.2.5

TL;DR: Regardless of what accessibility conformance level you target, do not arbitrarily open links in a new window or tab. If you are required to do so anyway, inform users in visible text. Overview Throughout this post I am going to use the terms browser window and tab interchangeably. While…

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Tags: accessibility, html, usability, UX, WCAG