It is not uncommon for someone to message, call, email, or carrier pigeon me to ask if something is accessible. They almost invariably want a “yes” or “no.” However, I need to understand what the heck they mean and what the other-heck prompted them to ask. Yes, I would be…
A screen reader is a single element of the overall set of assistive technologies. In practice, however, each is often used as a metonym for the other. Well, hello there. It’s nice to see you. If you’re here because I sent you the link, it’s nothing personal. You’re a lovely…
Web.dev is a site from Google Chrome developer relations that provides content both to evangelize Chrome and to more broadly support the web platform. Rachel Andrew’s monthly “new to the platform” posts are effectively required reading to try to stay abreast of the browser support landscape. However, the accessibility content…
I had some issues using the Disability:IN 2024 Conference Agenda so I made a bookmarklet: 🔗 Fix Disability:IN Agenda You may have seen this originally posted as a CodePen, but I opted to move it here since I can embed videos showing a before-and-after experience. Fixes Removes empty trigger link…
If you want something done right, post it wrong. In the long history of the innertubes, if you ask for help with code you typically won’t get much of a response. But if you post code and assert it is ideal and perfect and an immutable reflection of your pristine…
TL;DR: You probably don’t need to name that landmark. The Ngong Ping Village tourist trap on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. All the pricey tourist spots have visible named landmarks on the map, but the ones people generally care about (bathrooms, food, that lovely tea house) are not. The accompanying tactile…
I ran across a survey from Tilburg University on the experiences and perspectives of image describers. It asked what process I follow to write image alternative text, and it occurred to me that I don’t use a checklist or guideline anymore. That may or may not be a good thing,…
I ran a 3-hour workshop at John Slatin AccessU 2024 in Austin titled “Prototyping Accessibility.” The nice thing about workshops is that they are a dialog between the participants as much as with me. The less nice thing about workshops is standing up for three hours. I do not make…
TL;DR: Avoid setting heading levels greater than six (6). This applies whether using aria-level or the proposed headingstart HTML attribute. Use HTML <h#> elements whenever possible. ARIA The aria-level attribute, when applied to headings (or nodes with the heading role) lets authors set an integer value for a heading level.…
TL;DR: If you plan to style text highlighted by the browser, you must give it sufficient contrast — 3:1 for the highlight block against its background and (probably) 4.5:1 for the text within that highlighted block against that background. CSS Context CSS provides methods to style the highlights that browsers…
TL;DR: Keep your image alternative text brief, devoid of special characters, empty of URLs, and ideally in one language. Here We Go Sometimes you can have too much alternative text, particularly for an <img>. I don’t mean there is a limit to what is allowed, I mean there is a…