Archive for the ‘Web life’ Category

Windows 8 has several accessibility improvements. One of the most noticeable is Narrator, Windows’ built in speech capability. Narrator has grown up in Windows 8, and now comes with a lot more to offer.

HTML5 introduces the nav element for marking up sections of a page that contain navigational links. Used wisely the nav element is a big help to screen reader users, as well as a step forward in semantic meaning.

HTML5 headings make it easy to syndicate and reuse content, without breaking the heading hierarchy. Using HTML5 headings and keeping the heading hierarchy backwards compatible proves unexpectedly complicated though. The HTML5 specification has a solution, but is it the right one?

Inclusive design is an aspirational concept. It isn’t particularly inspirational though. Inclusive design is a phrase for client meetings and government papers. No harm in that, but it isn’t a phrase that rocks the world and inspires us to challenge the accepted status quo.

Several screen readers now support ARIA landmark roles. Some screen readers such as NVDA and Jaws are also improving support for HTML5 elements. This means that it’s important to put your ARIA roles in the right place.

When you’re browsing a website using its primary navigation, it’s helpful to know which page you’re on, and which pages you can go to. HTML5 makes it simple to do this, but the technique moves away from a common approach used in HTML4.01.

This video demonstrates how ARIA landmark roles help screen reader users understand the purpose of different areas of a web page. ARIA landmark roles can be used to navigate through a page and easily identify the purpose of key areas such as navigation, search or main content.

This article was first posted in 2007 on the eAccess blog. Three years later and I still believe that emotion rich images are important to blind people, particularly those who once had sight (and that’s most of us). Results from the third WebAIM screen reader survey suggest I’m not alone, so I’m reposting the article [...]

Screen reader support for tables is something of a curiosity. Although tables are among the most common of HTML elements, they’re often misused and poorly coded. To some extent this has influenced screen reader support, but even so the variations in screen reader behaviour are quite remarkable.

Some while ago I was asked how screen readers handle disabled and read only form fields. Despite forms being commonplace on most websites, there’s remarkably little information available on the subject. It turns out that there’s also very little consistency in the way different screen readers behave either.