Posted on December 28th, 2011 in Web life.
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.
Posted on November 28th, 2011 in Web life.
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?
Posted on September 17th, 2011 in Web life.
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.
Posted on September 7th, 2011 in Web life.
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.
Posted on July 31st, 2011 in Web life.
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.
Posted on June 3rd, 2011 in Web life.
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 here to encourage the debate to continue.
Posted on August 30th, 2010 in Web life.
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.
Posted on February 21st, 2010 in Web life.
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.
Posted on January 7th, 2010 in Web life.
Contacting an organisation to explain why you find their website difficult to use, can seem a bit daunting. Who should you talk to? What should you say? How should you approach it?
Contacting Organisations About Inaccessible Websites is a splendid new resource from the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Posted on October 24th, 2009 in Web life.
Google Wave is the latest innovation in online communication. It’s caused a great deal of interest across the industry, and may well herald a new era in online social interaction. It’s new, it’s cutting edge and it’s exciting. It’s also a catastrophic accessibility failure for screen reader users.
