Introduction:
Welcome to the latest edition of A11y (Accessibility) with Ady. I hope you enjoy it and find something useful. I’m happy to hear any feedback or thoughts or anything you would like to hear more about from the world of accessibility.
Tip of the Month:
Language is important, especially when speaking about groups of people with protected characteristics. This language style guide from the National Center on Disability and Journalism and as the site informs us; “The guide was developed by the National Center on Disability and Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and was last updated in the summer of 2021.” If you are writing or speaking publicly on a disability related subject this is a great resource to help do so in a respectful way.
General:
Converge Accessibility blog has some interesting content but I wanted to highlight this series on public sector accessibility. There are three parts so far and Part 1 explains the problem, Part 2 summarises different approaches and Part 3 describes how local governments can improve accessibility through the procurement process.
As we enter a new year the desire to have digital accessibility specialists on teams is growing. Kate Kalcevich, Head of Services at Fabel, “shares tips on which skills and questions to keep in mind when hiring for digital accessibility roles.” In a 17 minute read she goes in depth on what to look for and how to understand what to look for. The focus is more on a11y developer specialist but testing requirements are discussed.
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/01/how-hire-digital-accessibility-roles/
Compliance:
Although focused on the United States and compliance to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) this article from Usable Net really shows the increase in focus on having usable sites for all people. For every high profile case you see picked up by news outlets there are many hundreds more. Struggling to get buy in at your company? Show them these figures.
https://blog.usablenet.com/2021-lawsuit-report-trends-and-findings
In December last year the The CSS Working Group has published the following three First Public Working Drafts:
CSS Containment Module Level 3: This CSS module describes the ‘contain’ property, which indicates that the element’s subtree is independent of the rest of the page.
CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 5: This module contains the features of CSS for conditional processing of parts of style sheets, based on capabilities of the processor or the environment the style sheet is being applied in.
CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 6: This CSS module describes how to collate style rules and assign values to all properties on all elements.
Great information to help your teams stay up to date with what’s happening with CSS. Links to each draft are on the page.
https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/9383
Technical:
Are you technical? Do you like free things? Then this might be just the ticket. A free ebook on accessibility in Vue. As the site says; “Learn about core concepts of web app accessibility, tips & tricks, best practises strategies and how to implement inclusive components in Vue 2 and 3.”
To <div> or not to <div>. That is the question. And Scott O’Hara explains in some depth what the answer might be. Like lots of things in development and testing, it depends. An excellent deep dive into the subject and one that both testers and developers should enjoy. I certainly did.
https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2022/01/20/divisive.html
Disability:
By far the best way to learn how poor accessibility affects people is to hear from them. This great podcast from accessibility consultant Nicolas Steenhout shares people's lived experiences. In the latest episode Dacey Nolan talks about her barriers on the web due to her epilepsy.
https://a11yrules.com/series/a11y-rules-soundbite/
News that is important to people with disabilities doesn’t often take priority but the Disability News Service looks to address that. With stories on (at the time of writing) disabled peers helping to defeat the governments attack of right to protest. The National Emergency in Social Care. DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) long backlog of Access to Work applications to name just a few. Definitely worth checking out.
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/
Tools:
If you are involved in auditing sites or are interested in learning more about the subject a very good resource is A11y Tools Bookmarklets page. Not everyone likes ‘find everything’ tools or find them overwhelming, so focusing on a specific area can be an option. The list includes tools to list images and any alt attributes. All title elements, links, buttons and even links with no underline. As the page declares, “A random collection of accessibility-focused tools that you might find at least partially useful”. So don’t get too excited.
https://a11y-tools.com/bookmarklets/