Category Archives: Accessibility
Tabindex for keyboard accessibility
Steve Falkner did a good presentation to the WSG last week, outlining how and why AJAX can work with screen readers. One tiny little point I wanted to pick up on was whether it was a waste of time to update AJAX content if you've attached an event to an element that isn't a link or form control.
Closing the gap – User Agent improvements
Following up on the responsibilities in accessibility, some of the most critical gaps at the moment are on the User Agent (UA) end. This post highlights the things I think would make the most difference to people's experience of accessibility on the web. Note on Non-HTML formats
In my previous article on responsibilities in accessibility you might have noticed that I'd fallen into the traditional accessibility trap of only really referring to (X)HTML/CSS sites and guidelines. I'm quite aware of other technologies, but it's worth looking at why other formats are harder to make accessible.
Responsibilities in accessibility
The W3C has defined what to do for accessibility at each 'end' (i.e. client side or web site site), but there is quite a lot of overlap, and scant advice on who should be responsible for what. I'm going to try and show who's responsible now, and where things should go.
Automated PDF accessibility testing
I periodically receive emails from Sitemorse, despite trying to unsubscribe a couple of years ago. This one escaped my usual filters, and I noticed an interesting statistic about the number of accessible PDFs in the wild. SharePoint 2007 accessibility
I attend my first Microsoft (MS) oriented user group meeting yesterday, the SharePoint User Group on search and accessibility. Unfortunately our developers werre either too busy or on holiday, so I got volunteered. .net does accessibility
I was a bit quiet over the Christmas period, because .net magazine had asked me to do an article on accessibility. I'm very pleased with the result, it's great to see it in print, although also quite nerve-wracking: I'm used to making post-publish edits! Think ahead – Buy accessible
If there was one thing I could get across to project managers, company owners, and CTOs, it would be Struan Robertson's advice from a recent article "Legal reasons to make intranets, extranets and software accessible" on Out-Law.
Accessibility vs Universality – implications
Mike Davies has stirred up something of a hornets nest with his thoughts on where accessibility as a discipline should be going, especially with statements like
The current web-developer focused organisations are tainted, constrained by universality, with sour to nonexistent relationships with assistive technology providers and browser vendors.
WCAG 2 response on relative units
I had submitted a comment on WCAG about relative units, and looking through my incoming links with Google's new external links tool, I discovered that they had taken it on, partially.