Advocating full participation through equal accessibility.
Anyone who has delivered a live technology demonstration knows the feeling: you are driving the screen reader, narrating every keystroke for your audience, fielding questions, and somewhere in the back of your mind trying to remember which example comes next. Recently, I delivered a screen-reader accessibility demo on the job, and this time I had ... Read more
Khan Academy recently published a recap of its Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) celebration, written by Elizabeth Barker, Senior Technical Program Manager for Accessibility. You can read the full article here: The Duality of May: Why Global Accessibility Awareness Day Hits Differently. As many of you know, I joined Khan Academy as an Assistive Technology ... Read more
Happy Top Tip Thursdayh, everyone! Today s tip has a fascinating story behind it — and it comes with a built-in promise: by the time you finish reading this, you ll have a faster, easier way to do several things on your iPhone or iPad that you probably do every single day. We re talking about the one-finger ... Read more
Ever want to peek under the hood of a web page without having to open browser developer tools? If you re a JAWS or NVDA user, you re in luck — this is something you can do right from your screen reader. JAWS has this capability built in, and NVDA users can get the same functionality through ... Read more
For years, push-to-talk over cellular (POC) radios have offered something remarkable: the reach of a nationwide radio network, without the limitations of traditional two-way radio. Whether you are coordinating a volunteer emergency response, connecting with fellow hobbyists across the country, or simply staying in touch with a group of friends spread across the world, POC ... Read more
FastSM is a popular accessible client for Bluesky and Mastodon, and for the most part it works beautifully with screen readers like JAWS and NVDA. However, some users have encountered a frustrating issue: shortly after FastSM starts, performing any action — such as trying to create a new post — causes the entire user interface ... Read more
As a Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA), I spend my days ensuring the web works for everyone. But as a student currently enrolled in a design course, I recently hit a wall that even my expertise combined with advanced artificial intelligence couldn’t easily scale. The assignment was straightforward for most: Review a series of ... Read more
When Google launched Auto Browse for Gemini in Chrome in January 2026, a few of us in the blind and low-vision community felt a familiar surge of hope. Could this be the moment when the inaccessible web finally met its match? Could an AI that reasons about web pages—rather than merely reading their code—become the ... Read more
There s a particular kind of patience that only musicians develop — the ability to sit with a student through a hundred failed attempts at a chord, knowing that the hundred-and-first try will produce something beautiful. Tony Gebhard has been cultivating that patience since he was seven years old, when he first picked up a guitar ... Read more
Published in support of the National Federation of the Blind s March 2026 call to action. There is a lawsuit moving quietly through the American legal system right now that could undo five decades of civil rights progress for tens of millions of disabled Americans. It is called Texas v. Kennedy, and if you haven t heard ... Read more
Great news for screen reader users who rely on Slack s Simplified Layout Mode: the accessibility regression we reported last month has been resolved. In our February 14 article, we documented a critical, task-blocking bug introduced in Slack version 4.47.69 in which the Activity tab became completely inaccessible to JAWS users when Simplified Layout Mode was ... Read more
Imagine you are blind. Your child has a disability. The school district has just posted crucial updates to its website about your son s Individualized Education Program — his IEP, the legally mandated document that governs every support, accommodation, and service your child is supposed to receive in school. You open the site. Your screen reader ... Read more
AI as an Accessibility Bridge: Testing Gemini s Auto Browse For blind and low-vision users, the modern web is a minefield of good intentions gone wrong. Developers build visually polished interfaces — date pickers, multi-step dialogs, dynamic dropdowns — but the underlying code often fails to communicate with assistive technology. Screen readers like JAWS and NVDA ... Read more
What started as a seven-day experiment ended with a new primary screen reader. I ll be honest: I didn t expect this to go the way it did. On February 14th, 2026, I set myself a challenge use NVDA exclusively on my personal computer for one full week, switching back to JAWS only if my work ... Read more
In this video, Darrell Hilliker (CPWA) demonstrates a critical accessibility regression in Slack version 4.47.69. While the new Activity view aims to consolidate messages and mentions for improved efficiency, it appears to be completely incompatible with Slack s Simplified Layout Mode when using a screen reader. Darrell walks through several standard navigation techniques—including keyboard…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Blind Access Journal Launches Community Effort to Improve WSJT-X Accessibility for Aging and Disabled Amateur Radio Operators Peoria, Arizona — December 20, 2025 — Darrell Hilliker, NU7I, a totally blind Amateur Radio operator and accessibility professional, is spearheading a community initiative to improve the accessibility of WSJT-X (and WSJT-X Improved) for blind, ... Read…
Summary Some people experience severe headaches or migraines that make screen use difficult—especially when light sensitivity (photophobia) and flicker or refresh effects are major triggers. While display adjustments can help, there are days when the most effective strategy is to reduce visual reliance as much as possible. If you use an iPhone and Mac, Apple ... Read more
Introduction Artificial intelligence has the potential to dramatically level the playing field for blind and visually impaired people. Every day, blind professionals use tools like ChatGPT to create and export documents needed for jobs, education, and community participation: resumes, legal forms, code, classroom materials, and more. But a recent shift in how ChatGPT delivers generated ... Read…
At the intersection of the Salesforce ecosystem and the accessibility community, it has been long known that Experience Builder contains task-blocking accessibility issues that hold many disabled people back from being able to perform important job duties including site administration and content management. While the company continues efforts to improve the accessibility of Experience Builder,…
Starting all the way back in April of 2024, Google announced a new tabs feature for Google Docs, providing another way of organizing information in documents similar to that already found in spreadsheets. Soon after that, as the new feature rolled out over the next six months, a support article entitled Use document tabs in ... Read more
Unlocking the Power of AI Presented by the National Federation of the Blind of Arizona The future is here, and it s smarter than ever. The National Federation of the Blind of Arizona is excited to host our first-ever AI webinar: a deep dive into the world of Artificial Intelligence and how it s transforming accessibility for ... Read more
It was one of those Mondays No, wait. It was actually Tuesday morning. I opened my work GMail and pressed the button to switch to Basic HTML view only to encounter a temporary error that stopped me in my tracks! I had dabbled in GMail s Standard view from time to time, but I always returned ... Read more
From enterprise collaboration software to web browsers, the little-known F6 keyboard shortcut can do many things that make our lives as blind computer users much easier and more productive. In Slack F6 moves between the major portions of the window, such as channel navigation and workspace selection. It is, in fact, virtually impossible to access ... Read more
In this approximately 13-minute podcast, take a short break from all the pandemic news and listen to us decorate our Christmas tree. We hope all of you are enjoying happy holidays this year! [able_player src= https://pinecast.com/listen/c1a89a52-5d48-4cb8-897d-b5177a3185d2.mp3 text= Rockin Around the Christmas Tree ] Please tell us how you and your family are handling social distancing, feeding…
In this approximately 48-minute podcast, Allison Hilliker tries to avail herself of Maricopa County s almost-but-not-quite-accessible Braille ballot. [able_player src= https://pinecast.com/listen/0f103ab7-41a0-4d08-a9c7-276138bf74e9.mp3 text= Voting the Almost Accessible Braille Ballot ] We hope everyone had the opportunity to vote in this critical election and that accessibility barriers did not…