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There are many experiences in a person's life that in some way more or less strongly influence their course of life. However, there are some such events whose impact is so lasting that they can rightly be described as a key experience. The beginnings I had such an experience in the autumn of 1995. I visited a small exhibition of assistive technology products for the blind, which took place at the…
On December 19, 2019, Mozilla announced that it will switch to Matrix and Riot as the main synchronous communication platform, replacing IRC. In July 2020, Riot was renamed to Element , along with some other rebranding that happened around the software and services. This post is aimed to give you an introduction to using Element , the most popular Matrix client, with a screen reader. Matrix itself…
As I wrote in my last post , this blog has moved from WordPress to Ghost recently. Ghost is a modern publishing platform that focuses on the essentials. Unlike WordPress, it doesn't try to be the one-stop solution for every possible use case. Instead, it is a CMS geared towards bloggers, writers, and publishers of free and premium content. In other words, people like me. :-) After a lot of…
Yes, you read that right! This blog has just relaunched. It runs on a new platform. And it is a lot faster, and has a very slick look and feel to it. Read on to find out some more details. Why the switch? Well, after 13 years, I felt it was time for something new. Also, as I wrote recently, Mozilla now has a dedicated accessibility blog , so I feel that I am free to do other things with my blog…
Recently, Mozilla introduced an official blog about all things accessibility . This blog is transitioning to a pure personal journal. For years, this blog was a mixed bag between information about my official work at Mozilla and my personal views on accessibility. Now that Mozilla has its own accessibility blog, my personal blog at this space will contain less work-related material and more…
Gutenberg 7.2 has just been released as a plugin. The development cycle was longer than usual. As a result, this version contains a lot of changes . Several of them improve Gutenberg’s accessibility. The tab order in the editor When editing a block, the tab order has been adjusted. Rather than tabbing to the next block, for example from one paragraph to the next, pressing tab will now put focus…
To everyone who celebrates it, a very merry Christmas! That’s it, folks! This concludes 30 days of continuous blogging. Over the last month, I shared a few tutorials, a few web development tips, thoughts on Gutenberg in various shape or form, told you how I made a graph accessible, was a bit sentimental, had a bit of reviews, some hints on products on sale that are accessible, and more. Feel free…
Wishing all of my readers who celebrate it, a very happy Chanukka! This year, Chanukka started at sundown on December 22 and runs through December 30. It coincides with Christmas. And as it so happens, the muslim mayor of London kicked off the Chanukka celebrations from a Christmas tree last night. In a world where there are so many separating thoughts and actions becoming more prominent again,…
My recent frequent blogging about Gutenberg has led to some really productive changes. One change is that my profile on WordPress.org now shows that I am also contributing to the accessibility effort . The accessibility team mostly consists of volunteers. And now, I am one of them as well. I also started contributing more than issues to Gutenberg . I can also review and label issues and pull…
Today, I am just quickly going to recommend you an old, but all-time reader favorite post of mine I published 4 years ago. And it is as current today as it was then, and most of it already was in the year 2000. Yes, I’m talking about the basics of web accessibility .
Threema is an alternative to WhatsApp & friends, with a focus on privacy. It’s made in Switzerland, and it is on sale until December 31 for half the price. Threema is a messenger alternative for smartphones and tablets, with a web version also available that connects through your installed app. All offerings are accessible to screen reader users. It is not a free app, and it is only partially…
The new WordPress block editor is also available in the WordPress app for iOS and Android. It uses the same basis as the editor on a self-hosted or hosted WordPress site, but is a bit simplified. And it is accessible. Here are a few quick tips to get around it. Enable it first You may first have to enable it. You’ll find the setting under each blog/site you have in the WordPress app. It is called…
Last week, I got my set of AirPods Pro. And after using them for a few days in various situations, can say: Best active noise cancelling headphones I’ve ever used! Apple released AirPods Pro earlier this autumn, and I was very curious to get my hands on them. I have always been a fan of the AirPods, even though the first generation still had quite some lag with VoiceOver. But I was totally sold on…
Over the weekend, this post by Dave Rupert made the rounds, and I totally agree with what he is saying. In his post, Dave showcases a problem with the gap between intent and developer assumption about what a certain element or set of elements, are intended or should be used for, and what not to be used for. In this case, the details and summary elements being used as accordions, or not. If you are…
Today, we passed the two thirds mark of this crazy project . It is Sunday, December 15, the third advent. Time to reflect a bit on the number 15, which takes a bit of a special place in my life. I was born on April 15, 1973. The checksum of 15 is 6, which is the product of the very first two prime numbers, 2 and 3. 15 itself is the product of the first odd prime numbers, 3 and 5. The checksum of…
Firefox 72, currently in beta, received some fixes to the Accessibility Inspector this week. Here they are. The first fix is to a longer standing issue. If you opened Accessibility Inspector by right-clicking an element and choosing Inspect Accessibility Properties, keyboard focus would not land on the Inspector or Properties tree view, but in limbo somewhere on the document. You had to tab a…
Late in November, I published a personal opinion on the state of Gutenberg accessibility . Today, I’d like to give an introduction to Gutenberg from a screen reader user perspective. Gutenberg, the WordPress block editor, is the new way to create content and build sites in WordPress. It is a rich web application that uses many modern techniques such as dynamic updates, toolbars, side bars and…
TL;DR: As a rule of thumb, if you label something via aria-label or aria-labelledby, make sure it has a proper widget or landmark role. The longer version is that several elements created extraneous amount of announcements in screen readers in the past that were not really useful. Especially in the ARIA 1.0 days where a lot of things weren’t as clear and people were still gathering experience,…
Yes, my Mom has her birthday today. She’s 70 now. And I’ll go see her and the whole extended family on Sunday to celebrate. But don’t you worry, the Sunday blog post is already planned. 🙂 And that’s all for today, folks. 🙂
My personal favorite e-mail provider mailbox.org is giving away Christmas vouchers until January 10, 2020, for each new customer registration. Details if you read on. Mailbox.org is an e-mail and calendaring/office suite provider based in Germany. They are very privacy focused, run on renewable energy exclusively, and are committed to using Open Source wherever possible. They are promoters of open…
NVDA 2019.3 beta 1 has been released today . It is a huge milestone in the history of this free and open-source screen reader. With this release, there are a ton of under the hood changes that have all kinds of far reaching consequences. The most significant are the move to Python 3 from the Python 2 programming language, which is being discontinued and all support is ending. The second is a major…
Since the update from October 2018, (Version 1809), Windows 10 has had an extended clipboard feature. Here’s how you turn it on and use it. Turn it on With this feature, the last 25 text bits you copied or cut to the clipboard will be available to paste. You can either just use the clipboard history for one computer, or synchronize across multiple devices logged into the same Microsoft account.…
Some of you may have noticed that since May, my blog is displaying ads here and there. It was kind of an experiment, and here are my conclusions after six months. When I got sick in March, I came down so hard that it wasn’t clear for a long time whether I would recover enough to be able to remain fully employed. More on that at another time maybe. However, this led to my looking at my then current…
Today, just a quick reading tip for you. Michael Scharnagl posted a great article on Wednesday about when to use Hamburger menus, when not to use them, and what to consider for each decision. And that includes accessibility. Thank you, Michael!
Since the release of iOS 13, Apple and app developers have put more emphasis on context menus in apps such as Files, Mail, or on home screen icons. in iOS 13, Apple made it a lot easier for VoiceOver users to get to these. Before iOS 13.2, what VoiceOver users had to do to simulate a long-press of an item was to double-tap and hold, wait for a tone that signaled that the gesture was being passed…
A friend of mine published his very first blog post on Monday. Congratulations, Schepp, and welcome to the world of blogging! His post is not related to web accessibility, but I found it a fascinating read, so am sharing it with you. He describes how he wrangled ads into the responsive (and accessible) relaunch of the media company’s web site he is working on. But be warned, it’s not for the faint…
Today marks my 12th anniversary working for Mozilla. I started on December 3, 2007, as a contractor, and moved to a full employment 13 months later, in January 2009. So in January this year, I was employed there 10 years. I wrote about my work anniversary once before . Some things have changed since then, some have not. I am still working on Firefox accessibility, doing, unfortunately, less…
Yes, a bold statement, I know, but this piece by Dr. Elizabeth Fernandez made my conviction even stronger. For some years now, there have been advancements in computer-generated image recognition. That recognition nowadays goes far beyond optical character recognition. Face recognition, objects, some scenes are things that software such as the Facebook algorithms, Microsoft’s Seeing AI and…
This year, I am noticing an increased number of sentimental waves, as well as an unusually strong afinity towards the Christmas holiday season. As it is now the first Advent Sunday , I feel it is time to share a little personal bit about how this year has been going so far. It has been a rather eventful year in terms of family matters, health conditions, and some other events that were emotionally…
Have you heard of Blue Beanie Day before? Well, I have, but only because I have been involved with web standards and accessibility for so long. The Cute Calendar has all information . And you know what? I even know a few people who celebrate it. This year, I’ve heard of Deborah and Jeffrey celebrating it. Do you celebrate it, too? Let us all know in the comments! 😉
Since its debut in Firefox 61, the Accessibility Inspector in the Firefox Developer Tools has evolved from a low-level tool showing the accessibility structure of a page. In Firefox 70, the Inspector has become an auditing facility to help identify and fix many common mistakes and practices that reduce site accessibility. In this post, I will offer an overview of what is available in this latest…
Firefox toolbars got a significant improvement to keyboard navigability in version 67. It was once again enhanced in Firefox 70. Here’s how. For a long time, Firefox toolbars were not keyboard accessible. You could put focus in the address bar, and tab to the search box when it was still enabled by default. But the next press of the tab key would take you to the document. Shift-tabbing from the…
I have, for the most part, remained silent about the whole WordPress Gutenberg accessibility topic. Others who are closer to the project have been very vocal about it, and continue to do so. However, after a period of sickness, and now returning to more regular blogging, I feel the time has come to break that silence. What is Gutenberg? Gutenberg, or the new WordPress block editor , is the next…
In recent months, you may have come across the name Mastodon here and there. Especially two weeks ago, when Twitter again made headlines with some, possibly politically motivated, account suspensions that resulted in an influx of users from India to the federated network. Time to look at it a bit, also with regards to accessibility. Mastodon itself is merely the name of an application that, like…
Firefox 70, released in October, contains a new feature called the Protection Report. It contains a graph of all the things Firefox protected you from in the last seven days. Here’s how I made that screen reader accessible. Originally, the data shown in the protection report was only presented visually. Well, for sighted people, that is still the case. However, if you’re a screen reader user, you…
This year, I have a special treat for my readers. On Monday, November 25, at 12 PM UTC, I will start a 30 day series about everything and anything. Could be an accessibility tip, an how-to about using a feature in an app I use frequently, some personal opinion on something, a link to something great I came across on the web… I am totally not certain yet. I have ideas about some things I want to…
In November of 2018, I started a third attempt at switching to Android as my primary mobile operating system. This time, the experiment lasted 9 months. But I switched back to iOS nevertheless. In 2013 and 2014, I conducted two experiments whether I could switch to Android as my primary operating system. The conclusion after my last experiment was, again, that Android was not fit for my use cases…
Over the past year and a half, I have ventured time and again into the federated Mastodon social network . In those ventures, I have contributed bug reports to both the Mastodon client as well as some alternative clients on the web, iOS, and Android. One of those clients, a single-page, progressive web app, is Pinafore by Nolan Lawson. He had set out to create a fast, light-weight, and accessible,…
The WAI-ARIA standard defines a number of related menu roles. However, before using them, please give great consideration to the implications. Preface This article was previously published under a different title and with a different tone. The comments below, left here for documentary and historic reasons, speak to that fact. At the time, it felt right to write it the way I did. However with some…
Sara Soueidan just published an article on her path to designing a theme switch . Among the many great points she is making in this post, I would like to highlight one particular quote: It was important for me to make sure this demo is accessible even if it’s just a quick proof of concept for a talk. First of all, because the code for the demo will be public, so I have a bigger responsibility for…
In WAI-ARIA 1.1 , the aria-roledescription attribute has been added to give web authors the ability to further describe the function of a widget. Here are a few tips for usage. The definition of role When screen readers describe any control or item on a website, they use multiple pieces of information to describe it to the user: The name or label. What does the element do? “Add a file”, for…
In recent months, I have discovered a tendency within myself that longs for more focused, hassle-free environments or niches, where distractions are reduced to a minimum, and I can immerse myself in one thing, and one thing only. And that has lead to rediscovering the merits of some blindness-specific products. A bit of history Products that specifically fulfill the needs of blind users have been…
The built-in Firefox Developer Tools just received a new family member. The Accessibility Inspector allows you to inspect your website’s exposure to assistive technologies. Introduction As a web developer, have you wondered what your web site might look like to a screen reader for the blind? Have you wondered why you get reports that some people with disabilities cannot use your web application?…
For the past 18 years, screen readers on Windows have had a particular way of presenting web content to their users. This model no longer scopes well in light of modern web applications and dynamically changing web sites. The model, therefore, needs to be reimagined and modernized.<!— more —> A little bit of history In 1999, the two major screen reader vendors on the market, JAWS and Window-Eyes,…
When I started making my social media rounds this morning, I came across Jeffrey Zeldman’s call to action for this year’s Blue Beany Day on November 30th. But I respectfully disagree with a number of points he is making in his post about JavaScript frameworks and their accessibility implications. Frameworks aren’t inaccessible because they’re frameworks First, I agree that the spreading of new JS…
As you may or may not have heard, Firefox 49 supports the HTML5 < details > and < summary > elements. Both full keyboard support and support for assistive technologies is also available right from the start. What are they? <details> and <summary> allow to dynamically show and hide blocks of content. For example, when composing a list of frequently asked questions, each question could be wrapped in…
A few months ago, I wrote about the efforts to make the built-in Firefox developer tools more accessible. That work started in January and is now carrying first far-reaching fruits. Here’s an update! Until now, the Firefox developer tools are, except for the web console, largely unusable for people with visual impairments, who rely on assistive technologies etc. In January of 2016, part of the…
On March 29, 2016, Twitter announced that description of images is now available when tweeting photos. This helps first and foremost the blind and visually impaired who cannot see images, but may also help people with certain cognitive disabilities who cannot interpret photos, but can make use of descriptions. Here’s how describing your tweeted images works! Tweeting images with descriptions Right…
Have you also noticed an increased buzz around Microsoft’s accessibility efforts lately? You probably have if you, like me, are on Twitter and other social media channels and are following the MSFTEnable Twitter account. But in case you haven’t, here are some exciting pointers for you to keep an eye on. When Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella took on his current role in 2014, one of the things he…
In the first quarter of 2016, Yura, who is part of the accessibility team at Mozilla, and I are starting on a journey to make the firefox developer tools accessible. The majority of the tools are currently a very mouse-driven environment, and our goal is to make them equally accessible for keyboard users and those using assistive technologies such as screen readers. This blog post marks the…