Mark your calendars: the 2025 edition of Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) will take place on the 25 September 2025! We've just opened our call for presentations (closing date 31 May 2025) - looking forward to your exciting submissions! inclusivedesign24.org/2025/ #a11y #accessibility #inclusion #inclusiveDesign
While I'm talking about games: #stardew Access is so, so close to being actually fun, with a good time freeze and autofishing addon. Unfortunately, I just can't get past the way pathfinding fails sometimes, and the way crops that are watered randomly don't update to show they're watered, and the way NPCs run around like pixies when you want to talk to them, so by the time pathfinding finishes they're already gone, and the way getting into bed is still a matter of trial and error. It makes things that would otherwise be fun into a chore. But, like, the mod itself is done well enough that it makes Stardew feel like a native #audiogame, if it wasn't for the weird bugs and issues. And the game is fully playable, from what I can tell. I just can't get into the relaxing cozy vibe when I'm trying to figure out the exact direction to approach my bed at night, or wondering why the plants aren't getting watered when I'm using my watering can right on the tile, or chasing an NPC across the map who keeps walking away from me when I wanna talk to them. github.com/stardew-access/stardew-access#a11y
Ball Bouncer is perhaps the ultimate culmination of a bunch of weird #blind traits in the #audiogames scene: random pointless destruction, casual games, 2d audio, and incomprehensible ball physics. Oh, and as with most of these types of games, I brutally suck at it, but feel compelled to keep playing anyway for some reason. For the curious, here's a recording that mostly demonstrates...why I don't have a gaming channel. Available for Windows and Linux: files.sooslandia.ru/BallBouncer/1.3.4/#a11y
There was SO much technology at the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference and I'll be going live tonight (March 14th) at 8PM EST to share some of what I thought was the coolest stuff there!
Though I did not attend CSUN, I did my best to follow the news online! Come join me as I share what I saw and heard. Also, let me know what you know! 😊Major...
Massachusetts is looking for a summer Accessibility Intern. Paid. Mostly remote, some office. Preference given for applications received by 26 March - don't dillydally! massanf.taleo.net/careersectio…
The next OZeWAI panel topic is Accessibility for Content Management Systems featuring Amber Hinds (Equalize Digital), @mgifford, CPWA (CivicActions) and Ricky Blacker (WPEngine), moderated by Brigitta Norton.
Get tickets on Humanitix - OZeWAI online event - Ask the Professionals - 21 March 2025 hosted by OZeWAI. Online. Friday 21st March 2025. Find event information.
Hosts Eamon McErlean and Joe Devon interview Ted Drake, Global Accessibility and Inclusive Design Leader of Intuit.--OUTLINE:00:00 Opening Teaser00:36 Introd...
👀 "This document describes how user agents should expose semantics of PDF content to accessibility APIs. This helps users with disabilities to obtain and interact with information using assistive technologies."
@accessibleandroid Hello! I found a solid ebook reader on F-Droid, LXReader. TTS reading is really customizable. Although the app have some unlabelled buttons, they just expand certain options in the UI that are readable. f-droid.org/packages/io.gitlab… #accessibility #a11y
Web Design References: News and info about web design and development. The site advocates accessibility, usability, web standards and many related topics.
TL;DR: anyone promising you that a total solution to digital accessibility is coming, and they are the ones bringing it, may be lying. Background In 2016 I wrote Be Wary of Accessibility Guarantees from Vendors.
What's the state of #matrix, #xmpp and #IRC as far as #screenReader -accessible clients are concerned? Desktop (Windows, Mac) and mobile (iOS, Android).
Hoping for some input, please feel free to boost. As far as I know:
Matrix does not have a lightweight, fully accessible client for desktop, but one could be modified, such as #gomuks. On mobile, Element has scrolling issues, which is unacceptable for large rooms.
XMPP has accessible desktop clients (I used to run #Adium on the Mac), also #WeeChat. No idea about mobile.
IRC is perhaps the one which everything supports on desktop, from #MirandaIM through Weechat to the old Freedom Chat, which I could probably rewrite if I had to. Also not sure about mobile, but it would definitely need push notifications, because we can't expect people to stay constantly online on the go. #a11y #accessibility
If the extent of your WCAG testing is running axe / ARC / WAVE / EAAC and that’s it, not only are you only testing ~30% of WCAG, but my own 2023 testing shows those tools catch under 15% of issues: adrianroselli.com/2023/01/comp…
Manual testing is still a thing.
Which you need to know how to do, especially if bumping into `<canvas>`.
Automated accessibility testing tools cannot test 100% of WCAG. This position is not controversial. Other than overlay vendors, no automated tool maker makes that claim.
this video was going to be made public at some point ... but as this seems to have stalled (and there's really no financial incentive anymore that the conf can gain from keeping this 16 month old video under lock and key) ... here's the recording of my (then) updated talk "These (still) aren't the SCs you're looking for..." from 19 October 2023 / #a11yTO / Toronto youtube.com/watch?v=ADIgU53Y2R… #a11y #wcag #barrierefreiheit #accessibility
WCAG is supposed to give us a reasonably objective way of saying whether or not the sites we are building/auditing are "accessible" (to a particular baseline...
I dunno what it is, but something about Dreamy Train makes it the perfect #cozy#audiogame. I wish it had an #English dub or official English translation from #Japanese, though Google Translate works fine. Yes, it's simple (you can play the entire thing with three buttons), but...I dunno. Something about driving my train through a continent obviously based on Japan with a vaguely Cute Japanese woman giving me instructions in a language I don't speak is really Zen. Transport World Simulator and Tube Sim just stress me out. But Dreamy Train has just enough to keep my attention, without getting my adrenaline up, and enough content not to feel too repetitive or grindy. mm-galabo.com/dreamytrain/#a11y
Demonstrates iOS SwiftUI Accessibility programming techniques using live good and bad examples that can be tested with VoiceOver and other AT. Includes documentation for developers explaining how t...
So, a quick question for others in the blind community: Do you use ReddIt at all? I'm wondering if it's worth my time to create an account over there or not. Feel free to vote on this quick & dirty poll if you wish, and add any additional thoughts if desired. #A11Y #Accessibility #Blind #Poll #ReddIt
📣 Sei #A11y und unterstütze den Zugang zum !@metalab für Menschen mit Sehbehinderung oder Blindheit! Komm zum Do-It-Blind (DIB) Treffen 🛠️ am Montag, 24. Februar, Treffpunkt Ring-Passage, U3-Station Volkstheater um 16:00; Ende 20:00 metalab.at/calendar/event/7914… #make #blind #inklusion
So now that bit.ly is showing ads, if you need a URL shortener, #lynx is decent and #accessible and easy to host. And before you tell me that we don't need URL shorteners anymore and how they're a security risk, I need them for: 1. Business cards, slides, signs, and other physical objects that need a URL. While most phones can scan QR Codes, you can't read them out loud for #blind folks. If you're doing a presentation, "scan the QR code on screen" isn't good enough. You need to have a URL that you can speak and another human can remember. Yes, NFC is a thing, but it doesn't solve that problem. 2. Places that still don't allow URLs (LinkedIn) or where long URLs are awkward to work with (text-only emails, the terminal, etc.) 3. Times (like a phone call) where I need to tell someone a URL using the noises that come from my face-parts
Spent a couple hours playing the visual novel Pizza Game. If you're the kind of person who finds bad My Immortal style #fanfic funny, this will work for you. It's fully #screenreader#accessible in the standard #renpy way, but also has descriptions of the visual jokes; the developer spent time thinking about #A11y, and it didn't just happen thanks to the engine. store.steampowered.com/app/710710/Pizza_Game/#visualnovel
The very fact that a digital accessibility accommodation is a product is a sign that you might not be the customer and, even if you are, only for as long as there’s money to be made.
🤔HTML semantics: <abbr> theory versus abbreviation reality
"The HTML <abbr> element is deceptively familiar and attractive, its been around forever (1999) and thus people assume that it does what it does and does it well. Nothing much changed over the iterations of the abbr element definition over the years."
I disagree with use cases that rely on CSS, generally at risk from network interruptions and caching, to trigger programmatic state changes in the HTML that references it (see pic). Cart / horse and all.
The CSS3 logo as a head atop a torso with its arms folded across its chest. I am a big proponent of the First Rule of ARIA (don’t use ARIA). But ARIA brings a lot to the table that HTML does not, such as complex widgets and state information that…
Meet Josh: a sportsman who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy
"The missing piece is usability testing with disabled users. Even with good intentions, accessibility efforts can fall short without real user involvement."
Meet Josh, a sportsman who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Between training for the Olympics and his busy day job, Josh talks to us about how navigating the web is constantly evolving, how he adapts to various assistive technologies, and his hopes and c…
If you haven't dipped your toes into Next Gen Access, here's a taste of what Season 1 had to offer! We talk about innovations in NVDA, VoiceOver, JAWS, ZoomText, Fusion, and More! We have an assortment of amazing Panelist including Steven Scott, Shaun Preece, Shelly Brisbin, Robin Christopherson , Carrie Morales , Sam Seavey , and many more talented people! Listen to this highlights of our first season. pinecast.com/listen/c89a824d-5… #a11y
Interesting breakdown of how Google has gone off the accessibility rails, among other rails, while also framing some common corp methods for reframing needs into revenue streams. buttondown.com/TYFYFL/archive/…
Thank You For Your Feedback Loop is a monthly newsletter that will share previously unpublished reporting and analysis on the elite capture of disability movements.
The first post, "The Rise and Fall of Access" is available now.
by: Liz Jackson & Rua M. Williams In the Year 2000, Google’s 23rd employee, Paul Buchheit was pulled into a “meeting to decide on the company’s corporate...
Hosts Eamon McErlean and Joe Devon interview Ed Summers, Head of Accessibility at GitHub. They discuss how Ed began working in accessibility, some of the lat...
Experimented yesterday with Fedora’s KDE spin… I was shocked by the level of accessibility, although it wasn’t perfect. My primary issues with it were that I had to use a lot of Orca’s navigation commands to read panels in the systems settings app, and I had major issues with Konsole, the default terminal app. I wasn’t able to read any of the information in that particular apps interface using Orca. I also tried the Fedora workstation edition, which uses Gnome as it’s a desktop environment. Let’s just say that was not worth my time. Had accessibility issues there as well, and surprisingly it was worse than the experience I had with KDE. I know KDE defaults to Wayland, as does Gnome, but KDE’s accessibility implementation seems to be a lot better than what Gnome has under Wayland, with the exceptions I’ve previously mentioned. Incidentally, the X 11 experience with Gnome is actually worse now than it was previously. For example, the terminal app does not even open for me. I should also note that all this is under Fedora 41, so people aren’t confused. #A11Y #Accessibility #Blind #Experiments #Linux #Fedora41 #KDePlasma #Gnome #Wayland #X11
You may have seen this as a thread on Mastodon (my primary social short-form platform) or on BlueSky. Imagine these as the opening to a series of conversations between a vendor or client or boss or PO or whomever and me.
Promised I'll be dropping in with examples of good #A11y in different countries and then I broke the promise. Coincidentally, I was asked to fill in a survey where one of the questions was about this very subject so I'll share one of the examples I gave there. In Austria, the qualified electronic signature is one of the state e-government services. A tool was built to allow screen reader users to insert their e-signature into any PDF document. The signature can be both visible and / or just a digital finger print, possible to verify through a qualifying verification tool. The visible signature can be inserted in one of three ways: 1. You place it right at the end of the document. If there's place enough, it should land in the line below the last one where there is content, otherwise, a new page is created. 2. The provider of the document can first place a QR code at a place in the document they choose, then the signee can replace this QR code with their own signature. 3. The provider of the document can determine coordinates in pixels where the signature should be placed and the signee enters them on their side to place the signature. pdf.egiz.gv.at/ #Accessibility #Austria #Blind
This session will share stories and strategies from 3 decades of accessibility convincing with public and private organizations. Have you ever tried to convince someone of the value and importance of …
