Accessibility

The Web should be made accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of any disabilities they might have.

On using h1 for all heading levels in HTML5

The outline algorithm in HTML5 lets you use only h1 elements for all heading levels and still get a proper document outline. But browser and AT support is lacking, so use with care.

Posted on June 13, 2011

Responsive Web Design (Book review)

Ethan Marcotte’s book on designing for an ever-increasing variety of browsers, resolutions and screen sizes is a must-read for all web professionals.

Posted on June 9, 2011

The iOS Zoom setting disables maximum-scale=1 and user-scalable=no

Enabling the Zoom setting (in Settings > General > Accessibility) on iOS makes it possible to zoom normally on web pages that use a meta viewport element to prevent zooming.

Posted on June 7, 2011

Do unobtrusive, accessible social media sharing widgets exist?

No social media sharing widgets that I know of are keyboard friendly, and most use obtrusive markup. Anyone know of an accessible, unobtrusive option?

Posted on May 23, 2011

Accessibility checklists can be helpful if used right

Some people argue that checklists should not be used when evaluating accessibility. I think they work fine when used right.

Posted on May 18, 2011

iOS tip: how to zoom on web pages that have disabled user zoom

iOS has a Zoom feature that lets you zoom the entire screen and comes in handy on web sites and apps that use small text and disable user scaling.

Posted on May 11, 2011

Time to make the title attribute device independent

The contents of the title attribute in HTML is difficult or impossible to access in current browser implementations if you do not use a mouse.

Posted on April 26, 2011

Make links focusable (or use real buttons)

When using a link to trigger JavaScript functionality, make it keyboard focusable by giving it a non-empty href attribute. Or use a real button instead.

Posted on April 20, 2011

Keyboard accessibility (again)

Keyboard accessibility really is not that hard to get right, but many, many web developers do not seem to think about it. Here are some simple guidelines that may help.

Posted on April 14, 2011

HTML5 document outline revisited

My current thinking on document outlines in HTML5 and how and when to use the new sectioning elements, all with HTML4 compatibility in mind.

Posted on April 12, 2011

Restaurant websites

Many restaurant websites suffer from bad usability problems. Never said about restaurant websites highlights some of these by using quotes of things people won’t actually say.

Posted on March 29, 2011

Source order and display order should match

Using CSS to change the display order of content without also changing the order in the HTML source can cause accessibility issues and should be avoided.

Posted on March 17, 2011

Make your iPad and iPhone apps accessible

iOS has great potential for accessibility, but application developers need to do their part to make their apps fully accessible. Fortunately it seems pretty straightforward.

Posted on March 14, 2011

Flexible height vertical centering with CSS, beyond IE7

Using display:table to center a page layout vertically works in most browsers. There is an unfortunate issue with some screenreaders to be aware of though.

Posted on March 9, 2011

HTML5 sectioning elements, headings, and document outlines

Getting the document outline you want is not as easy as you might think if you want to use the new sectioning elements in HTML5.

Posted on March 1, 2011

DanKam for iPhone and Android corrects colour blindness

DanKam is an augmented reality app that uses the phone’s camera to filter images in real time, changing their colours to make them easier to see for colourblind people.

Posted on February 17, 2011

Writing useful page titles

A few simple guidelines that will help you create readable, usable, and accessible titles for your web pages.

Posted on February 8, 2011

Why do drive-through ATMs have Braille keypads?

It may not seem obvious why drive-through ATMs would have Braille keypads to enable blind persons to use them. But once you know the answer it’s quite simple.

Posted on January 12, 2011

iOS browsers that allow font scaling and text reflow

Safari for iOS doesn’t offer text resizing. Two third-party browsers that do are iCab Mobile and Atomic Web Browser, both of which also reflow text after a font size change.

Posted on January 5, 2011

Use uppercase text judiciously

Text set in all uppercase letters may slow readers down and may cause some screen readers to spell words out letter by letter. Use good judgement when capitalising text.

Posted on December 13, 2010

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