Accessibility

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

Beware of -webkit-text-size-adjust:none

Think very carefully before using -webkit-text-size-adjust:none since it will prevent people using WebKit-based browsers from resizing text. Needless to say, that is not user-friendly.

Posted on November 25, 2010

Accessibility myths in 2010

Highlighting some persistent myths about web accessibility.

Posted on November 9, 2010

Removing title attributes from WordPress links

WordPress likes to put title attributes on just about every link it outputs, which can be annoying and cause accessibility issues. Here is one way of removing them.

Posted on November 2, 2010

Style visited and unvisited links differently (most of the time)

Browsers give visited and unvisited links different colours by default for a reason. Make sure you have a really good reason to make them look identical.

Posted on October 20, 2010

IE 9 does not resize text sized in pixels

Internet Explorer 9 (in beta at the time of this writing), still does not let the user resize text whose size has been specified in pixels.

Posted on October 18, 2010

Is hiding text with CSS to improve accessibility bad for SEO?

Does using CSS to hide text - any text, for whatever reason - result in an automatic search engine penalty?

Posted on October 11, 2010

Accessibility improvements in Apple iOS 4 for iPhone/iPod Touch

iOS 4 for Apple’s mobile products have improved accessibility features, including support for navigating by WAI-ARIA landmark roles.

Posted on September 16, 2010

You can’t reliably detect screen readers

Since screen readers run alongside regular web browsers and have no user agent string of their own, there is no reliable way of detecting them.

Posted on September 6, 2010

No longdesc attribute in HTML5

The longdesc attribute, which can be used to provide a longer description of an image, is currently not included in the HTML5 specification.

Posted on August 20, 2010

New windows with JavaScript and the target attribute

A better, less obtrusive way of using JavaScript to open new windows than using window.open() is to programmatically set the target attribute.

Posted on June 8, 2010

Accessibility does not prevent you from using JavaScript or Flash

Many people mistakenly believe that in order to make a website accessible you have to completely abstain from using technologies like JavaScript or Flash.

Posted on May 31, 2010

If you use the accesskey attribute, specify unique values

If you use the accesskey attribute and specify the same value more than once, browser behaviour is unspecified and varies a lot. Make sure values are unique if you use accesskey.

Posted on May 26, 2010

The Web is a web of content, not an application framework

The Web excels at enabling people to find and share information, but it is not a particularly good platform for creating and delivering “desktop-class applications”.

Posted on May 10, 2010

Built-in or bolt-on accessibility in HTML5? How about a bit of both?

Having built-in semantics and accessibility in HTML5 is great, but I think we also need specifications like WAI-ARIA that let us add accessibility to less than ideal markup.

Posted on April 26, 2010

Designing with Progressive Enhancement (Book review)

An absolute must read for any web designer or developer, even if you think you know everything about progressive enhancement already.

Posted on April 15, 2010

Using the lang attribute makes a difference

Specifying the natural language of complete and partial HTML documents really does make a difference to users of screen readers that support language switching.

Posted on April 5, 2010

Whenever you use :hover, also use :focus

Neglecting to style :focus when you style the :hover pseudo-class can lead to minor inconvenience at best and complete inaccessibility at worst for non-mouse users.

Posted on April 1, 2010

A selection of VoiceOver keyboard commands

A selection of keyboard shortcuts used to control the VoiceOver screen reader in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Posted on March 29, 2010

Heading navigation in web browsers

Very few web browsers allow users to step through the headings on a page. This functionality would benefit keyboard users, so I would like to see more browsers implement it.

Posted on March 22, 2010

Visual display of alternative text

When an image is missing or images are disabled, web browsers should completely replace the image with its alt text.

Posted on March 4, 2010

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