I'm seing a trend away from "Text Size" sliders or old fashioned font dialogs and towards a few set choices "Default", "Large","Larger", etc.
This is a HUGE step backwards. Your 'larger' is never large enough for my crazy busted eyeballs when I'm using my 34" monitor.
If you must do this, please be sure to add "Largest" and even "ZOMG ARE YOU SERIOUS LARGE" options. Some of us REALLY need them, even if it seems insane to you.
So, this morning, after years and years of using the GUI in Linux, I gave up. The state of the GUI does nothing but deteriorate over time for accessibility, and it's exhausting. It's only getting worse. We're far, far away from what it used to be, years ago. Certainly, the QT framework has improved since 5 and now 6 came out, but GTK? Oh dear, oh dear... So, let's dive into it. #linux#xorg#wayland#a11y#accessibility#blind
This may be an unpopular take, but...
I don't think any blind person will ever be completely independent. I do, however, think that every blind person can be self-sufficient. Independence, to me, implies a lack of reliance on anyone/anything. But everyone needs help sometimes. Self-sufficiency, on the other hand, is about having the tools you need, and the ability to get assistance, to go where you need to go/do what you need to do.
Thoughts? #Blind#Disability#Disabled#A11y#Accessibility
Mathematical italic capital h mathematical italic small e mathematical italic small l mathematical italic small l mathematical italic small o.
WTF?
Oh, I just said “Hello” to you in italics.
(That’s similar to what someone who uses a screen reader hears when you use fancy non-alphabetical Unicode characters to simulate italics or boldface on your fediverse posts. So please don’t do that.)
Sometimes I can't help but wonder whether some large fraction of product designers actively hate people with low vision. For example, I just had to take a photo and use zoom and image enhancement to determine that this Keurig pod is decaffeinated.
If I were Empress of Earth, I would allow only vision-impaired people to work as product or UX designers.
Hm. I wonder if I can get any fediverse admins onboard to disable all images on their instance on the World Sight Day in October, so that only alt text shows up.
Writing up some best-practice patterns for form controls, and I've assembled this list of native HTML controls that should never be used (because they're not universally supported, and/or their native UI has accessibility problems):
The more I learn about Glidance, a system that purports to replace the cane, the more it seems to have taken all the criticisms of "smart canes" into account. It might be the first genuine high-tech navigation aid that could be beneficial, replacing the cane in most circumstances. I'm usually highly skeptical about these things because people just havent thought through the implications including ergonomics, weather conditions, etc
So @gnome is removing the x11 session, leaving just the Wayland one.
If this goes out before Orca, the GNOME screen reader, is fixed to work on Wayland, it will mean that people who rely on screen readers will have no way to use one on GNOME. And thus on the major Linux distributions.
So I’m hoping the plan is that this change will not land until GNOME has a working screen reader.
I'm unofficially/officially retiring from freelancing as an #accessibility consultant. The decision has been long in coming. While I will always continue to care about accessibility work, I no longer find it fulfilling. I will continue to be involved in projects that highly interest me as I've been doing for a couple of years now.
I'll focus instead on mentoring, leadership, executive training/coaching and other such work.
A year ago I was telling @christianselig that he was nominated. At that point I had only been working on my app for about two weeks. I never even imagined I would be a nominee a year later.
I've spent so much time on my accessibility support and this means so much to me!
With all the new folks joining here, I thought I should lay out a couple guiding posts for #AltText. I hope it will give everyone something to consider going forward, and I strongly encourage everyone to use this tool. It engages those like me, who have been shut out of entire conversations in the past because we couldn't follow along due to an absence of described images. #A11y#Advocacy
With BeMyAI and Lookout on the rise and existing services like Seeing AI and Envision being out there, it seems like a lot of #blind people are trying to become familiar with phone cameras and their interfaces. There are a lot of questions about camera positioning--e.g., how to point, how to stand, what will be covered, etc.
Gerade über einen Tröt gestolpert, wo die Buchstaben abwechselnd groß und klein geschrieben wurden, in etwa so "hAlLo SvEnJa" ist für mich als ScreenReaderNutzende absolut unverständliches Kauderwelsch. Ich kann nicht mal wirklich beschreiben, wie sich das für mich anhört, teilweise buchstabiert, teilweise einzelne Silben. Einen Zusammenhang herstellen kann ich daraus nicht. #a11Y
Does anyone know of a video or video series that does a detailed breakdown of all the WCAG 2.x success criterion?
There's plenty of brief overviews and introductions but I'm looking for something really detailed. I'm looking for this as my ADHD makes reading a real challenge.
After 25 years in HTML, it’s clear browsers/AT aren’t going to expose it consistently, never mind some set of users will always miss some piece of information.
Don’t use <abbr> (with or without title). Explain the thing on first use.
I have been reading through the State of HTML 2023 results site (https://2023.stateofhtml.com/) and I am so disappointed in the overall #accessibility efforts — both in the questions and in the code.