February 28, 2025
The title of this post might seem a little odd, but it's inspired by a recent accessibility audit where I saw the HTML <nav> region being used in some unusual ways.
The MDN HTML spec defines the <nav> element this way:
The <nav> HTML element represents a section of a page whose purpose is to provide navigation links, either within the current document or to other documents.…
Continue reading Accessibility: What is a nav region?
August 29, 2024
One of my clients is a site which has extensive audio recordings. Their current site uses the default HTML5 audio player, but they want something that is more customizable to fit with their design and needs.
One of their requests was to be able to set audio playback speed. One of my priorities was that the audio player be fully accessible.
To display the audio player, they are using the Drupal…
Continue reading How I customized jPlayer for accessibility and added playback rate control, Drupal 9
April 5, 2023
A very common website pattern is a list of teasers for blog posts or articles, each with a heading, short text extract, maybe an image, and a link whose text label is something like "Read more" or "Learn more".
Those "read more" links are very bad news for accessibility, mainly for blind users.
Why? Blind users often hear links out of context. This may happen by tabbing through focusable elements…
Continue reading "Learn more" or "read more" links: bad news for accessibility
March 30, 2023
During lived user accessibility testing, one pattern I've repeatedly found to be a problem for blind users is multiple inputs for one piece of data.
For example:
A Canadian postal code with separate inputs for each character
A driver's license number with three inputs, one for each set of five characters
A credit card date with separate inputs for month and year
Why is this done? Typically, it'…
Continue reading Multiple form inputs for one piece of data: bad news for accessibility
March 21, 2023
Recently I've been doing a lot of lived user accessibility testing, which involves observing people with disabilities using assistive technology to perform specific tasks on websites or apps. The goal is to identify the issues they encounter so the site owner can remedy them.
One issue I've frequently observed, which was totally unexpected for me, is uncertainty and confusion on the part of blind…
Continue reading Accessible wording for form submit buttons
February 15, 2023
It's a nearly universal pattern in websites: the organization logo in the top left corner of the page, usually a link to the site homepage. But what text label should that link have?
How the label is provided isn't what we're dealing with here (usually it's by alt text on the logo graphic), but its wording.
Normally, I counsel developers and content editors to only include the visible text in an…
Continue reading Should a site's linked logo include the word "Home" in the label?
April 26, 2022
Yesterday I had an interview for a front-end developer contract. The job would have involved overseeing a small front-end team rebuilding a suite of marketing sites on a strict deadline, specifically focused on improving performance.
I asked about the client's commitment to accessibility, and whether that was part of their redevelopment plan, only to be told no, it wasn't. Meeting their deadline…
Continue reading Why I turned down a job for a client not interested in accessibility
September 16, 2021
The title of this post might seem a little surprising. Isn't alternative text supposed to describe the image?
That's the concept that's drilled into us, and it's what most people think of when writing alt text. However, in some situations, it's actually wrong. One of those situations is when the image is serving as the visible content of a control, such as a link or button which does not also…
Continue reading Linked image alt text should not describe the image
September 10, 2021
Weird little accessibility note: using the CSS property display: table causes NVDA to announce the element as a table. (I'm not sure about other screen readers).
Putting role="presentation" on the element with this property stops it announcing as a table.
This is yet another reason you're better off using Flexbox or Grid for layout (as if we needed any more reasons). They're a lot more…
Continue reading CSS table display property causes NVDA to announce a table
August 26, 2021
WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.4 Resize text states:
Except for captions and images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality.
The reason for this is pretty obvious: people with low vision may need to resize text so they can read it. There are two ways to do that in the browser (not counting tools like screen magnifiers,…
Continue reading Detecting browser font size to fix accessibility and layout issues with large fonts