Reads – Page 9 – Customer Servant Consultancy

Read How new accessibility standard ISO 30071-1 helps developers by Jonathan Hassell

There’s a new international accessibility standard out – ISO 30071-1 – about embedding accessibility in your organisation and processes.
So why should we, as developers, care…?
Aren’t the WCAG checkpoints for developers, and the new ISO for the product/project managers?
Developers don’t have time to be reading every new bit of writing around accessibility. There’s loads of articles out there – some new, some old, some reliable, some misguided. An international standard should be able to be trusted, but does it give developers any solutions for tricky accessibility challenges that they may face?

Read Inclusive Content Strategy: How to Ensure Your Content is Accessible to Everyone by Deborah Edwards-Onoro

At the February 2019 Accessibility Talks online meetup, AmyJune Hineline, Drupal and WordPress Community Ambassador at Kanopi Studios, spoke about inclusive content strategy, what it means, and how to craft content that is accessible to everyone.

Read The Anatomy of Accessible Forms: The Problem with Placeholders by Deque Systems

Instructions help users to submit forms successfully. However, if the instructions are provided with a placeholder attribute, then the user might not be able to use that instruction effectively.

Yet another example of the need for HTML elements and attributes to be used as intended by the specification.

Read Grid, content re-ordering and accessibility by Rachel Andrew

A call for urgency in finding a solution to the content reordering problem which our new layout methods make far more likely.

Read The difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation by léonie Watson

People often include screen reader users in the much larger group of keyboard-only users. Whilst this is correct (most screen reader users don’t use a mouse), it also creates a false impression of the way screen reader users navigate content.

This is a really good primer for anyone building things for the web as well as screen reader users on the differences between screen reader and keyboard navigation. I’ve seen lots of situations where the two are conflated, by both developers and screen reader users.

Also, I really like the footer text on léonie’s site.

Read Source Order Matters by Adrian Roselli

CSS is providing newer and more complex methods of laying out your pages. Given the multiple form factors a responsive site has to support, it makes sense that developers want easy ways to structure the layouts that aren’t all floats, clears and position: absolutes.
Regardless of how you want your layout to appear in a browser, you must keep in mind that a clear HTML structure is [start of stricken text] important to search engines[end stricken text] . Sorry, while the bit about search engines is true, it’s not really what I consider important, but it is more likely to get some people to pay attention.

I still think it’s pretty messed up that, for the purpose of getting the topic of equal access for all on the web some play, we have to refer to the benefits for search engine optimization, (most of which are myths), because that’s the only way most people are going to pay attention. It’s either that, or try scaring people by reminding that eventually, they won’t be fully abled. I get it, I’m not going to stop doing it, but it’s still one of the less-desirable, less-lovable parts of accessibility for me.