Harvard accessibility settlement reached

Settlement reached in suit over video captioning at Harvard by Collin Binkley, Associated Press, 11/27/2019 “Our websites provide a wealth of opportunities for our community members to communicate and to share ideas, and we want these websites to be available to everyone who wishes to access them,” the university said.

A Taxonomy of Inclusive Design

A Taxonomy of Inclusive Design: On Disclosure, Accessibility, and Inclusion by Lorna Golzalez and Kristi O’Neil, Educause, 11/15/19 “Inclusive pedagogy can be an act of intention—something that is initiated before and during the course design process—rather than being an act of revision or omission.”

Supreme Court weighs in on web accessibility

Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if their websites are not accessible by David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times, 10/7/19 “In a potentially far-reaching move, the justices turned down an appeal from Domino’s and let stand a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling holding that the Americans With Disabilities Act protects access […]

WebAIM Releases Screen Reader Survey #8

In August and September 2019, WebAIM conducted a survey of screen reader users. Highlights include: Primary screen reader used: NVDA (40.6%); followed closely by JAWS (40.1%) Most common way to find information using a screen reader: Navigating headings (68.8%) How likely is it that PDFs will cause accessibility issues? Very likely or somewhat likely (75.1%) […]

Quick Tip: Capitalize Words in Hashtags

When using hashtags in your social media post capitalize each word. This makes it easier for screen readers to each word separately. #EasierToReadWhenCapitalizingEachWord

A11y in Higher Education

“To meet the needs of all users, colleges and universities must weave a mind-set of accessibility into institutional culture, using a process that includes all parts of a campus… Most people in education understand that the accessibility of electronic resources is essential, not only because it is mandated by law but also because it is […]

Welcome WCAG 2.1

On June 5, 2018, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. WCAG 2.1 builds upon the previous WCAG 2.0 guidelines, and is “intended to provide a better web experience for three majors groups of individuals: users with cognitive or learning disabilities, users with low vision, and users with disabilities […]

iOS 11 Accessibility Updates

iOS 11 was released on September 19. Apple continues to improve its mobile operating system by adding or enhancing accessibility features. The following are examples of some accessibility improvements now available. Smart Invert Colors A new option has been added to the color inversion feature called Smart Invert. With Smart Invert enabled, images and videos […]

Accessibility according to actual people with disabilities

“If you have a disability, what’s the hardest thing about browsing the web?” The answers to Safia Abdalla’s tweet are truly eye-opening and shows us what web accessibility should really be about. Accessibility according to actual people with disabilities – Axess Lab

WCAG 2.1 Proposed Changes

The first working draft for the WCAG 2.1 changes were released on February 28th, 2017. There are 28 proposed new success criteria. The existing 63 WCAG 2.0 success criteria will be grandfathered into WCAG 2.1. Here’s a sample of some of the proposed additions: Orientation – Requires authors not to rely on a screen orientation. Users who have […]

What does “a11y” mean?

When researching web accessibility online it is common to see a strange combination of letters and numbers, “a11y.” This is the accepted short version of the word “accessibility.” It is sometimes used in social media to tag posts as accessibility content where space is a premium, such as Twitter. The abbreviation is derived by taking the 13 letters […]