accessibility Archives

New Accessibility Tutorial for Learners and Educators

The Paciello Group announced a new online interactive tutorial called Teach Access. The tutorial is well organized and allows the learner to do some coding and see the results. It’s a result of work done by The Paciello Group and the Teach Access organization.

Learners are encouraged to use Voice Over to verify results of their coding efforts. Instructions for using Voice Over are included.

Something this tutorial does that you don’t often see is offer instruction in ARIA attributes such as ‘aria-labelledby’ and ARIA roles such as ‘list’ and ‘listitem’.

Following the exercises involving code, there is a section on design principles that talks about color contrast, text size, copy writing, and photos and videos.

This tutorial is a very useful site for anyone who wants to learn about writing accessible web sites.

W3C’s WAI Creates Perspectives Videos for Accessibility Understanding

an image of a man with burned toast — Just as we all like different degrees of doneness in our toast, users need to be able to change the way text is displayed — changing the size, spacing, font, color, and more — in order to read the text. When text is changed, no information or functionality should be lost, the text should re-flow, and users shouldn’t have to scroll horizontally to read sentences.

A wonderful new resource from the W3C is a set of very short videos called Web Accessibility Perspectives. The videos take a particular aspect of web accessibility such as keyboard compatibility or clear layout and design and show how they are essential for people with disabilities and useful for everyone.

I picked one at random, the text to speech one, to share here. There are 10 videos in all. They are perfect for use in a class about accessibility or just for learning something about web accessibility if you’re trying to understand it yourself.

Summary: How to Apply WCAG 2.0 to Mobile Devices

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This post simply serves as a summary of the 4 posts published recently that distill the information from the W3C about how the guidelines and principles of WCAG 2.0 apply to mobile devices.

I thought it would be useful to have a single post with links to each of the previous posts. The posts take the 4 POUR principles and explain what they mean in terms of mobile application.

POUR

Mobile Accessibility and the Robust Principle

The W3C wants to help developers understand how WCAG 2.0 applies on mobile devices. They recently issued the first working draft on the topic. The guidelines and principles of WCAG are explained using the POUR method: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.

In this post I will distill the W3C information on the Robust principle.

The Keyboard

Set the virtual keyboard to the type of data entry required.

Data Entry

Make data entry as easy as possible by,

On-screen keyboard
Bluetooth keyboard
Speech or Touch
Use select menus, radio buttons, check boxes or automatically enter known information (e.g. date, time, location)

Support the Platform

Don’t disable the device’s platform characteristics such as zoom, larger fonts, and captions.

Mobile device image: William Hook

Mobile Accessibility and the Understandable Principle

In this post I will distill the W3C information on the Understandable principle.

Orientation

Support both landscape and portrait orientations
Changes in orientation must be programmatically exposed to ensure detection by devices such as screen readers

Consistent Layout

Within a particular size and orientation, repeated items should be placed consistently
Consistency between different screen sizes and screen orientations is not a requirement

Positioning before the Scroll

Position important items before the scroll.

Group Operable Elements

When two elements (e.g., an icon and a text link) perform the same action, group both items within the same actionable element.

Be Clear About Which Elements are Actionable

Actionable elements such as links or buttons should be indicated by more than one means. Use combinations of shape, color, style, positioning, text labels, and conventional iconography.

Custom Manipulations and Gestures

Provide easily accessible instructions to explain what gestures can be used to control a given interface and whether there are alternatives.

Mobile device image: William Hook

Mobile Accessibility and the Operable Principle

In this post I will distill the W3C information on the Operable principle.

Touch Target Size and Spacing

touch targets should be at least 9 mm high by 9 mm wide
touch targets close to the minimum size should be surrounded by a small amount of inactive space

Touchscreen Gestures

Gestures should be as easy as possible to carry out and two-step gestures should be avoided
To prevent unintentional actions, “elements accessed via touch interaction should generally trigger an event (e.g. navigation, submits) only when the touchend event is fired (i.e. when all of the following are true: the user has lifted the finger off the screen, the last position of the finger is inside the actionable element, and the last position of the finger equals the position at touchstart).”

Device Manipulation Gestures

These suggestions are for manipulations such as shaking or tilting:

Developers should still provide touch and keyboard operable alternative control options
Provide onscreen indicators that remind people how and when to use device manipulation gestures

Button Placement

Place interactive elements where they can be easily reached when the device is held in different positions or by different hands
Flexible use is the goal

Mobile device image: William Hook

Mobile Accessibility and the Perceivable Principle

In this post I will distill the W3C information for the Perceivable principle.

Small Screen Size

Guidelines include:

Use a responsive design and minimize the amount of information that is put on each page
Use fewer images
Focus on the features needed to operate in the mobile environment
Use a “reasonable” default size for content and touch controls to reduce the need for zooming
Make sure link text does not exceed the width of the device
Put form fields below their labels

Zoom/Magnification

The suggestions include:

The user should be able to zoom to 200%. Do not block this with the page’s viewport meta element.
Support system fonts that follow platform level user preferences for text size
Support options on the page to allow the user to change text size

Contrast

Mobile device content is viewed on smaller screens and in different conditions so the allowable ratio for lessened contrast on larger text on desktop devices must be considered carefully for mobile apps. Therefore, the W3C suggestion at this point is that developers should strive to apply the lessened contrast ratio only when text is roughly equivalent to 1.2 times bold or 1.5 times (120% bold or 150%) that of the default platform size. Even then, the user must be able to zoom to magnify the text.

Mobile device image: William Hook