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.

 

 

Working with rem in CSS

Working with rem in CSS

Is the relative measure rem new to you? Most people are familiar with the em unit of measure, but the rem hasn’t been around quite as long. It came into being with CSS3.

The definition of rem is “root relative em.” So a rem is really nothing new, it’s merely an em living in a very close relationship with the page root – typically the html element.

The default font size in most browsers is 16px. We equate this with a font-size value of 100% or 1em or 1rem. These are the relative font units used for responsive web pages.

To repeat, a rem is relative to the root. Why is this so important? Because an em bases font-size on the element it’s used on, and those sizes are inherited. For example, if a ul had a declared font-size of 0.75em, a nested ul within that list would have a font-size of 0.75em of the parent list.

On the other hand, if a rule for ul set the font-size at 0.75rem, any nested list would remain at that 0.75rem size because it is root relative, not relative to the parent element.

Browser support for the rem is very good among modern browsers. Why not give rem a try?

Attribute Selectors: All the Bells and Whistles

There are many types of selectors in CSS. If you’re still making your way through the darkness with nothing more than a few element selectors, a few classes, some ids, and the occasional pseudo selector, you need to find your way into the light with attribute selectors.

I wrote about Attribute Selectors in CSS back in 2008, but there are 3 new types of attribute selectors in CSS3. And they have good browser support.

Attribute Selector Basics

The basic syntax is to name an element, with an attribute in brackets following it, then give the CSS rule.

element[attribute] {
some rules here;
}

This rule, for example, would target any image with a title attribute.

img[title] {
some rules here;
}

This rule would target any anchor element with an href attribute.

a[href] {
some rules here;
}

Beyond that basic type of attribute selector, there are several operators can can be used to refine or broaden what you are selecting.

Using an equals sign, you can add specific values to the chosen attributes, making the selector even more precise. For example,

img[title="mybunny"] {
some rules here;
}

a[href="http://blogher.com"] {
some rules here;
}

The first example would select any image with the exact title attribute “mybunny.” The second would choose any link going to exactly “http://blogher.com,” but not to, say, “http://blogher.com/tech.”

The ~= operator select elements with an attribute value containing a specified word.

i [lang~="en"] {
some rules here;
}

This would match any italic element with a language attribute of English.

The |= uses the syntax |= to match hyphenated elements. This most often is used in rules targeting specific language declarations, where you might have hyphenated attributes in an HTML element such as en-US or en-GB. An example selector is:

body [lang|="en"]{
some rules here;
}

New in CSS3

The ^= operator uses the caret (^) with the equals sign to select what something begins with. It will match elements that have an attribute containing a value that starts with the specified value. For example,

a[href^="https:"] {
some rules here;
}

That selector would match only anchor elements with an href that began with https:.

The *= operator will match elements that have an attribute which contains the specified value somewhere in the attribute value. For example,

a[href*="blogher.com"] {
some rules here;
}

That would select any anchor element with an href value that contained blogher.com somewhere. This gives you a much wider sweep than the simple = operator.

Finally, the $= operator uses the dollar sign ($), which matches to elements that have a  specified value at the end. Examples:

img[src$=".gif"] {
some rules here;
}

a[href$=".doc"] {
some rules here;
}

These two examples would select only image elements ending with .gif or only href attributes ending in .doc.

Summary: How to Apply WCAG 2.0 to Mobile Devices

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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

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

Mobile Accessibility and the Understandable 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 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