The Paciello Group provides this area to share techniques with our clients and the accessibility community.
1. The accessible designer remembers that among other things, Web accessibility is designed to promote access by individuals with varied environments.
Following are some things to keep in mind about potential users from the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines:
- They may not be able to see, hear, move, or understand easily — or at all.
- They may be in a situation where their eyes, ears, or hands are busy or interfered with (for example, driving to work, working in a loud environment, and so on).
- They may have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
- They may not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse.
- They may have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.
- They may have a slow connection, a small screen, a text-only screen, and so on.
- They may not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written.
2. Using the HTML title attribute
When and how to use the HTML title attribute to improve the accessibility of your web sites and web applications.
3. Using WAI ARIA Landmark Roles
How WAI-ARIA landmark roles can be used to aid navigation and understanding of web content and structure.
4. Accessibility testing tools
There are many tools available for accessibility testing, here are the accessibility tools that we use.
5. Adobe Flash and WCAG 2
View a webinar providing an understanding of how Adobe Flash content can be made accessible and conforming to WCAG 2.0
6. HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives
Provides clear and practical advice on how to provide appropriate text alternatives for images using currently supported techniques.
7. Developer Beware: Using Flash to Detect Screen Readers
The facility to detect some Assistive Technology by using Flash has been around since ActionScript 1.0 and Flash Player 6. The method has usually been referred to as a way to ‘detect screen readers’. Unfortunately this method, using the ActionScript Accessibility.isActive method, is not a ‘screen reader’ detector.
8. Introduction to WAI ARIA
WAI-ARIA is a specification that provides a means of describing roles, states, and properties for custom widgets so that they are recognisable and usable by assistive technology users. WAI-ARIA also provides a mechanism to ensure that users of assistive technologies are aware of updates in the application. This article provides an overview of what web applications should do, and how WAI-ARIA helps.