Craig Abbott wrote about the term “best practice” today. Thanks to posting his thoughts on Mastodon, I had time to kick my brain into gear …| Eric Eggert
I frequently see the word “help” used in accessibility, and I don’t like it. This is certainly a personal gripe, but I want to share my …| Eric Eggert
We must make more progress for web accessibility. We need to fix the top issue and concentrate on addressing them where it makes most sense. In the end, the promise of an accessible web must be kept.| Eric Eggert
Auf der Seite barrieren-gutachten.de hat die wundervolle Casey Kreer Gutachten zum Stand der Barrierefreiheit in Deutschland erstmals …| Eric Eggert
The deadline of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is near (June 28 is just 20 days away as I write this), and you just realized that your website or apps will not meet the requirements by then. Maybe you have just heard of it for the first time, or you might have tried to meet the requirements, but you’re not there yet. If you have believed that there is an additional transition period, that is not true. The transition period basically started when the EAA got approved by the European Pa...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Steve Faulkner tagged me in this chain letter/interview style post, and I foolishly agreed in advance to respond. So here we are 😂 Why did …| Eric Eggert
Last weekend, I launchedWAI A Day, the daily random WAI resource fun and information. I added some things: A web page lists the URLs now together with the dates they have been picked for. This meant I had to give the page a history of all previously generated URLs. In the first version of the page, it only served as a random generator of a WAI URL and also, basically, only as an API – returning just the URL as a text string. So every time I accessed the URL, the response was different. To c...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
When I worked for W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative, we often discussed ways to spread the good word of our resources better. One idea …| Eric Eggert
In accessibility, “focusable” UI elements are represented by two separate yet equally important concepts: the elements who can be focused sequentially and those who can only receive focus programmatically. These are their stories. Dun-Dun While working for a client the other day, I found that Polypane[^ Affiliate link.], which is excellent in locating accessibility issues, showed elements with tabindex="-1" as focusable in the Focus Order section of the Outline tool. I contacted Kilian to...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Just to preemptively state it: I appreciate what the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AGWG) is trying to do with the “In Brief” sections in WCAG’s Understanding documents. My criticism is about the execution of the information. In addition, this is not a plea to change it. I think the WG is very set on its approach and I learned it’s almost impossible to make it reconsider, so I don’t even want to bother trying. This is mostly documentation for myself. Table of Contents What ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
On Mastodon, Steve Faulkner shared a link to a GitHub discussion around the A, AA, and AAA levels of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). In it, the question is asked what makes a Success Criterion (SC) A, AA, or AAA. Basically, the question is what criteria are used to decide the level for any specific Criterion. The “Understanding Levels of Conformance” section in the Understanding documents explains which considerations contributed to the decision for each criterion (paraphrase...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Accessibility audits are the bread and butter of every accessibility consultancy. It’s an easy to package product that clients have learned to ask for and buy. They have expectations on the deliverables and the form of an audit. Audits are usually also thorough, following established international guidelines (usually the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Note: I think this article applies to all kinds of accessibility audits, whether they are called “review” or “check” or “au...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
The Web Content Accessibility Guideline’s (WCAG) Success Criterion 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast is one of the harder to understand requirements. Here’s a deep-dive into the details of it, including practical examples, concerning only its “User Interface Components” section. Because, of course, this SC has multiple sections: 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast (Understanding) (Level AA) The visual presentation of the following have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 against adjacent color(s): User Inte...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
In our tech-focused society, there is this ever present notion that “accessibility will be solved by some technology”. But it won’t. Making things accessible is a fundamentally human challenge that needs human solutions in human contexts. I wrote about automated testing before. Support Eric’s independent work I'm a web accessibility professional who cares deeply about inclusion and an open web for everyone. I work with Axess Lab as an accessibility specialist. Previously, I worked wit...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
In the last couple of weeks, I had some encounters that made me think about the state of ableism. Turns out that despite a lot of slow but meaningful progress, the world overall is still pretty much ableist. This is not news for anyone who is disabled, of course, and it shouldn’t be for anyone who works in the field of accessibility. Support Eric’s independent work I'm a web accessibility professional who cares deeply about inclusion and an open web for everyone. I work with Axess Lab as ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Accessibility, especially on the web but also elsewhere, is a complicated combination of people with different roles working together. At any point during the creation of a web page, a blog post, its design, sourcing of images, or writing, issues can creep in. As accessibility people, we often look at the end product and say “this is not accessible” (often meaning “this does not meet the minimum standards set out by WCAG”). And yes, it is always difficult to make everything 100% corre...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
After the yearly theme of 2022 spilled over into 2023, it’s time for a new theme for 2024: “The Year of Focus on Focus”. (See the previous post for some context on yearly themes.) The Year of Intent in 2022 worked out very well. I felt better and more intentional. Unfortunately, it lost all its power over 2023. Extending the theme this way was unintentional, which basically set the whole year up for failure from a yearly theme/north star perspective. I never really caught up with anythi...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
In a stunning press release, Level Access has revealed that it plans to buy accessibility overlay company UserWay for about $99 Million. For those who are unaware, accessibility overlays are JavaScripts that claim to fix accessibility issues automagically. They claim to use “AI” to analyze the site and then apply accessibility fixes on the fly while the user is using the website. Of course, it is common knowledge that automated tools for finding accessibility issues can only find a limit...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’m not a good “retro” person. I always want to move on to the next thing. But reflecting over the past achievements is a good habit, so let’s do it. This year was very different from last year. I did not bike a single kilometer, which feels super bad, and if I have one personal goal for 2024, it’s getting back on the bike again. That said, we did rent a car to find hiking trails and hiked quite a bit during the summer. So not all is lost. I also built many more Lego sets, so many i...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
The name “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” (WCAG) has always been a source of misunderstanding and contention. “Guidelines” implies that this document only guides you, gives you hints on how to make web content accessible. But that is only half of WCAG. The other half are “Guardrails” that prevent you from producing wholly inaccessible material. Guidelines The guidelines consist mostly of the Principles and Guidelines (oh!) of WCAG. There are four Principles that have in summ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
My friend Nicolas Steenhout has published an article about the impossibility of specificity in accessibility recommendations. It is excellent, and I strongly recommend reading it before continuing here. The reason we often cannot be super specific has its roots in three areas: The web is a complex environment. Anything can be done in hundreds of different ways, depending on the underlying technologies, frameworks, and sometimes business constraints. Recommending the one straightforward HTML/C...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
This was my submission for axe-con 2024, which unfortunately did not make it to the conference. Please tell me if the topic would be interesting for you, and you would like to hear more about the topic! Title: Enough with the baby steps! Let’s make accessibility leaps. Outline: So much of our work is based on nudging people into the right direction. Applying a little pressure that makes a change but is not disruptive. This needs to change. This talk showcases steps that we can take that mak...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
While it is often sufficient to test the mobile view of websites and applications on the desktop, with desktop browsers, it’s sometimes not enough: Some websites use device sniffing to hash out which device is used and deliver different code to users. In other instances, the web view is part of an application. Being able to inspect and look at the code in these views is essential to give good feedback to developers implementing these views. Inspect Browser (websites only) The Inspect Browse...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
You can switch VoiceOver (and Voice Control) on in the iOS settings on iPhone and iPad. But this is very cumbersome if you are in the process of testing an app or website. There are quicker ways: Using Siri Siri switches VoiceOver on where you are at the moment, if you invoke it using the command “Hey Siri, VoiceOver on”. Switching VoiceOver off works by issuing “Hey Siri, VoiceOver off”. But this way is cumbersome, and if you, like me, switch VoiceOver on and off many, many times dur...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
This is a repost of a Twitter thread from August 2022. Slightly edited in format and for clarity. Accessibility must work within the constraints of an ableist world to improve things. I hope it can help to make the world a tiny bit less unjust every day. I have seen accessibility people say “this is a hill I’m willing to die on” and then they died on that proverbial hill. Some clients just don’t care, and you have no power to make them care. You can make them aware, you can put proced...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Time and time again, I come across accessibility solutions in which teams have put a massive amount of work. And often I have to ask them to undo that work. There are many reasons for that request, but it typically comes down to a false understanding of how assistive technologies actually work. Now, don't get me wrong, a good percentage of my work is to “well, actually” people who should know better. And I generally enjoy it – using my mansplaining powers for good. But now and then, you...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Every few months, the discussion comes up that you cannot make accessibility work if you are not fighting for disability rights or practicing inclusive design. While there is a kernel of truth in that – it will certainly be easier to make consistently good choices regarding the interaction of disabled individuals with the product you create – it is not a requirement for accessibility practices. What I mean by that is that often, you are in a situation where you cannot influence the cultur...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Earlier this week, W3C/WAI announced that Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 is now at the last hurdle before becoming a standard. This is huge news because its precursor WCAG 2.1 is the basis of a lot of accessibility policy and laws. For example, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) makes web accessibility mandatory for most commercial websites. The requirements are set in the European Norm EN 301 549 which explicitly directly references WCAG 2.1. While WCAG 2 (and 2.1, and 2.2...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
When writing about HTML, especially in the context of accessibility audits, you always need to be very clear in what you mean. Otherwise, the guidance is challenging to read for your audience. I recommend to always include brackets with the element names. You can differentiate attributes and values by using these words. Always include the word “value” when talking about values. First mention of an element: “<h1> element” First mention of an attribute: “id attribute” First mention ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
About two weeks ago, the WCAG WG released a new version of the Candidate Recommendation for WCAG 2.2. After it had been in the Editor’s Draft for quite some while, it changed the requirements for the Focus Appearance Success Criterion (SC). The SC was deemed to not be AA-worthy. With the W3C process, however, items marked as at risk, which this SC was, can only be removed before publication of the standard, not altered. So changing it to a AAA criterion meant that there had to be a new Cand...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Over the past few years, accessibility companies have started to develop tools that claim to find accessibility problems automatically. Often the idea is that “automated testing is not quite there yet, but in a few years there will be a revolution”. I don't believe that. Human problems need human solutions At its core, accessibility is about people interacting with computers. Users take different paths with their computers to get to your content. Sometimes that route is through a screen r...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
It’s January 2023 and there is a new WCAG 2.2 Candidate Recommendation Draft (which apparently is a different type of document from the September Candidate Recommendation Snapshot). Here is a diff between these two versions for your convenience. Table of Contents About the ratings 2.4.13 Focus Appearance (Level AAA)Update 7 February 2023 Update 2 June 2023 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) (Level AA) 2.4.13 Focus Not Obscured (Enhanced) (Level AAA) 2.5.7 Dragging Movements (Level AA) 2.5....| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Year in review blog posts are very en vogue this year. Probably because people now have more time on their hand now that they are not constantly doomscrolling on Twitter. Good stuff We have settled in to the new apartment, and it is still great and everything we could wish for. I started e-biking and spent over 250 km on the bike this year. While that does not sound much, considering that my fitness level is bad and the terrain here is quite hilly, I feel good about it. Biking helped me to g...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Twitter was and is (for now) an integral part of my web presence. Since March 2007 I have tweeted over 72 thousand times. That’s roughly 13 messages a day. I found community and friendship there. And the love of my life. Twitter was (is?) important to me. Seeing it change over the years made me sometimes tired of it, but in the end it just felt like a net positive place for me to be. Of course, this has changed this week. The place was attacked, but not from random people, but by someone w...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Many people think about moving or at least establishing a presence in the so-called Fediverse. The Fediverse is (and this is probably a very shortened and incorrect) a collection of distributed web applications that can talk to each other. The most well known software is Mastodon, which is installed on many servers. Now, because it is such a distributed system, the accessibility around the Fediverse is not super consistent either. But there are all the important foundations there, including t...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Thanks to Shelly for inviting me to talk about all things WCAG 2.2 on the Parallel Podcast, Episode 75! It was a wonderful conversation, and we walked through all the individual changed and new success criteria. Note:RelayFM. Parallel’s podcast network, supports St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in their fight against childhood cancer with the annual donation drive. Listen to the episode.| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Thanks to Christian, Hans, and Vanessa for having me on the German language Working Draft Podcast Episode 540! We talked about all things accessibility, including the German WCAG 2.1 translation, that we at outline carried out with support from Tomas Caspers and Aktion Mensch. Listen here.| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
The previous incarnation of this website had a dark theme option, but when I did the redesign a year or so ago I did not get around to implementing it. I’m of course aware that a dark option is an important accessibility feature for many people, especially as I’m using dark mode, too. That said, most websites do not implement dark mode, so having a browser plugin like Noir or Dark Reader is necessary anyway. A few weeks ago I read through Hidde’s blog post on his dark mode toggle implem...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
JAWS, Job Access With Speech, is the world’s most popular screen reader, developed for computer users whose vision loss prevents them from seeing screen content or navigating with a mouse. Freedom Scientific A tweet from my friend Nicolas Steenhout reminded me of one issue I often run into with clients: They ask for how to best test their sites in popular screen readers and I routinely name the ones most often used. That includes the most named “Primary Desktop/Laptop Screenreader”, ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
This post is basically a short addendum to my article about text resize and reflow. I stumbled over some instances of text-overflow: ellipsis the other day and it broke resize and/or reflow. The whole reason text-overflow exists is to specify the behavior of text once it flows over the container. There could be with and height constraints for a block. Using overflow: hidden makes sure that there is no overlapping text, but it cuts off the text abruptly. Text-overflow: ellipsis[^ And other, le...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
There seems to be a confusion about the relationship and how to test for the WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria 1.4.4 Resize Text and 1.4.10 Reflow. While these two success criteria seem related, they cover different use cases. 1.4.4 Resize Text This success criterion that was introduced with WCAG 2.0 on level AA covers text resizing without assistive technologies. The requirement is that, except for captions and images of text, text can be resized up to 200% without losing content or functionality. N...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Last week, I received a big box with something that I hoped to buy for a long time. As you might have guessed from the title of the blog post, it was a bike. Now, I’m not the most active person, especially through the last two-and-a-bit years of pandemic life, so a regular bike was out of the question. I just know myself too well, that I would lose interest if it was not fun to do. And honestly, the main reason for getting a bike is to have some fun. Also, to be flexible for running errands...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’ll be holding three talks and workshops remotely in May. Diversity in May (Mangfold i mai) – ARIA Live Regions and User Preferences For NAV, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, I’ll be holding two sessions for their “Diversity in May” series of events. Workshop: We’re ARIA Live!(May 3, 2022, 10:00-11:30) A deeper dive into ARIA live regions, their alternatives, and particularities. (This workshop is NAV internal, registration for NAV employees is available on the we...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
After almost, but not quite, six years, I had my final day with Knowbility last week. The time working with them was great. I’m going to miss working with the many great minds over there. Knowbility picked up and supported my W3C/WAI work when EU funding dried up in 2016 with 50% of my time. With the rest, I supported the Knowbility team, worked with Knowbility’s clients and did trainings and audits. I also supported the “Community Programs”, the common good part of the Knowbility non...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
People who are tasked with remediating accessibility often have little experience of how people with disabilities actually use the web. This leads to overcomplicated solutions, as they underestimate the capabilities of disabled people. A few years ago, I talked to a person new to accessibility about their view that data tables were terrible for accessibility, especially for people using screen readers. It took a bit of time until I realized why they thought this was the case: The person had u...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Thanks to Smashing Magazine for naming me(!) “Person of the Week” during last week. This is what they had to say: Eric Eggert (@yatil) is a Web Accessibility Expert who tries to make the web a better place for everyone. He’s currently Director of Accessibility Services at Knowbility, before that, he worked with the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative to improve documentation of accessibility best practices on the web. Eric shares his knowledge as a speaker, teacher, and on his YouTube chan...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Since hearing Myke Hurley and CGP Gray talk about “yearly themes” on the Cortex podcast, I try to go into every year with a theme that acts as the north star for decisions during that time. As I outlined in my 2021 blog post, it was a stressful year and I never really felt in the driver seat. I reviewed the year using this Looking Back at 2021 planner from ink+volt (likely an inaccessible PDF) and it helped me greatly to see what the wins and possible improvements were. The exercise helpe...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I welcomed 2021 with a blog post, so let’s wave goodbye to it that way, too. To be honest, I don’t have an extensive review in me. This has been an extraordinarily tough and stressful year for me. After COVID had held strongly in the winter of 2020, the spring felt to be more normal and ordinary. That particular calm was only of short duration as we got notice that, due to work from home of our landlord and the additional space requirements, we had to leave our home by March 2022. While t...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Table of Contents What’s the issue with being an early adopter? So, what about that “new color contrast algorithm”, then? So, should you use APCA? What is the way forward?What if…? Addendum 2021-12-14 Update 2023-03-28 Update 2024-09-16 In the last couple of weeks, more and more people point at the WCAG 3.0 Working Draft and recommend the adoption of aspects from it that suit their needs, despite the draft clearly stating (emphasis theirs): These are early drafts of guidelines includ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’ll be joining my Knowbility colleague (“Knowlleague”?) Anthony Vasquez in an evening of questions and answers about web accessibility. Date: November 30, 2021 Time: 8–9pm CEST (Berlin)/1–2pm Central (Austin) Register for the webinar! It’s free! Please send questions in via Twitter with the Hashtag #A11yOfficeHour. This event supports Knowbility’s current donation drive. So please support Knowbility and its mission by making a donation.| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Web accessibility is incredibly important. The web is the prime medium for information, education, entertainment, and social interaction. And it still is incredibly inaccessible to many people. According to WebAIM’s assessment of one million home pages, 97.4% of them had easily detectable failures. Today starts W3C’s TPAC Conference. It’s where all W3C groups have an opportunity to meet and make sure that they work to bring the web forward. There is usually a lot of accessibility going ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Should some links look like buttons, or should some buttons look like links? Twitter was all up in arms about this issue this week. Let’s take a look to see what these two UI elements are and what they do, and then, how they can look. What are links? Links are interactive elements that usually link to another document, for example: Click this link to go to Knowbility’s website. There is some additional functionality, like the ability to point to different frames in a “frame set” (yup,...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
We all needed distraction in 2020. Here are some of my highlights, so maybe you find something to enjoy from the list. Podcasts Unfortunately no podcasts listed have transcripts. The inaccessibility of podcasts is a really big problem. Tech Relay FM is a podcast network that hosts some of my favorite tech-related podcasts: Upgrade, Connected, Automators and Mac Power Users. Let me single out Relay FM show 20 Macs for 2020 here, which looked back at the most notable Macs until now. The...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’m so glad we’re in 2021, and I hope it gets to be better than 2020. For me personally, 2020 was a successful year, especially considering the circumstances we all had to work with. The year took off quite ordinary. My workshop at a11y.club in Berlin the previous November went well, and I looked into how to do more of these seminars with people. Suffice to say that planning for in-person events was not the most useful thing at the time. Oh, how little did we anticipate. In February, th...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
As the Raspberry Pi Zero is based on an older processor technology, the Node.js core team does not provide compiled binaries of newer versions. Here’s a quick guide on how to update anyway. I use my Raspberry Pi Zero mainly for Homebridge, a way to use non-Homekit devices from my iPhone, iPad and Mac. Homebridge is based on Node.js but as the Pi is based on ARMv6, there is no official version of Node since version 10.x. Newer plugins demand later versions of Node, so I had t...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
On September 3, I will hold an online seminar about Inclusive Design, hosted by Knowbility. The subtitle is “The Big Picture” as it continues my quest to connect all the dots between accessibility, design, inclusion, and society. Find a full description of the seminar on Knowbility’s website. Initially, I wanted to do a re-run of my Connecting the Accessibility Dots workshop that I did for Accessibility Club Summit in Berlin in-person in fall of 2019. But it did not sit right for me...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Here are some tips I have gathered from doing online Zoom talks since 2015. I hope they help with your talk. Sound Zoom compresses the sound in meetings to send it to attendees more, so investing into sound gear should not be the highest priority. That said, clear, intelligible sound is much more important than everything else. If you’re hard to understand or if there’s a constant noise from your line, attendees might not be able to follow you. Always use headphones. I have seen guidance ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
My colleague Christopher Schmitt passed away. He was one of the most extraordinary people I have been allowed to meet. I met Christopher in person for the first time when I spoke at AccessU Online in 2015. He was organizing the conference and his warm welcome made me immediately comfortable. There I was, embraced by Christopher’s smile and his generosity to invite me to his event. Events, that I admired from afar and I only had a tiny bit of hope to be ever involved in. It was a busy day, ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
As a web developer, it is incredibly hard to just be happy with one’s website. You want to improve, and you want to make it better, always. When I worked on this site the last time — apart from content updates, of course — I moved from Jekyll to Kirby. Now I have decided to move on from Kirby to Eleventy, a JavaScript-based static site generator. There's no particular reason behind this change. I ran into some issues with the two languages on this site, and broke my Kirby installati...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
On Wednesday, October 2, I will do an online talk for technica11y. The talk will cover common ARIA pitfalls and how to avoid them. It is free, thanks to the support by tenon.io. It is an updated talk from the one I gave several times before but it is always nice to document new and inventive atrocities. When: October 2, 2019, 11am ET Where: Online, Register here| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
On November 17, 2019, I’ll hold a workshop in Berlin as a part of Accessibility Club Summit 2019. Tickets are just €50. In this new workshop I want to help people wo have an understanding of specific parts of accessibility to get a better understanding on where this fits in the general framework of designing, writing, and developing accessible websites. The learning outcome should be a holistic approach to accessibility that leads participants to anticipate accessibility-related issues e...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I use Overcast for my daily podcasting needs. Sometimes I stumble upon new podcasts and I quickly want to add an episode to Overcast for sampling the podcast. Unfortunately there often is no link to the Overcast URL directly on the page despite Overcast having decent web integration[^ Which is one reason I switched back to Overcast twice after extended stints of trying out Castro where I prefer how podcast playlists are managed.]. Adding a podcast to Overcast in this case means copying the ti...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
CSS generated content can have unintended side-consequences. As Andy Clarke discovered recently, data- attributes he used as a way to transfer content into CSS for visual purposes are not translated using built-in browser functionality. His[^ Note that this is using Andy’s use case as an example. He immediately added a note to his article when I made him aware of the accessibility implications. I wanted to write this up as a lesson in how the web changes and how different aspects of the ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
In the past two days, people noticed that VoiceOver (VO) on top of Safari is not reading list semantics when the list is not styled in a list-like fashion. First things first: ## What does it mean for me as a web developer that Safari is not reading lists when it doesn't look like a list? **Nothing.** The first commits for “layout lists”[^I think that saying those lists are used as “layout” is quite a misnomer, the lists are used as a generic grouping mechanism.] have been committed t...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’ll leave Facebook by the end of the day today[^This blog post was in the making for days, and I wanted to give advanced warnings, but it didn’t work out sooner.]. I thought about this final step for several months. I have many reasons, including, but not limited, to Facebook’s ongoing privacy issues. For me, as for many, Facebook grew essential to be in touch with some relatives and colleagues. However, those contacts have been superficial, and Facebook is not the sole way to be in to...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- [Swaziland king renames country Kingdom of eSwatini](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/swaziland-king-renames-country-kingdom-of-eswatini) (The Guardian) Internationalization is hard, now you have to fit in a country with a lower case first letter. > Meaning “place of the Swazi”, eSwatini is the Swazi language name for the tiny state landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique. Unlike some countries, Swaziland did not change its name when it gained independence in 1968 af...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Jeremy [posted a solution for multi-language sites](https://adactio.com/notes/13720) where you want to switch hyphenation on when the page language is set to (for example) German: ``` css [lang="de"] { hyphens: auto; } ``` This works great until you have code on the page. Even if we have word-wrapping for code enabled (and we should on responsive sites), hyphenation is not what we want, usually. The same goes for code in sentences. So I’d suggest adding the following to the CSS: ``` css [la...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Nic [@vavroom](https://twitter.com/vavroom/) Steenhout ([Blog](https://incl.ca)) invited me to his #A11y Rules Podcast. We talked about my work with [Knowbility](https://knowbility.org) and the [W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)](https://w3.org/WAI/) and how I got into accessibility. Nic’s podcast is short and sweet, so you don’t have to listen to me waffling on for too long. Nic makes transcripts of the episodes available. [Episode 1 of the two-part interview is out now!](https://a1...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’ve been on vacation for a bit, which was incredibly relaxing. Some pictures are available on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/yatil/) (for now – I need an indie web solution for this). - Professionalism: [**Design’s Lost Generation**](https://medium.com/@monteiro/designs-lost-generation-ac7289549017) (Mike Monteiro, Medium) — Everyone who helps to produce a product is a designer, every decision counts. It’s important to make ethical design decisions. There are two words every...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’m in San Diego where I’ll attend the W3C WAI Education and Outreach WG Face-to-Face meeting, and CSUN, the biggest accessibility conference. It’s always amazing to be able to work with my colleagues in one room and to meet all accessibility experts in one place. - Beta: [**W3C/WAI Website**](https://www.w3.org/WAI/beta/) – We managed to launch the beta for the new WAI site last week. There are still a few rough edges, but it is essential to get it in front of people. A lot of work f...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
This was a long work week, so here are some games and apps instead of articles as I couldn’t find time to concentrate on pieces. - TV: [**Jessica Jones**, Season 2](https://www.netflix.com/title/80002311) – While work was plenty, some of it was also repetitive, so I managed to watch the new Season of Jessica Jones. Very intense storytelling. - iOS: [**Altos Odyssey**](https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/altos-odyssey/id1182456409?mt=8&uo=4&at=1010lpy5) – When I downloaded Alto for the first...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Let’s wipe some dust off this old blog, shall we? There’s a lot to do, including accessibility fixes, but sometimes you just have to start somewhere.| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
In _Sunday Seven_ I publish a list of seven links to things on the internet. The only criteria to make it in this category is that it is interesting to me. - Accessibility: [**Apple Park’s Visitor Center** by twitter user @xarph](https://twitter.com/xarph/status/967652885604450305) – An interesting twitter thread about the many small details build for accessibility.[1](#fn-102264-0) (If you enjoy twitter threads as much as I do[2](#fn-102264-1), [read the whole thread as one article on ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
As many of you might know, I have been the primary editor of the [W3C WAI Web Accessibility Tutorials](https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/) which provide practical guidance on how to implement web accessibility. A few days ago, the Education and Outreach Working Group and I were able to publish a major update. We added three new tutorials (which were released as a draft before). A lot of thought went into framing the tutorials the right way, and we addressed one of the issues with WAI resources...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Next month I will continue the tradition of flying over to Austin, TX, USA to attend the annual [AccessU conference](https://www.knowbility.org/education/accessu/) and teach some classes. Organized by [Knowbility](https://www.knowbility.org/), the conference is a gathering of brilliant minds around accessibility and is an excellent opportunity to broaden your accessibility knowledge. Here’s an overview of my four classes: - **Responsive and Accessible Images (March 17, 2017 – 2:15pm–3:4...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Great video over at the [Google Chrome Developers channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnUYZLuoy1rq1aVMwx4aTzw) about the upcoming [CSS Level 4 `:focus-ring` selector (draft)](https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#the-focusring-pseudo). The focus is often removed for stylistic reasons when using the mouse, but then keyboard users also have no indication of where they are on the website. `:focus-ring` solves that issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilj2P5-5CjI&index=1&list=PLNYkxOF6rcI...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
In 2006 I got my first Mac ever, the [2006 Apple MacBook “Core Duo” 1.83 13”](http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook_1.83.html). After owning a humongous Acer 15” Laptop in the previous years, the experience of owning this computer was something from another world. Since 2013 I owned a [13” MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and an 1.7GHz Intel Core i7 processor](http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook-air-core-i7-1.7-13-mid-2013-specs.html) and wh...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
[Tom Scott on tactile pavement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPymLgfXSY): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPymLgfXSY| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Over the last year, the name of a city is coming up in German news more often than I like it to be: Aleppo. It is not just a city involved in the war in Syria, it is the scene of a standoff that is lasting for months. This city, the mention of its name on the news, the descriptions of the cruelty that happens there, is especially painful for me. When I was in elementary school, we had Syrian neighbors who fled during the Gulf War. Mohammad and I shared a class. We were good friends, played fo...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I’m happy to announce here that I will be speaking at [Accessing Higher Ground](http://accessinghigherground.org) in November, representing [Knowbility](http://knowbility.org). The conference is in Westminster, Colorado and coins itself as an “Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference”. I will do two three-hour long workshops: - **[Advanced Accessibility: A Deep Dive for Developers](http://accessinghigherground.org/advanced-accessibility-deep-dive-developers/) Tuesday, Nov. 15th, ...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
> I always thought that it is not so difficult to find resources about these basics, the recurrence of that question prompted me to finally write my own take on this topic. So here it is, my list of absolute web accessibility basics every web developer should know about. A very solid overview of basic web accessibility techniques by Marco Zehe.| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Over the past years my social web interaction shifted from Twitter and this very blog more and more to Facebook. I have so many contacts and interactions there that it feels very overwhelming and occupying a good chunk of my free time that I would love to spend otherwise: Hiking through the sun, having random thoughts and ideas, read long-form articles or play video games. I was under the impression that engaging on Facebook – and to a lesser extend on Twitter – would allow me to relax, t...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
Wowza, that was a densely packed year 2015 for me. Here is my short,long, personal review of the year: ## January Slow start into the year, attended a reading by [Max Goldt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Goldt) at [Zeche Carl (Carl Mine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeche_Carl), a former mine and now event location, and even got a poster signed (yes, I’m used to my name being misspelled with a “k” in Germany):  on web accessibility and more.
My personal thoughts about “The Force Awakens” are very well mirrored by the discussion on last week’s [The Incomparable, Episode 277: Stormtroopers Are People](https://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/277/index.php). The panel consists of Jason Snell, Serenity Caldwell, Dan Moren and the [hypercritical](http://hypercritical.co/about/) John Siracusa. I think that Siracusa’s characterization of the movie (around the 2h45 mark) is especially noteworthy, where he states that he ma...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I read the [Webkrauts advent calendar article by Jens Grochtdreis](http://webkrauts.de/artikel/2015/ueberschrift-ueber-durchgestrichener-linie) earlier today, it is about headers with lines on the side, like in the article image. (There is a similar [article by Chris Coyier on CSS-Tricks](https://css-tricks.com/line-on-sides-headers/) for English-speaking people out there.) He presents a solution with one or two pseudo-elements and an extra `` in both cases, and has a pretty simple code for i...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
I was asked to write an article for 24ways.org, the well known web advent calendar, this year. It was published today! Hop over and read about [The Accessibility Mindset](https://24ways.org/2015/the-accessibility-mindset/). Thanks for all the good work behind the scene, [Drew](http://allinthehead.com/), [Brian](http://suda.co.uk/), [Anna](http://maban.co.uk/), and [Owen](http://fullcreammilk.co.uk/)! If you prefer to read the article in German, don’t shy away and see [Accessibility im Sinn]...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
> “The idea is to fill Facebook with music, breaking the monotony of selfies and sensationalism. If you ‘like’ this post you will be assigned a letter for a musician, band, artist or song for you to post on your timeline with this text.” I liked [Sandra’s post](https://www.facebook.com/ScreenOrigami/posts/1111049902246990) a few days ago and she assigned the letter “B” to me. I don’t have a lot of music I like and even less music that starts with the letter B. However there is...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- Simplicity is not dumbing down. - There is room for creativity even in relatively simple things. - Let’s focus on what matters. - Helps to provide the right optimizations for users. - Benefits about static sites - cheaper, simpler hosting - fewer points of failure - fewer vulnerabilities - easier compliance - greater portability - sandboxed environments - attrition avoidance - Credibility of static sites - Just for simple things? That’s not the case - Campaign for Obama – $250 million...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- Lots of old techniques out there have been outdated. - Layout methods have not. - Still using the same techniques as we did years ago. - Increasingly we’re using frameworks. - Add markup. - CSS processors. - Hopes for layout: - Flexbox - CSS Grid Layout - Box alignment module - Give us source oder separation from visual layout - precise alignment control - relationships to each other - Remember Faux Columns? (2004) - people jumped at display:table; give us a relationship between columns -...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- Personal debugging workflow - Don’t Write Bugs! - Although… - the opposite is true - the artifact of writing software is fixing bugs - gives you experience - no silver bullet to debugging - you need to pick and chose the right tools - debugging helps you to identify issues earlier - Disclaimer 1: Frameworks? - Don’t have a project that required frameworks. - Tools I use are not for frameworks - For react: It brings it own debugging tool, because it has to as it is so abstract. - Discl...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- Open data - Big data buzzwords - 90% of the world’s data was created in the last 2 years - Several ways to use data in your work - Tea tracker for personal tea consumption - Data is often restricted - Only certain data is displayed - Can’t use data freely - restricted - You sometimes can’t get your hand on the data that you want - Data sharing - Restrictive data sharing to restricted set of people - Open data means to not be confined to the data provider’s conditions - Opendefinitio...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- You can generate audio using JavaScript - Tiny new language - small vocabulary - few grammar rules - couple of ideoms - AudioContext - like canvas - toolbox - instance factory - Nodes Taxonomy - Generation - Manipulation - Analysis - Audio Context as audio graph - Modular routing - Sound modulation - connect() helps you to modulate from one node to another - Gain nodes - … - Don’t keep nodes - stop and disconnect sound sources - load binary data - decode into a buffer - create buffer so...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- Lets compare tooling to plumbing - new type of fitting: Sharkbite - Lego for plumbing - snaps together instantly - can connect any material to copper - can be redone - less prone to leaks - more expensive - less error prone - plumbers: too expensive, too new - changes the industry competely. - Some people write off tooling as over-engeneering, others see the benefits - Fine line between tooling for tooling’s sake and tooling to get work done - Let’s be smart about the tools that we’re...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- Create a company that is not a web dev dactories - Challenge: How to do creative work and still get paid. - Clients & 💩 - Getting work: If you don’t have clients, there’s no business. - You need to find good clients. - Really challenging. How to find good clients? - You need to balance two things: - Build relationships - Tedious pitching - Love all(most) all clients, fired one client – this is tough - You have certain views of how your clients should be. - But sometimes you wake up...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
- The web is a hostile environment. “It is a continuum.” (Jeremy Keith) - Viewport sizes have become fluid, and they don’t need to be the same as the device’s screen size. - Now we need to difference between simple and enhanced use cases. - Many people use proxy browsers like Opera Mini – that often breaks JavaScript and doesn’t support icon fonts. - There are so many input and output methods – and you can’t deduct from the screen size the input method, touch is now everywhere...| Eric Eggert (@yatil) on web accessibility and more.
How “Exclusive Accordions” hinder especially people with disabilities to efficiently use web pages, and why that is a reason to be careful about making it easy to implement them.| Eric Eggert
Some people might say that alternative text for images has a 125 character limit. That’s not correct.| Eric Eggert
