iOS Accessibility traitsApple has made accessibility part of the iOS app SDK. With integrated screen magnification and the VoiceOver screen reader available on all recent iOS devices, it’s an ideal platform for great accessibility.
Keyboard traps, Flash and Firefox 4Introduction On the 22nd March 2011 version 4 of the ever popular Firefox browser was released. With this release came a myriad of additions and improvements. On the whole the team at Mozilla have done a great job. However, this is not to say that the browser has been improved in all areas. After updating [...]
VizWiz app reviewThe VizWiz app for the iPhone is humanising technology at its best. It’s a remarkable fusion of social networking and innovative technology. Blind and partially sighted people can take a picture of an object, voice record a question about the object, and send it out into the ether for identification.
How do you detect a screen reader?The short answer is that you can’t. At the time of writing there isn’t a way to reliably detect whether someone visiting your site is using a screen reader (or screen magnifier). You might have heard that Flash will do the trick, but that might not be quite the solution you’re expecting.
If accessibility got the deciding voteWith the elections and referendum on the voting system used in the UK happening today, we at Nomensa have been wondering what would happen if the deciding vote were based on the level of accessibility achieved by each of the three main political parties websites. To a certain extent, accessibility has the potential to have more of an effect on individual voting than you would first expect.
Creating Accessible ChartsIntroduction I was recently tasked with the challenge of creating a series of accessible charts and graphs for an internal project. We were attempting to present some graphs showing site usage statistics pulled from one of our google analytics accounts. Charts and Graphs can be tricky to implement on web pages in such a way [...]
Getting accessibility testing rightWhen it comes to accessibility testing, there are three approaches. Automated testing, manual testing and user centred testing. All three have their uses, and all three have their limitations. Understanding how they fit together is the key to successful accessibility testing.
Keyboard TrapsYou’re sat at your computer, triumphant in completing that all important piece of code you’ve been working on. You quickly check your email which consequently causes your computer to stop responding. We all know the scenario… You haven’t saved your work for a while, cannot remember how to rework what you have lost and have an important deadline looming. You re-boot your computer and sit rewriting the code that you just lost, cursing yourself for not saving your work more frequently.
If this sounds familiar you already know about the inevitable frustration that follows. The brief interruption to your working day has cost you time, money and compromised what dignity you have left.
