Blog
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Making Testing Easier: An Accessibility Checklist
Accessibility testing can be hard and time consuming, especially if you are new to it. The mix of browsers, operating systems, and user-space tools is vast and ever-changing. The WCAG guidelines are the de facto standards for accessibility requirements across the world wide web, but they're not exactly light reading, and they can be difficult for newcomers to fully understand and take in. What Do…
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Accessible Graphs and Charts
If you have a lot of data that you need to convey to your audience you could use a table, but a graph or chart can help convey the same information much more simply and quickly to your readers. However, we need to be careful that the graphs that we create are still available to our whole audience. There are some simple ways that we can ensure this. Contents Text Alternatives Alt…
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Accessibility Myths And Misconceptions
In the week following Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) the Accessiblity London group asked: What are your most commonly encountered accessibility myths or misconceptions?— Accessibility London (@A11yLondon) May 19, 2020 The question was asked in about half a dozen languages, and there were a lot of great answers, but the same few kept repeating. Many of them were things…
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PHP EnumType: an Alternative to SplEnum
When it comes to data types, PHP doesn't come with much out of the box. That's where SPL comes in, a collection of more complex object types and interfaces. One of the types that it comes with is SplEnum which is part of the SplTypes and is not installed by default. On Linux and Unix systems, this isn't a major problem, as there are available packages to install it easily, but if you're running…
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WebAim 1 Million and Global Accessibility Awareness Day
It's Global Accessibility Awareness Day today, and more of us than ever are relying on online services and resources due to the Covid19 pandemic. With a huge swathe of the world being forced to work from home, we're seeing a greater need to ensure our products, tools, and websites are accessible to everyone. The WebAIM one million project paints a pretty bleak picture, as it looks like websites…
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Using Intersection Observer to Improve Image Loading Performance
Page performance is always something we should consider when building websites and applications, whether that's real or the way that a user perceves your site is loading. Some experts would actually say that in some situations, perception of load times is more important than actual load times; it's why some people prefer progress bars over spinners. …
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Accessibility Testing for Developers
If you're developing for the front end, then it's important to understand how to test that what you produce is accessible. Testing across multiple browsers has been part of front end development since the beginning; browsers would always interpret your code in slightly different ways, both small and large. Accessibility testing is no different really, you're just approaching things from a slightly…
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Making an Accessible Hamburger Menu
With more and more web usage being performed on mobile devices, increasing every year the, now common, hamburger menu is here to stay. One of the main problems that needs addressing is the usability and accessibility of the menu. A Typical Example Keyboard Handling Showing Focus Improving for the Screen Reader Setting the Expanded State …
