Welcome to the Talent Lab Tech Notes blog! Explore tips, perspectives, and news from our team of accessibility and usability experts and AFB Talent Lab participants in this collection of articles that’s updated monthly.
If you have ever used Android and Talkback, I’m sure you have heard the “Double tap to activate” instruction before. It is an indication that a control is clickable. This is fine for things like buttons, which should be clickable, but the issue is that this announcement happens when there is a click event tied to a certain element. It doesn’t matter if the click does anything or not, or if the element is announced as a valid control such as “button”.
The term “Digital Accessibility” may at first seem daunting. For many, accessibility can be an entirely new concept, and so, when faced with a situation where you have to apply it, one may be at a loss on where to start. What is the best way to learn? Upon doing general research to familiarize yourself with this new concept, you will most likely encounter advertisements on several “automated testing tools,” and you might think your predicament has a quick fix. That, however, is a false comfort.
Google IO, the annual developer conference, once again amazed audiences with its groundbreaking announcements. Held on May 10, 2023 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA, this year's event showcased a wide range of exciting developments across various domains, with a less notable focus on accessibility during the keynote. In this blog post, we provide a comprehensive overview of the key accessibility-related announcements made at Google IO 2023, highlighting the remarkable innovations and technologies unveiled.
Ensuring everyone can access digital content is one of our primary goals at AFB. One high-impact, easy-to-start way to make digital content more inclusive is to include alternate text, or alt text. Alternate text is simply a concise description of an image provided as metadata with the image. Content creators, marketers, web designers, and web developers should always include image descriptions as a part of their workflow. This simple addition improves website, marketing material, and document accessibility.
As a blind software developer and accessibility specialist who has been using a screen reader for 14 years, I can say that learning how to effectively use a screen reader can feel daunting. In fact, many who are new to understanding digital accessibility may not even know exactly what a screen reader is or how it works.
Screen reader software presents computer content verbally through audio or through braille displays. This software achieves this by taking the computer’s content, which may not necessarily be presented in a linear format visually, and transforming it to a form where every piece of content is either before or after the next. This forms a navigable document with which screen reader users can interact, eliminating the need for a monitor or display.
If you’ve been anywhere on the internet, you’ve encountered accessibility issues. While you might have not noticed them, they’re everywhere. But why are they so common?
Even though sometimes there are explicit decisions made which deprioritize accessibility, we never assume that there's ill intent when we encounter issues. Generally, the problem is lack of awareness coupled with inexperience, which go hand-in-hand.
As a blind accessibility tester with 16 years of screen reader experience, the most frequent accessibility issue I encounter while using and testing digital assets on both mobile and web platforms is the violation of the “Name, Role, Value” guideline, which often poses some serious challenges to screen reader users as it essentially makes navigation a guessing game.
Website accessibility overlays are becoming increasingly common because of the quick and easy accessibility fix they are often promised to provide. However, they not only fail to serve assistive technology users with an effective user experience but also fail to protect website owners from litigation, which is often a principle premise for their usage. At the AFB Talent Lab, we strongly recommend that you do not use any third-party scripts to try to fix your site’s underlying accessibility issues.
Managing focus on a web page is a very common accessibility issue. “Focus,” in this sense, refers to the element on the screen that is currently active or selected. It specifies where the user is currently located on the web page.
Screen readers have a specific key command to tell what the currently focused element is. Moving before and after the element also gives a sense of structure and the element’s order on the page.