Talent Lab Tech Notes

Tech Notes

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.

Tech Notes

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.

Tech Notes

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.

Tech Notes

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.

Tech Notes

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.

Tech Content

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.

Tech Notes

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.

Tech Notes

Videos have quickly become a popular online medium, being regularly consumed by millions of people around the world engaging with information on a daily basis. And with that comes the challenge of ensuring everyone can easily access the content without missing any information that might only be presented visually.

It is normal to ignore learning about things that you believe don’t directly apply to you. Do you know how to perfectly balance an egg on a stick? Or maybe how to accurately type into your phone with your hands on your back? Probably not, because you probably have never had to. And you probably won’t learn it either, because, well, why would you? But some skills may actually come in more handy than you might initially think. When it comes to accessibility, for example, everyone benefits and you don't have to be a dedicated accessibility expert to make a difference.