WebAIM Blog

“Do We Need To Change the Web Accessibility Game Plan” (inspired by this blog entry) was the title of a panel session I moderated this week at the CSUN conference. The panel consisted of Sandi Wassmer, John Foliot, and Jennison Asuncion. When I proposed and organized the panel, I did not anticipate being outnumbered by three Canadians, nor did I anticipate the amazing discussion and energy that would result. It was nerve-racking to manage the passionate conversation, especially in front of so many of my highly respected mentors and peers.

As the session began, we established a #gameplan hashtag. My Twitter stream exploded with over 300 tweets during and shortly after the hour-long panel. Below are many of the tweets (some have been trimmed) that capture just a few of the thoughts and messages of the conversation. Continue reading The Web Accessibility Game Plan

The results from the third WebAIM screen reader user survey have been published at http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey3/ These survey results show interesting trends from the previous January 2009 survey and the October 2009 survey, as well as much new, useful information.

A few items of note:

• JAWS is still the primary screen reader, but usage is decreasing as usage of NVDA and VoiceOver significantly increases.
• The perception of free or low-cost screen readers (such as NVDA and VoiceOver) is improving.
• 98.4% of respondents had JavaScript enabled.
• Respondent outlook for future web accessibility is optimistic.
• Two-thirds of the respondents use a screen reader on a mobile device, up from only 12% two years ago.
• Most respondents find longdesc useful.
• Social media use among screen reader users with disabilities has increased, though still lags behind respondents that do not have disabilities.
• 12.8% use screen magnification with their screen reader.
• Use of headings for page navigation continues to increase while use of “skip” links and access keys has decreased.

We invite you to review the survey results. If you have comments or questions or if there are components of the data you would like us to analyze further, please comment below.

The next few months at WebAIM will be full of conferences, presentations and trainings. Below our the sessions and activities we have planned, in chronological order. Continue reading Upcoming WebAIM Events

As many are aware, the Department of Justice requested comment on the possibility of revising the Title II and III regulations within the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to explicitly include Internet accessibility of covered entities. ANPRM comments posted by others share a wide array of viewpoints, from total opposition to support for the strictest of implementations. Internal to WebAIM, there is disagreement and has been much discussion about if and how these regulations should be revised. We believe our recommendations for implementation strike a balance between impact on entities while promoting improved accessibility for individuals with disabilities.

The following were comments provided by WebAIM to the Department of Justice: Continue reading ADA ANPRM Response

Nearly three years ago we published a blog entry titled The plague of outline:0. At the time, it was becoming increasingly common for web sites to disable the focus indicators for links via CSS, thus making it nearly impossible for sighted keyboard users to determine which link currently has keyboard focus. Unfortunately, in recent years, this trend has continued with many popular web sites removing the focus indicator, including Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, AOL, CNN, MySpace, ESPN, etc. Visit these pages and (assuming you have vision), try to navigate via the keyboard to see how entirely inaccessible this renders these web sites.

As noted in the original article, many of these sites use a CSS reset file that removes the focus indicator. One of the most popular of these reset files is Eric Meyer’s reset.css. In a recent update to reset.css, Eric has now commented out the line that removes focus indicators, thus requiring author intervention to re-enable it. UPDATE: Today Eric posted some thoughts about how best to address this.

A few months ago, the code at HTML5 Reset was launched without focus indicators. This was called to their attention on Twitter and within a few hours they had reintroduced keyboard focus indicators by default.

The recently launched OutlineNone.com web site draws attention to the distinct accessibility issues of removing focus indicators. Roger Johansson, among others, has also wrote on this topic – Do not remove the outline from links and form controls.

WebAIM applauds all of these efforts. Combined, perhaps they will change the course of this phenomena. They certainly have raised awareness of this significant, yet easily removed and even more easily avoided accessibility issue.