Category Archives: Software

Accessibility for Software and Devices | Microsoft

Our commitment to accessibility Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. With over 1 billion people with disabilities in the world, we’re passionate about ensuring that our products and services are designed for people of all abilities. We are committed to transparency, accountability, and inclusion inContinueContinue reading “Accessibility for Software and Devices | Microsoft”

Face ID Accessibility. Apple offers some answers

Apple today made a series of hardware announcements. Understandably, the announcement that has caused the most social media chatter in the blind community relates to the iPhone X, and it’s new Face ID feature. Apple has earned our trust over the years by ensuring that its products are fully accessible from their initial launch, soContinueContinue reading “Face ID Accessibility. Apple offers some answers”

What’s new with Accessibility in iOS 11?

iOS 11 has some helpful new options in Accessibility to assist any person and everybody customise their iPhone and iPad interface to paintings with them and for them. Here is what’s new. Sensible Invert Sensible Invert is a brand new atmosphere to be added to the Invert Colours phase of Accessibility in iOS. While colourContinueContinue reading “What’s new with Accessibility in iOS 11?”

ARIA Labels and Relationships  |  Web  | Google Developers

Labels ARIA provides several mechanisms for adding labels and descriptions to elements. In fact, ARIA is the only way to add accessible help or description text. Let’s look at the properties ARIA uses to create accessible labels. aria-label aria-label allows us to specify a string to be used as the accessible label. This overrides any otherContinueContinue reading “ARIA Labels and Relationships  |  Web  | Google Developers”

10 guidelines to improve your web accessibility

We put together a list of ten web accessibility guidelines that will guarantee access to your site to any person, in spite of their disabilities. There’s a quote by Tim Berners-Lee, Director of W3C and inventor of the World Wide Web, that says, “The power of the web is in its universality”. As people who make a living byContinueContinue reading “10 guidelines to improve your web accessibility”

Accessibility | Improvements to the next udpate are already planned

In both the Windows Anniversary and Creators Update, Microsoft has added many new enhancements to features across the operating system to improve accessibility for its customers who have low vision, are blind, have a partial hearing loss or deafness in either or both ears, live with physical disabilities, or need assistance reading text on theirContinueContinue reading “Accessibility | Improvements to the next udpate are already planned”

Accessibility Testing: Checkers & Development Tools Review

Tools of the Trade In a different article, I outline the basics foundations of accessibility standards: “Understanding s508 & WCAG 2.0”. To further expand this, let’s look at various development tools to help author accessible content conformant to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (“WCAG”) 2.0 standards. Getting Started For a primer or refresher on whatContinueContinue reading “Accessibility Testing: Checkers & Development Tools Review”

Semantic HTML: The Unbearable Rightness of Being

This is the fourth post in a series on accessibility from Shopify’s UX team. We’re publishing posts every two weeks. Check out the introduction. Using valid, semantic HTML is one of the most impactful ways to make your site more accessible. Writing semantic HTML means using the HTML element with the most specific, correct meaningContinueContinue reading “Semantic HTML: The Unbearable Rightness of Being”

The 7 Factors that Influence User Experience 

User Experience (UX) is critical to the success or failure of a product in the market but what do we mean by UX? All too often UX is confused with usability which describes to some extent how easy a product is to use and it is true that UX as a discipline began with usabilityContinueContinue reading “The 7 Factors that Influence User Experience “

How a Smart Home Empowers People with Disabilities

… While advances in personal technology continue at a rapid pace, at times their designers seem to forget about the population that could perhaps benefit from it the most. Stabelfeldt says just the ability to charge a phone with a wheelchair didn’t even exist until a few years ago. But features like Apple’s “Home” appContinueContinue reading “How a Smart Home Empowers People with Disabilities”

JAWS screen reader gets more bight

Freedom Scientific has recently released JAWS 18.0.2738, which incorporates several important improvements made between the JAWS February 2017 release and this mid April 2017 update, plus dozens of less revolutionary but very practical enhancements. JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is the world’s most popular screen reader, developed for computer users whose vision loss prevents themContinueContinue reading “JAWS screen reader gets more bight”

Windows 10 free upgrade offer still on for AT users

Microsoft continues to support a free upgrade to Windows 10 for people who are using Assistive Technologies (AT) in Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, despite officially ending their promotional offer on 29 July 2016. Curated by (Lifekludger) Read full article at Source: Windows 10 free upgrade offer still on for AT users |ContinueContinue reading “Windows 10 free upgrade offer still on for AT users”

A group of Google employees spent their ‘20% time’ making Google Maps wheelchair-friendly

  Google Maps is now wheelchair-friendly. The wildly popular map app will now tell you whether locations are suitable for people with access needs — and it’s thanks to a group of Googlers who worked on the feature in their “20% time.” It’s a famous policy of the Californian search giant: Employees can spend 20%ContinueContinue reading “A group of Google employees spent their ‘20% time’ making Google Maps wheelchair-friendly”

Make your Word documents accessible – Office Support

This topic gives you step-by-step instructions to make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities.People who are blind or have low vision can understand your documents more easily if you create them with accessibility in mind. Visual Components such as this image need meaningful alternate text. Curated by (Lifekludger) Read full article at Source:ContinueContinue reading “Make your Word documents accessible – Office Support”

Developing Shopify Themes with Accessibility in Mind

We want to help you get excited about accessibility, understand its importance within the web industry, and inspire you to integrate accessibility checks in your daily development workflow. We’ll also demonstrate some simple ways to make your clients’ online stores the best in the world, for everyone. The importance of web accessibilityAccessibility, also know toContinueContinue reading “Developing Shopify Themes with Accessibility in Mind”

Google’s DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows better than a pro | New Scientist

An artificial intelligence system developed by researchers at DeepMind and the University of Oxford got so good by watching 5000 hours of BBC programmes Artificial intelligence is getting its teeth into lip reading. A project by Google’s DeepMind and the University of Oxford applied deep learning to a huge data set of BBC programmes toContinueContinue reading “Google’s DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows better than a pro | New Scientist”

What the Heck Is Inclusive Design? ◆ 24 ways

Recently, I’ve been using the term “inclusive design” and calling myself an “inclusive designer” a lot. I’m not sure where I first heard it or who came up with it, but the terminology feels like a good fit for the kind of stuff I care to do when I’m not at a pub or asleep.ContinueContinue reading “What the Heck Is Inclusive Design? ◆ 24 ways”

Introducing A11y Toggle

If you’re only here for the code, go straight to the GitHub repository. A few weeks ago, I introduced a11y-dialog. Today, I am coming back with another accessibility-focused module: a11y-toggle. At Edenspiekermann, we used to heavily rely on the checkbox hack to toggle content visibility. Unfortunately, this hack (the word is an understatement) involves someContinueContinue reading “Introducing A11y Toggle”

The Accessibility Difference Between Aria-hidden and role=”presentation”

In dealing with role=”presentation” and aria-hidden=”true” you may find that they both have deceptively similar functions when it relates to how they interact with assistive technology (screen readers). Before we dig into the difference between these two attributes we first need to learn a little bit about how accessibility in a Web browser works and this thing called: The Accessibility TreeContinueContinue reading “The Accessibility Difference Between Aria-hidden and role=”presentation””

Accessibility in Office 365—enabling greater digital inclusion – Office Blogs

The 2016 International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD), focuses on laying the foundation for a future of greater inclusion for persons with disabilities. In honor of IDPD, we invite all Office 365 customers to lay the foundation for a more inclusive digital environment by discovering and using accessibility capabilities built into Office 365. CreateContinueContinue reading “Accessibility in Office 365—enabling greater digital inclusion – Office Blogs”

The woman featured in Apple’s accessibility video also edited it

Apple’s accessibility features help this woman with cerebral palsy make films. https://youtu.be/XB4cjbYywqg Curated by (Lifekludger) Read full article at Source: The woman featured in Apple’s accessibility video also edited it

The Importance of Accessibility in the Dev Process

Developers rarely talk about the importance of having the right accessibility strategy or tool in place to help with our development. Actually, we barely seem to talk about having an accessibility strategy or tool at all.With the issue of accessibility at an all-time high, it’s time we, as a development community, talk about the importanceContinueContinue reading “The Importance of Accessibility in the Dev Process”

Simple Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Accessible

Web site accessibility has been a lingering issue on the Internet for quite some time. However, with several laws in the US pushing website accessibility as a primary feature in public and private web entities, it has affected the Internet on a wider scale. Accessibility has been proven to be beneficial to websites, public orContinueContinue reading “Simple Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Accessible”

Windows 10 upgrade for assistive technology users

For the general public, the free upgrade offer to Windows 10 ends on 29 July. However, if you use assistive technologies, you can still get the free upgrade offer even after the general public deadline expires, as Microsoft continues our efforts to improve the Windows 10 experience for people who use these technologies. With theContinueContinue reading “Windows 10 upgrade for assistive technology users”