Categories
interview testing webaim

WAVE now available in Spanish

WebAIM recently announced that their free web accessibility evaluation tool WAVE is now available in Spanish. It’s a great tool for testing web sites, and there’s even a Firefox toolbar plugin!

WebAIM plans to translate the utility to more languages possibly Portuguese, German, Japanese, Thai, Turkish, and Russian. They are seeking volunteers to help; if you are interested, please contact WebAIM.

By the way, you can read a recent interview with Jared Smith of WebAIM from totallyaccessible.com.

WAVE logo

Categories
audio captcha

CAPTCHA Alternatives and Articles

Seems like there’s been more talk about CAPTCHA lately (stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”). Most of us dislike the use of CAPTCHA in web forms. And all of us (I hope) can certainly agree that it’s poor in usability, and often times not accessible–even for any human user; see Top 10 Worst Captchas. Even so, it’s still way too common on the web. Damn spammers are forcing developers to implement this poor technique.

Fortunately, the collective intelligence of developers across the world have created many alternatives to CAPTCHA. Here are some great ideas from WebAIM’s article Spam-free accessible forms:

  • Detect spam-like content within submitted form elements.
  • Detect content within a hidden form element.
  • Validate the submitted form values.
  • Search for the same content in multiple form elements.
  • Generate dynamic content to ensure the form is submitted within a specific time window or by the same user.
  • Create a multi-stage form or form verification page.
  • Ensure the form is posted from your server.

Here are some other articles about the (in)accessibility of CAPTCHA and other resolutions:

Example of impossible CAPTCHA:

Categories
heading screenreader video

Video: Importance of HTML Headings for Accessibility

In the YouTube video Importance of HTML Headings for Accessibility, the user “gringochapin” (who is blind) demonstrates browsing a web page by its headings using a screen reader (JAWS). He demos a few different pages including a good and poor example. This is an excellent example of how proper headings is important for web accessibility. Ironically, there are no captions for this video.

Categories
administrative aria expert interview podcast standards

Podcast #71: Gez Lemon Interview & ARIA

Download Web Axe Episode 71 (Gez Lemon Interview & ARIA)

[transcript of podcast 71]

New Song!

This episode premieres the new Web Axe theme song, check it out! Created by Jeff Ensign.

Gez Lemon, ARIA expert

Gez Lemon is a world leader in the web accessibility profession and its community. He as an Accessibility Consultant for The Paciello Group, a company devoted to accessibility in technology. He maintains a popular blog Juicy Studio in which he’s written many excellent articles and innovative scripts. Gez is a member of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force (ATF). He’s become an expert in WAI ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications). You may also follow Gez on Twitter (or Accessible Twitter) @GezLemon.

Related Links

News Links

Categories
adobe aria basic wcag

Five Layers, Questions, Adobe Encourages, Great Basics

The 5 Layers Of Web Accessibility
Great slide deck on Slideshare. In addition to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Dirk Ginader adds “CSS for JavaScript” and ARIA.

Is Your Web Site Accessible?
Great questions a web designer and developer should continually ask oneself.

Adobe encourages the European commission to use WCAG 2.0
Boring, but important.

Accessibility Basics
A great beginning-level article from Opera. Topics include:

  • What is accessibility?
  • Designing with accessibility in mind
  • Interoperability requirements
  • Features of an accessible web page
  • Standards for accessibility