Categories
color expert keyboard law

Colorblind, Law, and Lightboxes

Color Sensitive

I usually shy away from About.com, but I recently came across a piece worth mentioning. In the article Are Your Web Pages Color Sensitive? from the HTML/Web Design section, Jennifer Kyrnin provides some good information and techniques for web development with color blindness in mind. Here are some good tips from Jennifer:

  • Don’t use only color to indicate something specific on your page.
  • Desaturate your images to see if they still have impact.
  • Avoid placing red and green together.
  • If you can, find a color blind friend or relative to look at your site.

Did you know that color blindness is an issue with 8 to 12% of males of European origin?

Law Needed

In his blog Yes, we need accessibility laws, Eric Eggert gives an argument for why we need better laws for web accessibility. He states that a good accessibility law should do:

  • Create awareness.
  • Do not create a climate of fear.
  • Create mediations.
  • Reference international standard.
  • Be inclusive.

Lightboxes

In the article Lightboxes and keyboard accessibility from 456 Berea Street, Roger Johansson describes how a lightbox should function with a keyboard. He states:

  • Let me use the left and right arrow keys to step through images in a slideshow.
  • When I press Esc, close the lightbox.
  • Do one of the following:
    • Either add focusable elements (links or buttons) for close/next/previous, put keyboard focus on the first focusable object in the lightbox, make sure I can’t tab to something behind the lightbox, and make it visually obvious which object has keyboard focus.
    • or close the lightbox when I press Tab.
  • When the lightbox closes, return keyboard focus to where it was when I opened it.

In addition, Roger cites the following two articles:

Categories
adobe expert interview podcast webaim

Podcast #75: Jeremy Keith Interview, Google Wave

Ross interviews web guru Jeremy Keith; Dennis and Ross discuss news, articles, and Google Wave.

Download Web Axe Episode 75 (Jeremy Keith Interview, Google Wave)

Chatter

News and Links

Accessibility Review of Google Wave

Google Wave Preview Accessibility Review by Jared Smith. Jared tactfully explains how web accessibility of Google Wave fails miserably. For example:

  • Alternative text is not provided for any images.
  • Background images are used to convey content.
  • Roles, states, and other accessibility properties are not defined.
  • There is no document or heading structure or semantics.
  • Form elements do not have labels or titles.
  • Keyboard focus indication is hidden, making keyboard navigation nearly impossible.
  • Keyboard focus is often trapped.
  • The application becomes unusable and unreadable when text size is increased only slightly.

Jeremy Keith Interview

Co-host Ross Johnson speaks with Jeremy Keith, Adactio.com, a web standards guru, author, and speaker. Here are some great Jeremy Keith links:

Related Links

UPDATE

The podcast was originally cut off by a couple minutes at the end. It is now fixed. Full running time is about 1 hour and 12 minutes.

Categories
"assistive technology" conference

ATIA Chicago 2009

The Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) is presenting a new conference this late October: ATIA Chicago 2009 “Showcasing Excellence in Assistive Technology”.

There are over 200 sessions planned. The list of exhibitors includes:

The conference will be held at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center, in Schaumburg (Chicago), Illinois, U.S.A.

Dates

October 28: Pre-Conference Seminars
October 29: Leadership Workshop
October 29-31: Main Conference

Categories
aria event flash interview news

Accessibility Round-Up from Twitter

Accessibility Review: PetsContained.com by Joe Dolson.

In the United Kingdom, join the campaign for Offcom to increase audio description on TV from 10% to 20%.

Wanted: Flash and Dojo accessibility experts for contract work. Contact John Foliot at the email address: jfoliot AT stanford DOT edu.

Update on The Paciello Group’s ARIA role support: how the Windows browsers stack up.

Rate Accessible Twitter on oneforty.com.

Interviews:

Event reminders: