Categories
firefox html5 longdesc

Longdesc Links, History, Future

Recently I Twittered daily about longdesc, the classic unsung HTML attribute which supports long descriptions of images. Here’s a summary of the tweets/links:

Some History

To make a long story short (pun intended), longdesc was made obsolete in HTML5 but then returned. I applaud @JohnFoliot, @Laura_Carlson, and @Chaals in their dedicated efforts to return longdesc. I agree it should remain as there is no sufficient ARIA replacement.

Here are more great links on the topic on long description over the last few years.

The Future

Check out the ARIA 1.1 spec for aria-describedat ARIA 1.1 spec for aria-describedat! The aria-describedby attribute is like a combination of longdesc and aria-describedby. I’m pretty excited about this as it seems to provide a method for long description that we can all agree on.

Categories
event firefox podcast testing

Podcast #82: Deque Labs FireEyes

Dennis and Ross speak to Dylan Barrell (VP, Product Development) and Brian Kerr (Software Developer) of Deque Systems/Deque Labs. The main topic is the newly developed Worldspace FireEyes plugin for the Firefox browser which is being released in Beta status. It is a web accessibility tool that works in conjunction with the widely used Firebug Firefox extension. You can follow Deque Labs on Twitter.

Download Web Axe Episode 82 (Deque Labs FireEyes)

[transcript of podcast 82]

NOTE: As of June 28, the Worldspace FireEyes add-on has not yet been released. It’s planned for end of June.

UPDATE: On July 1, the Worldspace FireEyes beta is released! Read the FireEyes announcement.

Chatter & News

Categories
"assistive technology" browser firefox RSS visual

Free Browsers for Visual Impairment

I recently came across an article from disaboom called “Assistive Technology: Top 8 Free Browsers for Visual Impairment and More“. The link was also popular on Twitter. But one problem, there are no links to the mentioned browser! So I went and found them:

  1. WebbIE -accessible browser, RSS news reader and more.
  2. EdWebtalking web browser that can display web pages as text and symbols.
  3. Fire Vox – Talking Browser Extension for Firefox (add-on page).
  4. CliCk, Speak – less advanced version of Fire Vox.
  5. Orca – speedy and powerful Gecko-based browser.
  6. Simply Web 2000 – outdated; optimized for Internet Explorer 5.
  7. SpeakOn -PC-based media suite program (four apps).
  8. Thunder – package contains the WebbIE Text browser and more.

I’d like to add that Disaboom is a pretty nice site. In their words:

Disaboom is the leading resource for disability information and real-life articles about people with disabilities. Our broad range of topics, including health conditions, lifestyle, and helpful resources, help you create the life you want.

Categories
firefox law mobile news twitter

Web Accessibility News

Latest goings-on in the web accessibility community. Found all on a valuable resource, Twitter!

Categories
articles expert firefox twitter

Improving Twitter Accessibility

I admit I’m hooked on Twitter, but unfortunately, like many web sites, it’s not very web accessible.

Thanks to Gez Lemon of Juicy Studio, you may now implement a Focus Twitter Greasemonkey script to help with web accessibility, specifically keyboard use. With the script, the user is now able to view the Favorite, Reply and Delete links for each tweet in the timeline on the focus event (in addition to on current mouseover event, which obviously requires a mouse).

In order to use the script, you have to install Greasemonkey which is a Firefox add-on, so it obviously requires the Firefox web browser.

Learn more about it in the Juicy Studio article Twitter Focus.

UPDATE (Feb 3)

  • The script was broken due to Twitter changing code on their site, but it is now fixed.
  • I (Dennis) am working on an Accessible Twitter web site and hope to launch it within a couple weeks!