Web Axe – blog and podcast on web accessibility

Reading List Nov 2022

Recommended articles and presentations from over the last few months:

Learn Accessibility course on web.dev by Carie Fisher
5 Visual Treatments that Improve Accessibility by NNGroup
Buttons and the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon (how to, and how not to, label buttons) by Manuel Matuzovic
aria-label is a code smell by Eric Bailey
Cognitive Overlords A11yTalks with Alex Tait
7 tactics that benefit both accessibility and SEO by Deque Systems
The anatomy of visually-hidden by TPGi
5 takeaways from screen reader usability interviews by Jess Bud
Focus appearance explained and Bag some [WCAG] AAA wins where you can by TemperTemper
Foundations: HTML semantics by TetraLogical
Under-Engineered Patterns for #a11yTOconf by Adrian Roselli
BONUS: Blast from the past! What Is ARIA Even For? A most entertaining and informative video from by Heydon Pickering, Nov 2020.

Web Axe publishing update

Post author By Dennis
Post date November 12, 2022
No Comments on Web Axe publishing update

So much has happened since the last Web Axe post over 18 months ago. The turmoil with Twitter lately (thanks to evil Elon) has inspired a resurgence of a more friendly and responsible Internet – self-publishing and decentralized content, so let’s hope this continues.

One thing we’ve learned over the last couple decades is that large corporations and their owners should not be the owners of the news, of social media, of us.

There will be more Web Axe blog posts coming, and more often. And the Twitter content will be cross-posted from Mastodon, a completely free, decentralized, and open-sourced social media platform. Besides this blog (and RSS feed), please feel free to follow Web Axe on Mastodon at @WebAxe@a11y.info.

PS: good tweets

Elon the new Twitter fail whale. Lol pic.twitter.com/0Bliwc0hZp

— 🇺🇦💧 💧 Angry Granny (@AngryGranny1) November 4, 2022

Over 1 million people have joined Mastodon since October 27. Between that and those who returned to their old accounts, the number of active users has risen to over 1.6 million today, which, for context, is over 3 times what it was just about two weeks ago!

— Mastodon (@joinmastodon) November 12, 2022

event roundup

Upcoming Accessibility Events (mid-2021)

Post author By Dennis
Post date March 18, 2021
2 Comments on Upcoming Accessibility Events (mid-2021)

With CSUN and axe-con ending, what are other events or conferences are coming up? Here’s a list of upcoming digital accessibility events in mid-2021. Feel free to comment with more.

TechAccess Oklahoma 2021, April 20-22
Added: Web4All April 19-20
Making a COVID-19 Site Accessible: From Tweet to Action (live YouTube), A11yTalks series, April 22
A Future Date conference, date to be announced @afuturedateconf
Global Accessibility Awareness Day, May 20 #GAAD
Accessibility Camp Bay Area, May 22, @A11yCampBay
John Slatin Virtual AccessU 2021, May 13 and 18–20, Knowbility
Accessibility Toronto Camp, Saturday May 29, tweet announcement, @a11yTO #a11yTOCamp
Inclusive Design 24 returns September 16, @id24conf #id24
M-Enabling Summit, October 4-6, 2021, Washington DC @menablingsummit
Accessing Higher Ground – November 15-19, submit speaker proposal (due 5/12)

Also, check out my Twitter list of accessibility meetups around the world.

jobs

Digital Accessibility Jobs, Jan 2021

Post author By Dennis
Post date January 18, 2021
No Comments on Digital Accessibility Jobs, Jan 2021

More great opportunities in the field of digital accessibility.

Senior UX Designer, Accessibility at Ad Hoc (remonte/DC).
Accessibility Director at California Community Colleges (CCC) Technology Center.
Web Accessibility Programmer at California Community Colleges in San Mateo, CA.
Accessibility Consultant at Deque Systems in Herndon, VA, or remote location.
UX Accessibility Specialist II at Edward Jones in San Francisco, CA.
Accessibility Engineer at Vispero (Remote).
Accessibility Lead at Zendesk in San Francisco, CA.
Accessibility Program Lead at Amazon (remote).
Accessibility Engineer at MURAL (Remote).
Digital Accessibility Consulting Engineer at Stanford in Palo Alto, CA.
Sr. Accessibility Specialist at Thomson Reuters.
Senior Accessibility Lead at Spotify in New York, NY.
Mobile Engineer: Accessibility at Babylon Health in Austin, TX.

As always, watch out for more job listings on Twitter via @a11yJobs, @EasyChirp, and me @WebAxe.

code design roundup

Web Accessible Code Libraries and Design Patterns

Post author By Dennis
Post date January 7, 2021
11 Comments on Web Accessible Code Libraries and Design Patterns

Within a web development organization, it’s ideal to maintain (and enforce usage of) design patterns and a components library. And they should work together; design patterns create consistency among visual elements across projects and the components library creates consistent implementation of those patterns during development. This is especially important on several levels including accessibility.

Here is an extensive list of recommended code libraries, patterns, and design systems. It’s one list instead of separating by category as many have elements of each. There are also some related articles below. Please leave a comment for any updates, corrections, additions, etc.

U.S. Web Design System version 2 from United States government (previous version: U.S. Web Design Standards)
Assets Framework by U.S. federal government website managed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (requires 6 JS and 3 CSS files)
Government Service Design Manual (UK)
GOV.UK Design System — and blog post Introducing the GOV.UK Design System
BBC GEL
Australian Government Design System
Online Accessibility Toolkit by The Government of South Australia
AccDC Technical Style Guide by WhatSock/Bryan Garaventa
Accessible_Components by Scott O’Hara
No Style by Adam Silver
MIND Patterns from eBay by eBay/Ian McBurnie
Cauldron React pattern library by Deque Systems (Cauldron vanilla JS version but is deprecated)
Code Library by Deque University
Tenon-UI accessible React components library
Foundation for Sites by ZURB
A11Y Style Guide by @CarieFisher
Accessible design patterns by @LeonieWatson
Demos by Web Overhauls by Web Axe author @DennisL
Modern Web Accessibility Demos by @PaulJAdam
Accessible Solutions by @haltersweb
Simply Accessible Examples – training and workshop examples by Simply Accessible
Vuetensils – A reportedly accessible component library for Vue.js
Lightning Design System by Salesforce
Polaris by Shopify
Rivet Design System by Indiana University
Lion Web Components by ING Bank; Lion on GitHub
Chakra – React component library by Segun Adebayo
Web Experience Toolkit (WET) by Government of Canada

Related resources:

W3C WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices – Design Patterns and Widgets
Web Accessibility Tutorials by W3C WAI
Inclusive Components article series by Heydon Pickering
Design Patterns for [UK] Government Services UXPA 2016 (Slideshare) by Caroline Jarrett
Style Guide Best Practices by Brad Frost
Creating A Living Style Guide: A Case Study by Steven Lambert
Website Style Guide Resources – long list of real life pattern libraries, code standards documents and content style guides.
Design Systems vs. Pattern Libraries vs. Style Guides – What’s the Difference? by UXPin
Scaling accessibility with a design system by Geri Reid
accessible-slick – the last (accessible) carousel you’ll ever need, by Accessible360