Author Archives: Marco

About Marco

Marco Zehe, Hamburg, Germany, Mozilla a11y QA.

Mozilla is launching the Aurora channel, bringing accessibility features to you more rapidly!

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Marco

As was just posted on the Mozilla blog, Firefox is moving to a more rapid release cycle from now on. This also means that accessibility features and fixes will be delivered to users more rapidly than in the past. And … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Firefox 4 is here!

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Marco

Firefox 4 has finally hit the release channels and is available for download immediately! This is a major update that brings a lot of new features and enhancements as well as loads of stability and performance fixes to your browsing … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox, Mozilla, QA | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments

The WebVisum extension needs you!

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Marco

This is a shout-out to all interested extension developers who have some time to donate to the WebVisum extension project. As you can read in my review of the extension, it is one of the most important extensions for blind … Continue reading →

Posted in Extensions, Firefox | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

First time driver: A critical fix for Firefox 4.0Beta11

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Marco

This already happened a while ago, but I just now found time to blog about it. It was during preparation of Firefox 4.0Beta11 that I found a critical accessibility issue while the second build candidate was already in testing. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, QA, Testing | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

New accessibility support for HTML5 elements and attributes

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Marco

In the nightly builds starting November 9th, 2010, there are some HTML5 elements and attributes newly supported by the accessibility APIs. This will be in Firefox 4.0. Landmark elements mapped to WAI-ARIA landmark roles We are mapping the following HTML5 … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox | Tagged , , , , | 23 Comments

New in Accessibility in Firefox 4.0

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Marco

The below is a preliminary recap of the new features in accessibility for the upcoming release of Firefox 4.0. API support Most of the changes are under-the-hood changes that do not have API changes as a consequence. There is one … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox, Mozilla, NVDA, Orca | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

What’s up with all those windows?

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Marco

This blog post has to do with the reasons why Firefox 4.0Beta 5 and Beta 6 are totally inaccessible to most, if not all, Windows assistive technologies, and also cause problems with some mouse drivers and such. It all started … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, Mozilla, NVDA, QA, Testing | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Apple’s iOS 4 supports WAI-ARIA landmarks

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Marco

This is, I believe, my 100th post on this blog, and I’m using it to announce that Apple’s iOS 4, released yesterday for the iPhone and iPod Touch, supports WAI-ARIA landmark in the VoiceOver screen reader. VoiceOver has had, since … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Apple, ARIA | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

A cheers to the try-server!

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Marco

Umm, yes, I know, it’s unusual to drink to a technology, esp at this early hour of the day! But I just wanted to give a shoutout to Try Server and the team at Mozilla’s build/release engineering department who built … Continue reading →

Posted in QA | 1 Comment

Roundup: What is the Mozilla Accessibility Team working on?

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Marco

Well, it’s been a while since I posted here I’m afraid. The reason was not an outbreak of laziness, but on the contrary the fact that the accessibility team at Mozilla is alive and kickin’, and working on the next … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, Thunderbird | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

CSUN 2010 recap

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Marco

From March 22 to 27, the 5th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference took place at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego, California. It is most commonly referred to as CSUN 2010. The Mozilla Foundation had … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Apple, ARIA, Firefox, Mobile, Mozilla, NVDA, Orca, Thunderbird | Tagged , | 5 Comments

The new “Freedom Of Choice” does not account for accessibility needs!

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Marco

Before continuing, please read

Posted in Accessibility | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Easy ARIA Tip #5: aria-expanded and aria-controls

Posted on February 10, 2010 by Marco

In this Easy ARIA tip, I will give you a bit of a hint on how to make not too complex, but still dynamic, menus accessible. We often encounter menus that pop in and out upon a mouse click or … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Thunderbird 3 is coming out soon, and it’s accessible!

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Marco

The release of Thunderbird 3 is just around the corner. Aside from all the great new features Thunderbird 3 has in general, its accessibility story is also one which should be celebrated once the release has happened. Thunderbird 3 is … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Thunderbird | 23 Comments

New accessibility features in Firefox 3.6

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Marco

Firefox 3.6 is just around the corner, and despite all the birthday celebrations, and the looking back that comes with it naturally, I think it is also time to look ahead. So here’s a roundup of what accessibility features will … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | 56 Comments

Happy birthday, Firefox!

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Marco

In case you haven’t noticed already: Today is Firefox’s 5th birthday! On November 9th, 2004, Firefox 1.0 was released to the general public after more than two years of development. And boy, was I jealous! All my sighted friends could … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | 18 Comments

Easy ARIA Tip #4: Landmarks

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Marco

Yes, they’re back! This is the fourth Easy ARIA Tip in a trilogy of Easy ARIA Tips. This week, WebAIM published the results of their second screen reader survey. One of the things to note for me was that not … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA | 20 Comments

Firefox 3.5.4 fixes certain comboboxes on Linux with Orca

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Marco

If you haven’t noticed yet, Firefox 3.5.4 hit the web last night. For accessibility, this brings one major fix all of our Linux and Solaris users will appreciate: Certain comboboxes such as the “Security Question” one on the GMail signup … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, Orca | 7 Comments

NVDA 2009.1 beta, what’s in it for Firefox users?

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Marco

En route to their 2009.1 final release, the NV Access team has released 2009.1beta1. Here’s a run-down of new features since their 0.6p3 release, of which I did a similar post. This does not cover everything, just the bits that … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox, NVDA | 11 Comments

The importance of placement of HTML elements in a document

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Marco

This was an issue I ran into today, so thought I’d blog about it. When dealing with dynamically added and removed content on web pages, there are usually two approaches: One approach is to show and hide content in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility | 18 Comments