Category Archives: Accessibility

Apple’s iOS 4 supports WAI-ARIA landmarks

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

Roundup: What is the Mozilla Accessibility Team working on?

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

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!

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Posted in Accessibility | Tagged , | 5 Comments

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

New approaches to Flash and Java accessibility in the browser on Windows

Mick and Jamie from NV Access, the organization behind the free and open-source NVDA screen reader for Windows, are taking new approaches to accessing accessible Flash and Java applets inside the browser. Traditionally, Adobe Flash content is being rendered into … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, NVDA | 22 Comments

The current state of accessible Firefox on the Mac, your help is appreciated!

I’ve been asked time and time again about what the current state is of the possibility of an accessible Firefox on the Mac that interacts with the VoiceOver screen reader. Well, let me recap what the current affair is. First … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Apple, Firefox | 20 Comments

You’re a table, and I don’t care what lies underneath

Over the past couple of weeks, Alex, David and I have been hard at work refactoring, discussing, and implementing better support for accessible tables in Gecko. Some of this has seen the light in Firefox 3.6alpha, but the heart of … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox | 16 Comments

Use CSS3 transforms, makes your pages more accessible!

If you’re one of those types who likes to visually twist, rotate or tweak some text, in previous years the only real choice was to use pictures to achieve such visual effects. However, thanks to CSS3 transforms, supported in Firefox … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | 19 Comments

Blind web devs, jump on the Firebug train!

Late yesterday, Firebug 1.4 was released. Firebug is the web development and debugging tool for Firefox, with a huge user base worldwide. As JJB mentions in his post, UI accessibility was provided for many of the Firebug features by Hans … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Extensions, Firefox | 17 Comments

The WAI-ARIA Windows screen reader shootout

Firefox 3.5 has been released, and now it’s time to take a look at what features of WAI-ARIA are being supported by which Windows screen reader. Competition is healthy in this market, and two new screen readers have started supporting … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox, GMail, Yahoo! | 44 Comments

New accessibility features in Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5 is fast approaching, and it’s time to list all the user-visible changes to the accessibility support in this new version! Support for text attributes, formatting and spell checking Firefox 3.5 exposes text attributes such as bold, underlined, and … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox | 34 Comments

My first experience using an accessible touch screen device

Yes, you read correctly: An accessible touch screen device! This morning, I went to a retail store carrying mostly Apple products and had a look at the new iPhone 3G S that was released in Germany on Friday. Apple revealed … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Apple | 101 Comments