Category Archives: Accessibility

Accessibility fix in 3.0.6

As you may have read already, Firefox 3.0.6 was released on Tuesday. Among the fixes introduced in this version is one for accessibility. It has to do with CaretMoved events and selection changes not being communicated to screen readers properly … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | Tagged , | 1 Comment

New feature: Nesting level and position information for HTML lists

The new year has just begun, and we’re already speeding ahead with new features in Firefox trunk nightlies, AKA version 3.2a1pre. These features won’t see inclusion in Firefox 3.1, but are already the next generation features. The feature I’m going … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | Tagged , | 1 Comment

NV Access published their progress on the Mozilla Foundation grant

The new year starts out with a bang! NV Access, the makers of theNVDA, a free, open-source screen reader for Windows, have published their progress report on the current Mozilla Foundation grant. The grant goals were laid out for a … Continue reading

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Firefox 3.0.5 accessibility: New features

Firefox 3.0.5 has just been released, and as the release notes mention, brings a few accessibility improvements. Here’s what they are! Firefox 3.0.5 exposes all CSS display properties as object attributes now in addition to the older “formatting:block” parameter. However, … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Starting an Accessible Name refactor, need your help in testing!

For those of you following the Firefox/Gecko platform development, or for those interested in helping out, this is a call for participation. If you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty a bit and would like to help the Firefox … Continue reading

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

Why I would not buy an iPod just yet

Recently, Apple announced better accessibility features in iTunes 8 and the 4th generation iPod Nano. This is a major breakthrough in accessibility because now, the maker of a mainstream hardware media player is taking steps to make sure the device … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Apple | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments

Firefox 3.0.2 has been released, lots of accessibility improvements

As was announced on the Mozilla blog, Firefox 2.0.0.17 and 3.0.2 security updates are now available. In addition to the security fixes, there have been a couple of significant accessibility improvements made to Firefox 3.0.2 that I’d like to give … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox | Tagged , | 9 Comments

WebVisum had to switch to an invitational registration system, I can give out invites!

As you may have read on the WebVisum website, the team had to switch to an invitation-based registration system. The spambot abuse attempts became such a toll on the team after such a short time already that they were forced … Continue reading

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

Jim Zemlin on this year’s breakout of the Linux desktop

Jim Zemlin of the Linux foundation wrote a very good post on this year being the year of the Linux desktop breakthrough. One thing he did only mention marginally, but which I think is just as important for certain users/markets, … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Orca | Tagged , | 5 Comments

JAWS 10 public beta’s Firefox 3 support: A review

In the August issue of the “FS Cast” podcast, Freedom Scientific announced the soon-to-be expected availability of JAWS 10 public beta. They also demoed many of the new features, like the automatic forms mode switching. They also mentioned that they … Continue reading

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

A job opportunity in Mozilla accessibility!

The Mozilla Corporation has the following job opportunity available: The Mozilla Corporation is looking for a full time engineer to develop accessibility in its software. The job will involve working with a small team to develop support for a wide … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, Mozilla | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

New: Firefox 3 with Screen Readers FAQ online!

After the release of Firefox 3, it became apparent that there were many questions that came up again and again on the various mailing lists. The accessibility team along with several community members formulated a set of frequently asked questions … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, Mozilla | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

ARIA in Gmail #2: Enhancing the Chat experience

This post continues a series on the implementation of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) in Gmail. On July 30, Orca team lead Willie Walker forwarded a message to the Orca mailing list titled Orca & gmail. The message is originally … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, GMail | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

More ARIA in the news

As I’m catching up with news after my return from Whistler, I have two suggested ARIA-related readings for you: Gez Lemon of the Opera Developer community has posted an article titled Introduction to WAI ARIA. This is probably the most … Continue reading

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Progress on automated testing for the accessibility module

Today, I checked in two changes that allow the unit tests we’ve developed for the accessibility module so far, to run on what we call a staging server. A staging server is a server that simulates production conditions, but isn’t … Continue reading

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ARIA in Gmail #1: Alerts

Google have recently started to put ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) into GMail. This means that ARIA is now getting a lot more exposure than it used to, with GMail being probably one of the most widely used web applications … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, GMail | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Support for text attributes and spell checking is coming in Firefox 3.1!

For those of you on the bleeding edge, namely on the Firefox 3.1a1pre nightly builds, the Friday’s nightly build will include one big new feature in accessibility for 3.1: Text attributes and spell checking support! This means that assistive technologies … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Firefox, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments

Easy ARIA tip #3: aria-invalid and role “alert”

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I posted my last Easy ARIA tip. But I’m hoping that this one will find you all excited and willing to play with it some more! The problem: You have a … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 26 Comments

WordPress 2.6 brings a lot of accessibility improvements!

I just upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.6. This version brings with it a number of accessibility enhancements. One thing you might have noticed already is that there is now a default language set. Default English blogs should now always … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox, Orca, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , | 14 Comments

Review of the WebVisum Firefox extension

Today, a post announcing the WebVisum Firefox extension was posted to the mozilla.dev.accessibility newsgroup. The things talked about in this post and on the WebVisum homepage almost sound too good to be true. Among the features are: Ability to tag … Continue reading

Posted in Accessibility, Extensions, Firefox, Mozilla | Tagged , , , | 50 Comments