Category Archives: ARIA

Easy ARIA Tip #6: Making clickables accessible

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Marco

It often happens that designers and web developers agree on the fact that they do not like the standard buttons or the styling capabilities of buttons in browsers. To work around this, they then resort to what’s called clickable text. … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Sometimes you have to use illegal WAI-ARIA to make stuff work

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Marco

In this blog post, I’d like to recap an experience I just had while trying to apply some accessibility enhancements to the NoodleApp app.net client. The problem NoodleApp uses keyboard shortcuts to allow users to switch back and forth between … Continue reading →

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

Advanced ARIA tip #1: Tabs in web apps

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Marco

The following article will describe how to properly create accessible tabs in web apps. This is important for both mobile and desktop web applications. Tabs are not native to HTML5, so if you simulate them, you’ll probably use other markup … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Mobile | Tagged , , , | 27 Comments

If you use the WAI-ARIA role “application”, please do so wisely!

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Marco

This goes out to all web developers out there reading this blog and implementing widgets and other rich content in HTML, CSS and JavaScript! If you think of using the WAI-ARIA role “application” in your code, please do so with … Continue reading →

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

From WAI-ARIA to HTML5 and back…or maybe not?

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Marco

Over the weekend, I gave a presentation at the German Multimediatreff. I talked about how to make things more accessible by combining HTML5 and WAI-ARIA in smart ways, using HTML5 where available and appropriate, and enhancing the user experience where … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Firefox 7 is released, new features in accessibility

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Marco

Firefox Update 7 has just hit the net, and while it’s still hot, I wanted to share a few items specific to accessibility that are included. First and foremost, we participated in the improvements to memory usage and speed. More … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Firefox | Tagged , , , , | 18 Comments

Review: The all-new Yahoo! Mail web application

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Marco

Yahoo! recently announced the availability of their all-new mail web application. They also made announcements on the Yahoo! Access channels about the much improved accessibility of this new mail interface. Well, it’s time to look at it! So shall we? … Continue reading →

Posted in Accessibility, ARIA, Yahoo! | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

What’s new in accessibility in Firefox 6

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Marco

On Friday May 27, a bigger update was offered to everyone on the Aurora channel that brought them up to a revision 6 Firefox. As this was a bigger update, it is time to also point out the new stuff … Continue reading →

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

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

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

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 , | 6 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 , | 20 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 | 22 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

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

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Marco

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

Blind web devs, jump on the Firebug train!

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Marco

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

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Marco

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! | 45 Comments

New accessibility features in Firefox 3.5

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Marco

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