accessibility

Limitations of screen readers.

I'm a web developer, and I want to make the web sites I develop more accessible to those using screen readers. What limitations do screen readers have that I should be most aware of, and what can I do to avoid hitting these limitations. This question was sparked by reading another question about non-image based captchas. In there, a c...

Accessible controls for ASP.NET

In my last job we ended up rewriting the complete ASP.NET stack (forms, controls, validation, postback handling, ajax library etc...) - the reason I was given was that the ASP.NET controls were not accessible enough, not were any of the third party controls that were assessed for the project. Can anyone point me to good accessible ASP.N...

Enhancing the web user experience for the vision impaired

I was listening to a recent episode of Hanselminutes where Scott Hanselman was discussing accessibility in web applications and it got me thinking about accessibility in my own applications. We all understand the importance of semantic markup in our web applications as it relates to accessibility but what about other simple enhancements...

Tool to test Website accessibility

Can you suggest a tool for testing accessibility and section 508/ADA compliance of a Website with MS Share Point and .Net 2.0 as the underlying platform? ...

What are the key components of web accessibility?

I understand that some countries have laws regarding website accessibility. In general, what are the minimum requirements that a website must meet to be accessible, regardless of country? Or, in lieu of minimum requirements, what are some specific things that websites should have to make the accessible? ...

What are the best methods to ensure our SharePoint implementation is accessible?

Are there any blogs, guides, checklists, or controls we should be using to ensure our SharePoint implementation is accessible? Preferrably to the W3C double A standard, or as close to that as we can get. We're implementing an extranet solution. ...

Make Web Application Accessible

What things have to be done before I can honestly tell myself my web application is accessible by anyone? Or even better, convince Joe Clark. I don't have any video or audio to worry about, so I know I won't need transcripts. What else do I have to check? ...

Is there a way to convert indentation in Python code to braces?

I am a totally blind programmer who would like to learn Python. Unfortunately the fact that code blocks are represented with different levels of indentation is a major stumbling block. I was wondering if there were any tools available that would allow me to write code using braces or some other code block delimiter and then convert that ...

How can you program if you're blind?

Sight is one of the senses a programmer take for granted. Most programmers would spend hours looking at a computer monitor (especially during times when they are in the zone). I know there are blind programmers who can program (such as T.V. Raman who currently works for google). If you were a blind person (or slowly becoming blind), ho...

Colour blindness simulator

Like any responsible developer, I'd like to make sure that the sites I produce are accessible to the widest possible audience, and that includes the significant fraction of the population with some form of colour blindness. There are many websites which offer to filter a URL you feed it, either by rendering a picture or by filtering all...

Is it good to include title="" within your links?

I am developing a website and for the main navigation, I was thinking it would be a good idea to include the title attribute. <a href="/results/" title="Results">Results</a> Is this a good thing to do? Also, is it good for SEO and accessibility? ...

Why are hidden form elements still read by JAWS?

The Situation I have an area of the screen that can be shown and hidden via JavaScript (something like "show/hide advanced search options"). Inside this area there are form elements (select, checkbox, etc). For users using assistive technology like a screen-reader (in this case JAWS), we need to link these form elements with a label or ...

Javascript and Accessibility

As a web developer, a number of the projects I work on fall under government umbrellas and hence are subject to 508 Accessibility laws, and sometimes W3C accessibility guidelines. To what extent can Javascript be used while still meeting these requirements? Along these lines, to what extent is Javascript, specifically AJAX and using pac...

Java Instance Variable Accessibility

What is the difference in the accessibility of the following variables in Java? public class Joe { public int a; protected int b; private int b; int c; } I'm most interested in what the last one is doing. ...

Java Class Accessibility

Slightly related to my other question: What is the difference between the following: private class Joe protected class Joe public class Joe class Joe Once again, the difference between the last 2 is what I'm most interested in. ...

H1 in article page - site title or article title?

Within an article-oriented page (such as a blog post), the <h1> element (level 1 heading) is commonly used to markup either: the blog title (i.e. the often-large site title at the top of the page, not to the <title> element), or the article title What is the best choice and why? To the site owner, who may want to shout out to the wo...

Flash and Accessibility

As a web developer, a number of the projects I work on fall under government umbrellas and hence are subject to 508 Accessibility laws, and sometimes W3C accessibility guidelines. To what extent can Flash be used while still meeting these requirements? For using javascript, the mantra is "Degrade gracefully" by providing the same conten...

How to find good looking font color if background color is known?

There seem to be so many color wheel, color picker, and color matcher web apps out there, where you give one color and the they'll find a couple of other colors that will create a harmonic layout when being used in combination. However most of them focus on background colors only and any text printed on each background color (if text is ...

Unordered lists and accessability

Many (most?) sites aiming for accessability and standards compliance use unordered lists for their navigation. Does this make the site more accessible or does it just provide useful elements for styling? I don't mind them, and I have been using unordered lists in this way. It's just that, when I remove the styling from a page to try to ...

WPF Tab View, Custom Templates, and Accessibility

I'm having a problem with the WPF Tab View control that I was hoping someone here might be able to help me with. I want my tab view control to use rounded corners for the tab headers, because I think rounded tabs look better. To do this I modified the default control template for the tab by using the "Edit Copy" command in Expression B...