Issue #8
Hey readers! It’s been almost two months since my last newsletter. I enjoyed a vacation, and a busy last two months of 2015 at conferences. This week, I’ve gathered a collection of news and links from the weeks I missed. Thanks for subscribing and see you on the Web in 2016!
How Do I Handle Alt Attributes
Alt attributes can trip up even the most seasoned web worker. But do them right, and they make a huge difference to screen reader users.
I like this table from an article by Whitney Quesenbery. It gives you all the basics for navigating how to handle most situations where you need an alt attribute.
If you want more explanation, check out the W3C’s alt decision tree. All images should have an alt attribute, even if it’s empty or null, like: alt="" .
News and links
Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016: From the site: “Beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical supports and security updates.”
Fall 2015 update: More delay for DOJ web regulations: From the post: “On November 19, 2015, The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) gave an update about pending regulations regarding the accessibility of websites. As the agency has done many times before, the update boils down to a five letter word: Delay. Probably until 2018 for private sector websites.”
WAI-ARIA Graphics Module published: From the post: “This new vocabulary for describing graphical documents allows improved representation to and interaction with people with disabilities, and will be of interest to those working in any graphics format on the web or in XML documents.”
HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0 working draft published: From the document: “HTML Accessibility API Mappings (HTML-AAM) defines how user agents map HTML 5.1 [HTML51] elements and attributes to platform accessibility application programming interfaces (APIs).”
Resources, tools and tutorials
- Freeing museums from behind the glass (video)
- Labeled with love (blog post)
- The browser accessibility tree (blog post)
- A captioning workflow (Google Doc)
- When the treatment is worse than the disease (blog post)
- Accessibility for business and pleasure (blog post)
- How to design for accessibility (tutorial)
- Don’t use Slack? (blog post)
- CSS toggle switch (code)
- Seriously, don’t use icon fonts (blog post)
- HTML developers, please consider (blog post)
- Designing with contrast (blog post)
- Delay (blog post)
- Learn more links (blog post)
- On accessibility and the lack of proper HTML (blog post)
New to A11y
Marco Zehe and covers the accessibility basics for anyone wanting to make websites and applications that work for everyone.
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