Author: Dennis

CSUN14 Review

Another CSUN conference has come and gone, and they only get better each year. Of course I’m referring to the CSUN (California State University, Northridge) Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference which happens at the incredible Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown San Diego, California.

The conference was officially kicked off Tuesday evening with a keynote speech by Tommy Edison (starts at 9:45) who is also well known as the @BlindFilmCritic.

Tommy Edison, standing at the podium, presents the keynote address at CSUN14.

Events & Happenings

Besides the plethora of sessions to attend, many events (official and unofficial) and fun things were going on:

There was a lot of talk (and behind the scenes) about the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP).
Two hack-a-tons occurred which was great! A TPG Bug Bash and an ARIA Hackathon by organized by @JohnFoliot.
I attended the Project Possibility’s SS12 Finals where the “Code for a Cause” contest is concluded. The contest is among university teams for the best accessible application. The winner was the CSUN team for a camera app for the blind.
Deque Systems announed a $10,000 Amaze Grant to Fix The Web initiative
Stevie Wonder was in da house! Check out this news feature, Stevie Wonder Touts Technology for Impaired (NBC San Diego). And check out Billy Gregory’s selfie with the music legend!
I personally enjoyed handing out Easy Chirp 2 stickers 😉

Highlighted Sessions

There are too many great sessions to note, but here’s are several to get you started:

Accessibility myths for a mobile generation (SlideShare) by @jonhassell
Introduction to Accessibility Testing (Slideshare) by @PatrickDunphy
Practical ways to make your website accessible by @jfc3
Developing a Web Accessible Modal Dialog (PPT) by @DennisL (Web Axe author)
Where Usability Meets Accessibility (Slideshare) by @whitneyq

Summary Next Year’s 30th

Next year is the 30th CSUN and promises to be even bigger and better than ever. Seriously, there are tremendous plans for CSUN15 are already under way. Hope to see you there!

More Resources

The Great Big List! on Curb Cut blog (by @mactoph)
Conference Twitter hashtag: #CSUN14
CSUN 2014 wrap-up by Robert Pearson (on Access iQ blog)

screenreader

Detecting Screen Readers – No

Post author By Dennis
Post date March 1, 2014
17 Comments on Detecting Screen Readers – No

There has been much discussion about the idea of detecting a screen reader from a website and optimizing the code. In the W3C editor’s draft IndieUI 1.0: User Context, screen reader detection is proposed. This scares me and many others in the web accessibility community.

In the recent publishing of the WebAIM screen reader survey, one of the questions is “How comfortable would you be with allowing web sites to detect whether you are using a screen reader?”. Surprisingly 54% of respondents replied “Very comfortable”. This sure sparked some discussion on Twitter and on blogs.

For the most part, detecting a screen reader has been ill-received from the accessibility community. I am also strongly opposed to this idea.

The reasoning boils down to two issues: development and privacy. And it’s bad for both. Here are some reasons why it’d be bad for development:

Text-only websites didn’t work before and you know devs will do this if a mechanism is provided.
Screen reader detection is eerily similar to the browser-sniffing technique which has proven to be a poor practice.
Maintaining separate channels of code is a nightmare; developers overloaded already with supporting multiple browsers, devices, etc (via RWD). And if done, it will many times become outdated if not entirely forgotten about.
Why screen reader detection? If you follow that logic, then detection should be provided for screen magnifiers, braille output devices, onscreen keyboards, voice-recognition, etc. That’s just a bad idea.

Let’s hope screen reader detection is removed from the W3C draft of IndieUI 1.0: User Context.

PS: Interestingly, @LFLegal recently announced that Safeway is (finally) removing a text-only version of its website in the blog Separate is Not Equal: Good News for Grocery Delivery.

Podcast #99: Jennison Powers Up Silicon Valley

Post author By Dennis
Post date February 16, 2014
No Comments on Podcast #99: Jennison Powers Up Silicon Valley

Dennis speaks with @Jennison Asuncion about his big move to Silicon Valley from Toronto, new Meetup groups and camps, CSUN14 and other fun things.

Download Web Axe Episode 99 (Jennison Powers Up Silicon Valley)

[transcript of podcast 99]

Event announcements:

The first Bay Area Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup is Monday, ~~February 24~~ March 3 at Evernote in Redwood City, CA. Follow on Twitter with hashtag #a11yBay.
The first Accessibility Camp Bay Area is Saturday, March 15 at LinkedIn in Mountain View, CA. Follow on Twitter at @A11yCampBay and hashtag #a11yCampBay.
The third Global Accessibility Awareness Day is Thursday, May 15. Date has changed due to European holidays. Follow on Twitter at @gblA11yDay and hashtag #GAAD.

More new groups:

New meetup in Denver: Front Range Accessibility and Inclusive Design. @a11yFR
New meetup: Charlotte Accessibility & Inclusive Design.
New meetup in Pittsburgh Area Accessibility Meetup.
New meetup: New York City Accessibility & Inclusive Design. @a11yNYC
New meetup in Sarasota, FL: Wandering Parrot

Tidbits:

The last time Jennison was on Web Axe was Podcast 95, 2 years ago, when he and @JoeDevon discussed the inaugural Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Follow @a11yEvents on Twitter for related event updates.
Catch Dennis and Jennison at the Bay Area events and the CSUN14 conference in sunny San Diego in March!
Learn more about accessibility camps at accessibilitycamp.org and a11ycamp.org.
List of Regular Accessibility Meetups on WebAIM.

html5 video

Vimeo Updates Video Player Including Accessibility

Post author By Dennis
Post date January 9, 2014
1 Comment on Vimeo Updates Video Player Including Accessibility

Vimeo, a YouTube competitor, has recently updated its web-based video player. Vimeo now defaults to an HTML5-based player rather than Flash. It provides much faster playback/load times and improved tools to share a video.

Vimeo logo

Although the accessibility implementation may not be perfect, it’s a very significant improvement. The Vimeo player now supports keyboard and screen reader users and supports captions and subtitles! Here’s a live example of Vimeo captions by Amara (@AmaraSubs).

Thanks to Vimeo for these changes. We hope to hear about more improvements.

2013 Year in Review

It was a steady (but relatively slower) year for Web Axe. Besides some blogging, I managed 2 podcasts, Twittered a lot, and maintained the Facebook page. All-in-all 2013 was a great year, with more than enough things to review; here are some:

2013 was the year of the successful Easy Chirp 2 Kickstarter campaign and the (soft) relaunch of Easy Chip 2 beta website (if you didn’t know, I also am the creator/developer of Easy Chirp).
For the first time in person, it was a pleasure to meet Greg Kraus and Kathy Wahlbin at Accessing Higher Ground and Chris Coyier at the CSS Developer Conference.
The rise of the accessibility of WordPress.
Representing my day job, I spoke at several events including the Boston Accessibility Conference and CSUN13 (and looking forward to CSUN14!) And for the first time, I spoke at the online Accessibility Summit and the CSS Developer Conference.
Discovered great folks such as @LauraKalbag; check out her terrific blog Why Bother with Accessibility? And @ScottKellum, read his blog Accessibility isn’t a buzzword, it’s personal.
Sticking to basics was a theme for me this year including blog posts Keep the Underline and Links: Don’t “Click Here”. In the social media, I was shocked and disappointed in having to argue for progressive enhancement.
Lots of accessibility jobs created/available especially with large companies such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Comcast, and now Yahoo. I do blog and tweet these so if you or anyone you know is looking, give me a follow.
A few extra-special links from 2013:
- Hitting the accessibility high notes with ARIA (by @Ted_Drake)
- Accessibility evaluation for web writers (by @Writing4Web)
- HTML5 accessibility (presentation video, @SteveFaulkner)
- Designing with Empathy (slideshare by @AaronGustafson)
- How Designers Destroyed the World (presentation video)

Do you have anything special to share from this past year?