Category: html5

Podcast #84: Web Axe 5-Year Anniversary

Post author By Dennis
Post date September 9, 2010
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In celebration of its 5th anniversary, Dennis and Ross discuss the history of Web Axe and several memorable moments. Then, nine special guests provide excellent insight and information relating to web accessibility including Paul Boag and Bruce Lawson. It’s great stuff, don’t miss it!

Download Web Axe Episode 84 (Web Axe 5-Year Anniversary)

[Transcript of podcast 84]

Some History

Dennis Lembree launched Web Axe in September 2005 with a boost from the Detroit Podcasters Network.
Co-host Ross Johnson joined September of 2006 in Lists and Accessibility — How and Why? (podcast #26).
Readership continues to grow; over 5,400 Web Axe RSS subscribers (85% of my RSS subscribers are using Google Reader or iGoogle). Number of Twitter followers continues to grow (@WebAxe).
Interesting topics for web accessibility: business reasons, bandwidth and loadtime, and screen resolution.

Memorable Moments

Nominated three years in a row in the .net magazine Best of the Web awards.
Web Axe featured in BBC Podcast, segment on accessibility in Pods & Blogs show.
First interview: Jared Smith of WebAIM, Podcast #27 (September 2006).
Podcast #74: Awards, Events & Back to Basics recorded from Santa Cruz, California (September 2009).
Podcast #35: Usability and Accessibility Conference recorded from event in Lansing, Michigan (November 2006).
Visit to Yahoo! Accessibility Testing Lab (July 2009).
NFB vs. Target Lawsuit is Settled!
Critiques invoke responses: Recovery.gov, ca.gov, section508.gov

Special Episode Podcast Contributors

Bruce Lawson (Opera, HTML5Doctor) – great HTML5 info.
Denis Boudreau (A11Y_MTL) – French Canadian up very late recording.
Jennison Asuncion – Accessibility tester, researcher, and all-around nice guy.
Karen Mardahl (STCAccess) – Wicked good technical communicator.
Mike Gifford (OpenConcept) – Drupal expert.
Paul Boag (Boagworld) – Well, everyone knows this guy!
Steve Grobschmidt – User Experience Lead and blogger.
Terrill Thompson – A cool musician, basketball fan, and Technology Accessibility Specialist.
Tom Babinszki (Even Grounds) – Accessibility consultant and blogger.

Addendum: Podcast Corrections

Steve Grobschmidt’s last name was announced incorrectly (it’s not “Aquinas”, that’s part of his Twitter handle).
We state that there are 8 guest speakers; there’s actually 9!
We mentioned that Boagworld is no longer podcasting, but failed to mention that they plan on returning in January 2011. (Paul mentions this in his commentary.)

alt aria html5 image podcast

Podcast #83: Fate of Longdesc in HTML5

Post author By Dennis
Post date August 16, 2010
5 Comments on Podcast #83: Fate of Longdesc in HTML5

What’s the fate of the “longdesc” attribute in HTML5? Can or should the “aria-labelledby” ARIA attribute replace it? These are some of the controversial issues discussed by Dennis and guests John Foliot (@johnfoliot), Everett Zufelt (@ezufelt), and Joe Dolson (@joedolson).

Download Web Axe Episode 83 (Fate of Longdesc in HTML5)

[transcript of podcast 83]

Accessibility for HTML5 Video, Controls and Captions

Post author By Dennis
Post date July 22, 2010
No Comments on Accessibility for HTML5 Video, Controls and Captions

As you probably know, HTML5 provides a video tag for rendering a video natively in a web browser (and audio as well). But unfortunately, as of now, HTML5 video isn’t very accessible, yet.

Controls

Browser support for native HTML5 video controls varies widely. No browsers but Opera provide keyboard-accessible controls. Well, you can also start/stop with keyboard in Firefox 3.6. To make the controls keyboard-accessible calls for JavaScript. This is fairly easy to do, and is quite fun to implement for web geeks like me. But nonetheless it requires JavaScript which obviously isn’t good for devices and browsers which don’t have JavaScript available.

Note that in Firefox 3.6 and below, disabling JavaScript also disables the native video controls! To bring up a contextual menu, you must do a mouse right-click in the video.

Captions

The HTML5 spec has a great plan for captions, timed tracks. It accommodates well for different types of roles (captions, subtitles, descriptions) and multiple languages. The format of the caption text files themselves may be similar to the time stamp format WebSRT (Web Subtitle Resource Tracks). Sadly, there is no support for timed tracks in any browser at this time. The code would go inside the video tag and would look something like this:

Fortunately, in the meantime, Bruce Lawson of Opera provides a method for JavaScript HTML5 video captions. The solution uses JavaScript to grab caption text from span tags with time attributes and place the text over a video. Neat! If JavaScript is unavailable, the caption text appears below the video.

About the Codecs/Containers

Not directly related to accessibility, but let’s take a look at the supported video codec/containers of the major browsers. First off, and not surprisingly, Internet Explorer doesn’t support any HTML5 video. And the word is that IE9 will only support WebM if it’s installed on the operating system.

So to cover all major browsers today, you’ll need to encode to an OGG and MP4 file, and then do a Flash video fall-back for IE. Here’s a great table on current support codecs/containers.

Video support in shipping browsers
Codecs/container	IE	Firefox	Safari	Chrome	Opera	iPhone	Android
Theora+Vorbis+Ogg	·	3.5+	·	5.0+	10.5+	·	·
H.264+AAC+MP4	·	·	3.0+	5.0+	·	3.0+	2.0+
WebM	9*	4	·	5.0+	10.6+	·	·

It appears WebM will be the codec of the future, but again, it is only partially supported at this time.

Link Roundup – May 2010

Do Your Flashing Ads Cause Seizures?
FAQ on software development for the blind or visually impaired
Why You Should Adopt An Accessible Content Strategy (business case for accessibility)
4 Easy Steps to Make Your Site More Usable (and accessible) to Older People
Program to help locate screen cursor: PinPoint 3 “Never Lose Your Mouse Again”
Use ARIA to Indicate When Form Fields Are Required
Google Slaps People with Disabilities in the Face
Kill Accessibility (great comments)
Test cases with HTML5, ARIA Roles & Screen Readers
What are your favorite accessibility & UX blogs?
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives
Next accessibility unconference is A11yCamp, Guelph, Canada, June 8
Text CAPTCHA service – alternative to image or audio CAPTCHAs
The new GNU accessibility statement
iPad Assistive Technology Roundup
Slides from Access U presentation HTML5 & Accessibility
NFB files complaints against 9 law schools for inaccessible web site
Importance of HTML Headings for Accessibility
Future Web Accessibility: HTML5 Semantic Elements (Part 2 in a series)
A few problems with the concept of accessible PDFs
Do we need a new game plan to make the Web accessible? (great comments)

expert html5 interview podcast video

Podcast #81: HTML5 and John Foliot

Post author By Dennis
Post date May 24, 2010
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HTML5 is hot. It’s new, powerful, and exciting. But what is it exactly, and how will it make the web more accessible? Dennis discusses these issues and more with web accessibility veteran John Foliot. Topics include background on HTML5, browser support, new form functionality, how Canvas can be accessible, and much more!

Mr. Foliot runs the Stanford Online Accessibility Program. He is an active member of the W3C and is an integral part of the web accessibility community. He writes a blog entitled Unrepentant and you can find John on Twitter.

Download Web Axe Episode 81 (HTML5 and John Foliot)

[transcript of podcast 81]

Mentioned Resources

HTML: The Markup Language
HTML5 differences from HTML4
HTML5 Doctor
Bruce Lawson
Remy Sharp
Dive Into HTML5
Book: Introducing HTML5 by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp (there’s also HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith)

Other HTML5 Resources

Test cases with HTML5, ARIA Roles & Screen Readers
HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives
Slides from Access U presentation HTML5 & Accessibility
Future Web Accessibility: HTML5 Semantic Elements (Part 2 in a series)
HTML5 Demos and Examples