Introduction: 

Welcome to the latest edition of A11y (Accessibility) with Ady. I hope you enjoy it and find something useful. I’m happy to hear any feedback or thoughts or anything you would like to hear more about from the world of accessibility. I’d also like to take this opportunity to wish you all happy holidays and a successful New Year.

Tip of the Month: 

Emoji gave a whole new world of possibilities to messaging and are now everywhere. But please consider your audience before getting carried away. For those using screen readers each one is read out as its title. The more you add, the longer and longer your message becomes and is particularly bad if you put emoji between words in a sentence as the message can get lost.  

General: 

In this Women in UX article Jadene Aderonmu answers questions on UX and Accessibility, her journey and being a woman of colour in tech. As she quite rightly says; "The more we discuss, implement and learn about accessibility the better our digital products and services will be."

https://blog.uxtweak.com/women-in-ux-jadene-aderonmu/ 

This longer post from Michael Fairchild covers collaborative planning and introduces Accessibility Behaviour Informed Development (a11yBID), an interesting concept. A11yBID grows on Behaviour-driven development (BDD) and the article explains that concept too if you are unfamiliar. 

Bringing accessibility into the design phase has many added benefits for the process, company and end users creating a more inclusive experience for all. Highly recommended read. 

https://www.deque.com/blog/collaborative-planning-the-forgotten-step-of-accessible-development/ 

Another design article on including accessibility is this one from Mike Gower about IBM Accessibility and how they moved from a “shift left” campaign for a11y to adopting it as part of their development process. 

https://medium.com/carbondesign/not-dragging-our-feet-a03ea57150e 

Compliance: 

There has been a significant rise of accessibility overlays over the past few years despite lots of evidence proving they are not compliant and can make using websites even more difficult than it already was. This article collects a lot of information, some of which is quite troubling as a French accessibility overlay company has sued a web accessibility champion because she talked about overlays. Trying to stop conversations on the subject is in my opinion reprehensible. 

There are lots of links in this long read including to The Overlay Factsheet, a site with over 600 signatures supporting not using them and I’m proud to be one of the signees. 

https://www.lflegal.com/2021/11/overlay-legal-update/ 

Disability:

It feels a bit odd to mention a supermarket in an update but Asda are introducing a new ‘Quieter Hour’ to aid customers with certain disabilities. Between 2 and 3pm Monday to Thursday they will reduce store noise and have given 85,000 additional training through the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Scheme. Look out for new ‘Purple Tuesday’s’ branding

https://corporate.asda.com/20211101/were-rolling-out-quieter-hour-and-training-more-colleagues-to-better-serve-customers-with-additional-needs 

There could be a big shake up in exams that would help many groups including pupils who are deaf, blind, autistic and dyslexic. This quote from the article sums up the problem nicely. 

“Ofqual, the exams regulator in England, has published draft guidance aimed at tackling the ways in which some pupils are “unfairly disadvantaged by irrelevant features” in exams, making it harder to determine their knowledge, skills and understanding.”

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/nov/01/english-exam-boards-may-be-asked-to-avoid-complex-language 

The Access to Work Factsheet for Employers was updated this month so I thought it was worth sharing for those having or wanting to have conversations about inclusion at work. I’m sharing the summary below so you can get a feel if this might be useful. 

Access to Work is a publicly funded employment support grant scheme that aims to support disabled people start or stay in work. It can provide practical and financial support for people who have a disability or long term physical or mental health condition. Support can be provided where someone needs support or adaptations beyond reasonable adjustments.

An Access to Work grant can pay for practical support to enable your employee to start or stay in work, or to support you if you are self-employed. The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not covered by Access to Work and there is a different service in Northern Ireland.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/access-to-work-guide-for-employers/access-to-work-factsheet-for-employers 

Tools: 

This great article from Story of a Blind Life explains what a screen reader is and goes into detail about how they are used. There is information on assistive technologies Jaws (Job Access With Speech), and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access). As well as details of what they can and cannot do. A great read if you are thinking about learning screen reader testing or just want more info. 

https://storyofablindlife.com/whats-a-screen-reader/ 

On the theme of assistive technologies, in their ‘World of Disability’ section TPGi (Previously known as The Paciello Group), who are an accessibility solutions provider, give a great overview of why screen readers are important. There is even a video (seven and a half minutes with audio descriptions) showing someone using a screen reader and explaining 

https://www.tpgi.com/what-is-a-screen-reader-and-why-are-they-important/