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How accessibility trees inform assistive tech by Hidde de Vries
The web was designed with built-in features to make accessibility possible; these have been part of the platform pretty much from the beginning. In recent times, inspectable accessibility trees have made it easier to see how things work in practice. In this post we’ll look at how “good” client-side code (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) improves the experience of users of assistive technologies, and how we can use accessibility trees to help verify our work on the user experience.
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Understanding SC 3.2.1 on Focus by Raghavendra Satish Peri
3.2.1 On Focus: When any component receives focus, it does not initiate a change of context. (Level A) The intent of this success criterion is to make sure that any unwanted actions are not initiated when focus moves on to an element. For example during tab navigation or shift tab navigation if user focus moves on to a link & a modal is triggered this fails this check point. Here user did not initiate this action; it was initiated when user focus moved on to a particular element.
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Inclusive Content Strategy: How to Ensure Your Content is Accessible to Everyone by Deborah Edwards-Onoro
At the February 2019 Accessibility Talks online meetup, AmyJune Hineline, Drupal and WordPress Community Ambassador at Kanopi Studios, spoke about inclusive content strategy, what it means, and how to craft content that is accessible to everyone.
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The Anatomy of Accessible Forms: The Problem with Placeholders by Deque Systems
Instructions help users to submit forms successfully. However, if the instructions are provided with a placeholder attribute, then the user might not be able to use that instruction effectively.

Yet another example of the need for HTML elements and attributes to be used as intended by the specification.

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I think I’ve figured out a solution to my Twitter difficulties, specifically trying to manage two accounts. I have EasyChirp open in the browser for my personal account, and Open Tween open on the desktop for my work account. I suppose I could just use a private window in the browser as well for the other account, but as far as I can tell, you can’t respond to direct messages using EasyChirp, so I need a way to respond to those along with viewing two accounts at the same time. I have no idea what I’m going to do about managing the other accounts I have access to/manage. Open Tween will handle multiple accounts, but I’m still trying to figure out how you tell which one you’re sending from. Standard tweets are still easier from my websites. I already have the tabs open and it’s just easier to send from there. No character limit, plus all the other Indieweb advantages, while reading/retweeting from Open Tween/EasyChirp. Yeah, this is really complicated and hacky, but I think it’ll work.

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I’m not one to throw around the “not-a-real-accessibility-advocate” label, but if someone exhibits a pattern of excuse-making for inaccessibility on behalf of themselves or others or both, they need to hand in their A card. Same if that extends to encouraging fellow people with disabilities to accept excuse-making for inaccessibility. If you do all three then you probably need to be taken to the proverbial woodshed because excuse-making for inaccessibility is never, ever acceptable. Either you believe it’s OK to discriminate or you don’t. It’s that simple. Signed: Someone who was once rightfully taken to the woodshed.

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Oh cool. I logged into micro.blog on my laptop, (which I haven’t done in a long time), and there’s a discussion of markdown versus HTML going on and it’s civil as usual. I’m team HTML because I find it much simpler than Markdown. In other news, I’ve started using My Fitness Pal again because it syncs with my Apple Watch and, (for that ecosystem), it’s the most accessible food tracker I’ve found. I started tracking my food again on Monday and I’ve made some slight changes to my diet, but I’m not expecting any losses this week. Because of the goal I’ve set for myself, I have a calorie allowance of 1870, which is amazingly hard to spread out over a day while I’m still collecting things like dishes and cooking gear. I’ll be happy if I don’t gain anything, but I don’t suppose I’m going to be too disappointed if I do. I’m still gettiing back into the habbit of keeping track of what I’m eating and drinking, so I suppose I’m cutting myself a little slack on making changes. The book challenge is going forward, although I need to spend some time with Goodreads logging the ones I’ve finished since I last logged one. I’ve finished the Prey Series, but it’s not all logged yet, and I’ve started rereading the Scott Harvath series by Brad Thor to introduce John to that series. I have some Audible credits to spend, so I picked up the next book in the Kill Chain series by William Hertling, Kill Switch. It’s the sequel to Kill Process, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I think this is enough for now, more next time.

291 Easterly Pkwy, State College, PA 16801

79 °F Mostly Cloudy

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Current status: Looking around the Podtrac dashboard to see if I can delete my address and phone number, which it required for registration and autopopulated, correctly, without asking my permission. I am very much not amused right now. There are zero, absolutely zero reasons why podcast statistics should require anybody’s personal details like that. If those details are sought, then permission should be explicitly asked. If those details are going to be autopopulated then explicit mention of where they’re being pulled from should also be made, and permission to autopopulate should also be asked for. This kind of shit is why people hate big tech so much.

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I just spent over an hour fighting with an admin consul with a pretty much inaccessible UI and a metric fuckton of settings. I really don’t care at this point why things on the web end up inaccessible or how it happens. If you put things on the web that are inaccessible you can go fuck yourself and you can do it until your shit is accessible. If you are a person with disabilities urging dipplomatic restraint in accessibility negotiations you can go fuck yourself too. I am tired of this shit. All I want to do is get my work done without a ton of shit, without having to fight with screen readers and browsers and switch back and forth between the best combinations and I am tired of negotiating and educating. I want to live my fucking life why is this so Goddamn much to ask? Fuck!

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Dear creatives with disabilities, including musicians. So-called exposure by way of contest, competition and, (in a lot of cases), volunteer work is bullshit. Don’t run after it. Your time and talents are just as valuable as those of your abled counterparts, and any person or organization trying to trick you with promises of exposure or large impact in exchange for free work is a vulture worthy of your contempt. Your time and talents do not become less valuable just because you may be unemployed now or because you’ve been unemployed for a long time. Dear people and organizations: People with disabilities are not a source of free labor.

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Shoutout to all the automatticians currently slogging through the VIP Go outage, from the people on the front lines dealing with customers to the people behind the scenes in the proverbial basement who are usually never noticed until something goes wrong. Support and server maintenance are often thankless jobs, but without people like you this stuff doesn’t run. I don’t work with y’all, and I’m not a customer, but I see no reason why we can’t support each other from afar.

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? I’ve read all but one of the books in the Prey Series by John Sandford and started the latest one yesterday. I’ve finished forty-two percent of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I plan to read some of his other novels, including Fall which was published this year if I can get them. The book challenge is moving ahead at full steam, but other than the Neal Stephenson books, I’m not sure what I’ll read next.

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The crockpot barbecue chicken has been unit tested. Verdict: Awesome! Dinner is going to be amazing, and all the moreso because I get to have it and you don’t. 🙂 If you want it, it’s a matter of getting some of your favorite barbecue sauce and some boneless skinless chicken thighs from your grocery store, making sure they’re thawed and washed, and put in the crockpot with the sauce poured over them and cooking on high for about five hours. Cook on medium if you’re going to be gone all day. For the blinks, when it starts to sizzle, turn it off and let cool, after unit testing of course. Then, serve with veggies cooked and seasoned according to preference, and a starch, (potatoes new or red, or yams). Bread and dessert optional. If you’re going to serve with a bread, challah is great.

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A huge grocery run was executed yesterday, and since I got one of the boxes with pots and pans in it this past weekend, I am making barbecued chicken in the crockpot tomorrow for dinner and mixed veggies and I am looking very much forward to it. I’m looking forward to doing a lot of cooking experimentation this summer and into the fall. I have so many recipes I want to try out. Welcome to Wednesday everybody.

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So apparently the 10,000-step count was a marketing campaign to promote a particular pedometer. I’m glad to find this out. Not that I’m feeling particularly guilty for not meeting my 10,000-step goal, but I now have sort of official permission to rebel against my pedometer overlords and adjust my goal down. Thanks for that tip, Kerry.

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Shoutout to the humans I know who work at Google and had to endure the outages Sunday and yesterday. It might be fun to snark on social media when big companies fall on their faces, but there are always humans who end up having to stick around and thanklessly fix the messes. I don’t know if any of you were caught up in that, but if you were I hope you get some extra off-time.

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The president bemoans the indiscriminate bombing of Idlib Province as his administration indiscriminately bans anyone from said province from seeking refuge from that bombing. Thoughts and prayers for all those dead civilions and their families I guess. The one person who could do something to alleviate some of the suffering for some of the people would rather play keyboard commando instead. What a pathetic contemptible weakling.

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The difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation by léonie Watson
People often include screen reader users in the much larger group of keyboard-only users. Whilst this is correct (most screen reader users don’t use a mouse), it also creates a false impression of the way screen reader users navigate content.

This is a really good primer for anyone building things for the web as well as screen reader users on the differences between screen reader and keyboard navigation. I’ve seen lots of situations where the two are conflated, by both developers and screen reader users.

Also, I really like the footer text on léonie’s site.