├── LICENSE ├── applications.org ├── desktop-environments.org ├── documents.org ├── operating-systems.org ├── readme.org ├── toolkits.org ├── uefi.org ├── uefi.org~ └── web.org /LICENSE: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 2 | Version 3, 29 June 2007 3 | 4 | Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 5 | Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies 6 | of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. 7 | 8 | Preamble 9 | 10 | The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for 11 | software and other kinds of works. 12 | 13 | The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed 14 | to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, 15 | the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to 16 | share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free 17 | software for all its users. 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It is safest 630 | to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively 631 | state the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least 632 | the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found. 633 | 634 | 635 | Copyright (C) 636 | 637 | This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify 638 | it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by 639 | the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or 640 | (at your option) any later version. 641 | 642 | This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 643 | but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 644 | MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the 645 | GNU General Public License for more details. 646 | 647 | You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License 648 | along with this program. If not, see . 649 | 650 | Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail. 651 | 652 | If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short 653 | notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: 654 | 655 | Copyright (C) 656 | This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. 657 | This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it 658 | under certain conditions; type `show c' for details. 659 | 660 | The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate 661 | parts of the General Public License. Of course, your program's commands 662 | might be different; for a GUI interface, you would use an "about box". 663 | 664 | You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or school, 665 | if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. 666 | For more information on this, and how to apply and follow the GNU GPL, see 667 | . 668 | 669 | The GNU General Public License does not permit incorporating your program 670 | into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you 671 | may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with 672 | the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General 673 | Public License instead of this License. But first, please read 674 | . 675 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /applications.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: Application Accessibility 2 | 3 | An application, here, is a program that is meant for the user to 4 | launch and use. Applications can be sandboxed, or have access to more 5 | system resources. They can be elevated to administrator status, or 6 | operate in user space. 7 | 8 | ** Prime Directive 9 | 10 | The prime directive is to communicate with users. The user will 11 | generally know what they would like rather than what wouldn't help or 12 | even hinder their experience. Some users may have different ideas of 13 | what is "accessible" versus other users. In cases like this, you'll 14 | either need to choose between the two ideas, or give the users a 15 | choice between the two (preferable). When it comes to accessibility, 16 | choice is never a bad thing. Your users will thank you for giving them 17 | something that makes their own experience enjoyable, productive, or 18 | both. 19 | 20 | * Graphical user interfaces 21 | 22 | ** Total Blindness 23 | 24 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 25 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 26 | addressed in another section. 27 | 28 | *** Widget Labeling 29 | 30 | Always label your widgets with text. If there is an accessibility 31 | label you can use, you may use that if the widget shouldn't appear as 32 | text, for example if it's supposed to be an image. Use simple, brief 33 | label names. For example, "close" is better than "a green close button 34 | on a blue background." Do not include the widget's role in the label, 35 | as the operating system should provide that to the screen reader, 36 | which will provide that to the user. 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | ** Resources 41 | 42 | * Command line interfaces 43 | 44 | ** Total Blindness 45 | 46 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 47 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 48 | addressed in another section. 49 | 50 | *** Output presentation 51 | 52 | Add an option to output tabular data as comma separated values 53 | (CSV). Provide an option to send long output to an [[web.org][HTML]] file, with 54 | headings and other semantic elements where appropriate. Do not use 55 | box-drawing characters or other ASCII-art. 56 | 57 | Describe how the output is structured or provide a way for the user to 58 | use templates in a configuration file to structure output how they 59 | want. 60 | 61 | *** Progress indication 62 | 63 | When a command runs for a long time without outputting anything, print 64 | status messages. But don't use progress bars, spinning wheels or other 65 | animations made of ASCII or Unicode characters. Just print a short 66 | message that makes sense when read aloud. Have the frequency of the 67 | messages configurable. A good default is 30 seconds. 68 | 69 | *** Documentation 70 | 71 | Provide an HTML version of all documentation. They are easier to 72 | navigate and better convertible. 73 | 74 | ** Resources 75 | 76 | - [[https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3411764.3445544][Accessibility of Command Line Interfaces]] 77 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /desktop-environments.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: Desktop Environment Accessibility 2 | 3 | A desktop environment is the top-level interface that users interact 4 | with to launch applications, configure their system, check system 5 | information, and switch between open applications. These are the parts 6 | of the computing experience that automatically appear after the system 7 | is first started, and before any user applications are launched. 8 | 9 | ** Prime Directive 10 | 11 | The Prime Directive is to communicate with users. The user will 12 | generally know what they would like rather than what wouldn't help or 13 | even hinder their experience. Some users may have different ideas of 14 | what is "accessible" versus other users. In cases like this, you'll 15 | either need to choose between the two ideas, or give the users a 16 | choice between the two (preferable). When it comes to accessibility, 17 | choice is never a bad thing. Your users will thank you for giving them 18 | something that makes their own experience enjoyable, productive, or 19 | both. 20 | 21 | ** Total Blindness 22 | 23 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 24 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 25 | addressed in another section. 26 | 27 | *** Visual Cues and Messaging 28 | 29 | Everything visual must have an audible or haptic representation if it 30 | is meaningful. For example, each pixel on the screen does not need to 31 | be described in detail, but an important animation, or one that is 32 | appealing to sighted users, should be made known to the blind user. 33 | 34 | *** Speech, Sounds, and Both 35 | 36 | Some users enjoy hearing sounds for things like animations, progress 37 | bars and the completion of them, and error messages. Other users like 38 | having these things spoken using their screen reader. Others still 39 | don't want to hear these things at all unless they prompt for the 40 | information. 41 | 42 | *** Widget labeling 43 | 44 | Every widget must be labeled with text. If there is a way to give only 45 | an accessibility label, that can be done if the widget is only 46 | supposed to appear as an image to sighted users. Labels should be 47 | brief, like "close", not overly verbose, like "green close button on a 48 | blue background". 49 | 50 | *** Keyboard Focus 51 | 52 | A blind person usually only uses the keyboard to navigate. This means 53 | that the keyboard focus must never be trapped anywhere without a 54 | clearly communicated exit to the trap. For example, if a user is 55 | assigning a keyboard command to an action, the user must be able to 56 | escape that, rather than having Escape captured. This can be carried 57 | over to other interaction methods, like touch. 58 | 59 | * Resources 60 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /documents.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: Document Accessibility 2 | 3 | Documents, here, are any portable file that is to be read with a word 4 | processor or rich text editor. Documents can also be in plain text, or 5 | use Markdown or other markup languages. Use your best judgment for 6 | including these guidelines, as some don't apply to some document types. 7 | 8 | ** Prime Directive 9 | 10 | The prime directive is to communicate with users. The user will 11 | generally know what they would like rather than what wouldn't help or 12 | even hinder their experience. Some users may have different ideas of 13 | what is "accessible" versus other users. In cases like this, you'll 14 | either need to choose between the two ideas, or give the users a 15 | choice between the two (preferable). When it comes to accessibility, 16 | choice is never a bad thing. Your users will thank you for giving them 17 | something that makes their own experience enjoyable, productive, or both. 18 | 19 | ** Totally Blind Users 20 | 21 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 22 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 23 | addressed in another section. 24 | 25 | *** Formats 26 | 27 | Certain formats such as PDFs are very difficult to make completely 28 | accessible; many PDFs, for example, are just collections of images, or 29 | have issues such as words not being separated by spaces and images not 30 | being labeled. Different PDF readers often interpret things 31 | differently, leading to an inconsistent and difficult experience. 32 | 33 | Here is a non-exhaustive list of formats that are more friendly to 34 | accessibility: 35 | 36 | - The Open Document Format (ODF) 37 | - EPUB 38 | - Microsoft Word 39 | - The Rich Text Format (RTF) 40 | 41 | Plain text is also an option for short documents which do not use 42 | "rich" text elements such as headings, links, and tables. 43 | 44 | *** Use Headings 45 | 46 | If you are writing a large document, use headings to mark sections. Be 47 | sure to use the heading style, and not just bold the text of the 48 | section name and enlarge the font. This allows blind users to navigate 49 | from heading to heading in order to review the document much more 50 | quickly. 51 | 52 | *** Label Images 53 | 54 | Always label images that you put into your document. You can do this 55 | by adding a "caption" or "description" to the image during or after 56 | you put it into the document. 57 | 58 | *** Use table headers 59 | 60 | Tables can have headers, either for columns or for rows. This usually 61 | allows the word processor to tell the screen reader the title of the 62 | row or column it's in. 63 | 64 | * Resources 65 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /operating-systems.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: Operating System Accessibility 2 | 3 | An operating system, here, is made up of the low-level programs, 4 | toolkits, utilities, and libraries that a user may not interact with 5 | directly, but which facilitates interaction with a desktop 6 | environment. 7 | 8 | ** Prime Directive 9 | 10 | The prime directive is to communicate with users. The user will 11 | generally know what they would like rather than what wouldn't help or 12 | even hinder their experience. Some users may have different ideas of 13 | what is "accessible" versus other users. In cases like this, you'll 14 | either need to choose between the two ideas, or give the users a 15 | choice between the two (preferable). When it comes to accessibility, 16 | choice is never a bad thing. Your users will thank you for giving them 17 | something that makes their own experience enjoyable, productive, or 18 | both. 19 | 20 | ** Totally Blind Users 21 | 22 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 23 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 24 | addressed in another section. 25 | 26 | *** During Install 27 | 28 | A screen reader must be available during install. Otherwise, your 29 | operating system will not be used by blind people if they must switch 30 | to it from another. All messages about installation progress must be 31 | spoken, and widgets must be labeled. 32 | 33 | If the user must enable the screen reader during install or 34 | beforehand, the steps to do so must be simple, able to be performed 35 | with the keyboard, and documented in an easily-accessible location. 36 | 37 | *** After Install 38 | 39 | The out-of-box experience, which constitutes setup screens and all 40 | "getting started" steps after the system is installed, must be 41 | accessible. Creating an account, adding online accounts, and setting 42 | user information must be accessible in order to facilitate a good user 43 | experience. If not, the user will likely start looking for something 44 | else. 45 | 46 | *** Input and Output 47 | 48 | A blind person sends input to the operating system through a keyboard. 49 | Input with a touchpad or touchscreen is possible, but requires that 50 | the screen reader, accessibility APIs, and touchpad or touchscreen 51 | driver communicate with each other to make this possible. For now, 52 | only Apple Macs support using the screen reader with a touchpad. 53 | Windows and ChromeOS, however, support using the screen reader with a 54 | touchscreen. 55 | 56 | Since a blind person cannot see the screen, output is provided by a 57 | [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader][Screen reader]], which speaks using a software or hardware [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis][speech 58 | synthesizer]]. Sound effects also help the blind user by giving cues 59 | that are often much faster, and more distinct, than speech. These 60 | sound effects, called audio icons or earcons, can be used to signify a 61 | change in application state, an error, an animation, or invalid input. 62 | More general sound effects, like "low battery" notifications, startup 63 | sounds, and shutdown sounds, are also very valuable. 64 | 65 | *** Speech Synthesis 66 | 67 | Speech synthesis can be used for more than just a screen reader. It 68 | can also, for example, help those who cannot speak to communicate, or 69 | help dyslexic people read. An operating system should come with at 70 | least one speech synthesis engine. 71 | 72 | The quality of the voice provided by the speech synthesis engine, the 73 | frontend, matters. A boring voice will reduce productivity or 74 | enjoyment, just like a flat, unchanging, gray font will make content 75 | seem boring and lifeless. The voice should have good pronunciation 76 | ability, or allow the user to correct pronunciation. 77 | 78 | The speech engine, the backend, should be as responsive as possible. 79 | The engine must provide the ability to be stopped and restarted at any 80 | point, so that the screen reader can move from one item, or line, or 81 | character, to another at the user's request. The engine must provide a 82 | speech queue, so that messages can be read sequentially, such as in 83 | terminal output. 84 | 85 | For good flexibility, the speech engine must allow the controlling 86 | application, like a screen reader, to change its pitch, volume, and 87 | speaking rate. For even better flexibility, and possibility for spoken 88 | syntax highlighting, the speech engine should allow the modification 89 | of the speech intonation, head size, roughness, and other speech 90 | characteristics. 91 | 92 | *** Speech Input 93 | 94 | It can be tempting to believe that speech input is perfect for blind 95 | people, since it may be hard for some to find keys on the keyboard, or 96 | the misunderstanding between speech input and output. Speech input 97 | (speech recognition) is a great way to quickly enter a small amount of 98 | text. Indeed, mobile phone users have grown to prefer using this over 99 | typing on a glass screen, unsurprisingly. Blind people overwhelmingly 100 | use Siri and Dictation to get things done. 101 | 102 | On a computer, however, this isn't necessary for most. Many blind 103 | people are taught [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing][touch typing]], so they know where the keys are. 104 | Speech input should still be provided for users who are just beginning 105 | to learn to type, or who prefer dictation. 106 | 107 | *** Sounds and Latency 108 | 109 | Sound support must, at least, support two channels of output at 16-bit 110 | quality, with a latency of 40 milliseconds or lower. Sounds must also 111 | be able to play simultaneously, so that speech and sounds can play at 112 | the same time. At most, surround sound and virtual surround sound, 113 | through [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function][HRTF]], provides a great experience, while latency should be as 114 | low as possible, to provide a fast, snappy-feeling experience. 115 | 116 | *** Labels, Roles, and States 117 | 118 | Screen readers use different attributes of an item, hereafter called a 119 | /widget/, to describe what's on the screen. These attributes are: 120 | 121 | - Label :: The item's name. For example, "OK", "Name", and "Choose 122 | one". 123 | - Role :: What an item is, or its purpose. For example, "button", 124 | "edit field", and "check box". 125 | - State :: Relevant, dynamic observations about the widget. For 126 | example, "checked", "unchecked", "pressed", "has text" (for edit 127 | fields), "unavailable", and "dimmed". 128 | 129 | *** Toolkits and Text 130 | 131 | User interface toolkits must have a way for programmers to add text, 132 | or accessibility information, to their widgets. The toolkit should 133 | also expose state and role information. 134 | 135 | *** The accessibility stack 136 | 137 | The accessibility of the operating system depends on what the system 138 | gives to the screen reader. It does this through the accessibility 139 | stack. The stack must be robust enough to allow programs to give 140 | information about custom widgets, and rich enough to allow screen 141 | readers to get information about text formatting, image descriptions 142 | (if the application provides them), or usage hints in an unfamiliar 143 | application. 144 | 145 | * Resources 146 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /readme.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: UI/UX Accessibility 2 | 3 | This repository is for the documenting of UI and UX accessibility 4 | patterns that can be used by developers, testers, and auditors for 5 | determining the accessibility of an operating system desktop or 6 | "shell", programs running atop a desktop, web pages, or other frontend 7 | experience. 8 | 9 | * Contents 10 | 11 | - [[./uefi.org][UEFI Systems]] 12 | - [[./operating-systems.org][Operating Systems]] 13 | - [[./desktop-environments.org][Desktop Environments]] 14 | - [[./applications.org][Applications]] 15 | - [[./web.org][Webpages]] 16 | - [[./documents.org][Documents]] 17 | 18 | * Contributing and Contacting 19 | 20 | This repository will not reach its full potential without 21 | contributions from other people with disabilities, programmers, and 22 | other invested people. So, you can either fork the repository, make 23 | changes, and send pull requests, ask to be added as a contributor (if 24 | you plan on contributing heavily), or send requested changes via 25 | e-mail or other communication channels. Just please send the changes 26 | through a channel that supports long, multi-line messages. 27 | 28 | My contact info is below: 29 | 30 | - Email :: r.d.t.prater@gmail.com 31 | - Twitter :: @devinprater 32 | - Mastodon :: devinprater@dragonscave.space 33 | 34 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /toolkits.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: UI Toolkits 2 | 3 | A toolkit, here, refers to a set of widgets and UI tools to make 4 | graphical interfaces. These may be for local or web applications. The 5 | following is a list of toolkits that provide accessible interfaces. 6 | 7 | - [[https://github.com/AccessKit/accesskit][AccessKit]] 8 | - [[https://beeware.org][BeeWare]] 9 | - [[https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/classwx_accessible.html][WX-Widgets (Python)]] 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /uefi.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: UEFI 2 | 3 | BIOS and UEFI are the lowest-level parts of software on the computer, 4 | the firmware that handles CPU features and operating system boot. Even 5 | this is almost always inaccessible. Nothing can be done for BIOS 6 | systems, but UEFI should be extended to provide sound, and thus 7 | blind-accessibility, functions. 8 | 9 | ** Prime Directive 10 | 11 | The prime directive is to communicate with users. The user will 12 | generally know what they would like rather than what wouldn't help or 13 | even hinder their experience. Some users may have different ideas of 14 | what is "accessible" versus other users. In cases like this, you'll 15 | either need to choose between the two ideas, or give the users a 16 | choice between the two (preferable). When it comes to accessibility, 17 | choice is never a bad thing. Your users will thank you for giving them 18 | something that makes their own experience enjoyable, productive, or 19 | both. 20 | 21 | ** Totally Blind Users 22 | 23 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 24 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 25 | addressed in another section. 26 | 27 | *** Input and Output 28 | 29 | All input must be able to be performed on the keyboard. Output must be 30 | optionally spoken if a pair of headphones are inserted, or using 31 | another documented and easily found method. If a braille device is 32 | connected, output must be sent to that device. Braille support will 33 | depend on the Braille HID standard being adopted by more braille 34 | device vendors. There may be further work needed to bring braille to UEFI. 35 | 36 | * Resources 37 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /uefi.org~: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: BIOS and UEFI 2 | 3 | BIOS and UEFI are the lowest-level parts of software on the computer, 4 | the firmware that handles CPU features and operating system boot. Even 5 | this is almost always inaccessible. 6 | 7 | ** Prime Directive 8 | 9 | The prime directive is to communicate with users. The user will 10 | generally know what they would like rather than what wouldn't help or 11 | even hinder their experience. Some users may have different ideas of 12 | what is "accessible" versus other users. In cases like this, you'll 13 | either need to choose between the two ideas, or give the users a 14 | choice between the two (preferable). When it comes to accessibility, 15 | choice is never a bad thing. Your users will thank you for giving them 16 | something that makes their own experience enjoyable, productive, or 17 | both. 18 | 19 | ** Totally Blind Users 20 | 21 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 22 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 23 | addressed in another section. 24 | 25 | *** Input and Output 26 | 27 | All input must be able to be performed on the keyboard. Output must be 28 | optionally spoken if a pair of headphones are inserted, or using 29 | another documented and easily found method. If a braille device is 30 | connected, output must be sent to that device. 31 | 32 | * Resources 33 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /web.org: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | #+title: Website Accessibility 2 | 3 | A website, here, is a collection of pages, made of HTML, CSS, and 4 | JavaScript, presented usually over the Internet to users' web 5 | browsers. 6 | 7 | ** Prime Directive 8 | 9 | The prime directive is to communicate with users. The user will 10 | generally know what they would like rather than what wouldn't help or 11 | even hinder their experience. Some users may have different ideas of 12 | what is "accessible" versus other users. In cases like this, you'll 13 | either need to choose between the two ideas, or give the users a 14 | choice between the two (preferable). When it comes to accessibility, 15 | choice is never a bad thing. Your users will thank you for giving them 16 | something that makes their own experience enjoyable, productive, or 17 | both. 18 | 19 | ** Totally Blind Users 20 | 21 | This section will concern users who have either only light perception 22 | or cannot see anything at all. People who have limited vision will be 23 | addressed in another section. 24 | 25 | *** HTML 26 | 27 | Use HTML for content, not layout or looks. Tables should only be for 28 | the display of data, not for layout of regular information. If you 29 | want information to be in columns, do that using CSS. 30 | 31 | *** Use Headings and Landmarks 32 | 33 | Headings are for sectioning out your page. Try to only have one 34 | heading at level one, as the title of the page, article, or main 35 | content. This allows blind users who use only headings to find the 36 | main content of a site more quickly, and for those who use landmarks 37 | to do the same thing with the Main landmark. Keep in mind, though, 38 | that many screen readers only allow users to move from landmark to 39 | landmark, so if you've got a Navigation landmark for your navigation 40 | bar, then an Aside landmark for some complementary content, it'll take 41 | more key presses to find the Main landmark than it will the heading at 42 | level one. 43 | 44 | Landmarks are for more screen reader specific navigation. A main 45 | landmark denotes the main section of the page. Landmarks are for 46 | dividing your page into regions for faster navigation. They can be 47 | very helpful in news sites, where the article landmark allows the user 48 | to move from one article to the next, if the screen reader supports the 49 | movement from one Article to the next. 50 | 51 | *** Labeling Widgets 52 | 53 | Within form controls, like buttons, edit fields, check boxes, and 54 | radio buttons, it is important to give them textual labels using the 55 | label tag. Screen readers will read this to the user. 56 | 57 | Be sure to label widgets simply and briefly. It's better to label a 58 | button "close" than it is to label it "A green close button on a blue 59 | background." Do not add the widget's roll to the label either, as the 60 | browser will know what kind of widget it is, and will communicate that 61 | to the screen reader. 62 | 63 | Placeholders should never replace labels in forms. 64 | 65 | *** Try not to use ARIA 66 | 67 | You may have heard of ARIA, which allows a web developer to control a 68 | lot of what a screen reader says and does on a site. However, 69 | configuring ARIA can be brittle and painful, requiring a lot of manual 70 | intervention when something breaks. It is much easier to instead use 71 | simple, pure HTML, which screen readers and browsers are already good 72 | at understanding. If you have to use ARIA, be sure to have users test 73 | your site to see if they can use the functions built with ARIA. 74 | 75 | *** Label Images 76 | 77 | Images must contain an "alt" attribute with a description of the 78 | image. It doesn't matter if your descriptions are exquisitely vivid 79 | and detailed; what matters is that you get the point across. For 80 | example, "An orange kitten curled up on a windowsill in a sunbeam" is 81 | good enough for most cases. 82 | 83 | Leave the "alt" empty if your image is just decorative for sighted users and doesn't add any value to the content. 84 | 85 | Be careful when you use images inside buttons or links without text. 86 | Don't describe the image here, but which action will be initiated when 87 | the user interacts with the element. 88 | 89 | This is also important to make your site accessible for sighted people 90 | in poor countries who cannot have good Internet connection and will 91 | have images disabled by default. 92 | 93 | *** Language Changes 94 | 95 | If there is a widget, like a paragraph, in a different language, use 96 | the "lang" attribute to tell the screen reader which language to speak 97 | in. This helps in language-learning sites, or even social networks 98 | which allow multi-lingual posts. 99 | 100 | ** Color-blind Users 101 | 102 | This section will concern users who have color-blindness or color vision deficiency and cannot distinguish certain shades of color. 103 | 104 | *** Color 105 | 106 | Don't rely on color to give important information. Color-blind users 107 | may not perceive the difference. Use patterns, icons or text instead. 108 | 109 | If you give different color options to the user (for example, when 110 | they are buying a T-shirt), include text with the name of each color 111 | in the text description so they can know which one they are choosing 112 | even if they cannot perceive the difference. 113 | 114 | Be careful with color combinations. Some combinations may be harder 115 | for people with low vision to read. 116 | 117 | *** Contrast 118 | 119 | Make sure your text is readable and passes the accessibility 120 | guidelines for text contrast. These include text color, background 121 | color and text size. 122 | 123 | Try to avoid using text over background images, since it's harder to have enough contrast. 124 | 125 | When testing your site, use tools to convert your pages or design into 126 | grayscale. Can a sighted user still distinguish the text on the whole 127 | site? 128 | 129 | *** Placeholders 130 | 131 | Placeholders don't have enough contrast (and if they had, it would be 132 | a bad user experience) so avoid them. At least, don't use them to 133 | communicate crucial info. 134 | 135 | ** Keyboard Users 136 | 137 | This section will concern users who rely on keyboards to navigate 138 | websites. 139 | 140 | *** Outline on focus 141 | 142 | Never set the keyboard focus outline to 0 or none. If you do that, it 143 | will become impossible to navigate your website with a keyboard, since 144 | the user will have no idea where they are. 145 | 146 | The exception could be if you apply specific styles for an element 147 | when it's focused. But it's hard to keep track of every interactive or 148 | focusable element in a page. So make sure you only remove the outline 149 | for that specific element. 150 | 151 | The default style for the outline is not a good option either since it 152 | has low contrast and is very thin. It is highly recommended to set the 153 | width to -- at least -- 3 pixels. 154 | 155 | *** Navigation Order 156 | 157 | The order of the focusable elements should be logical and intuitive. 158 | Try to follow the visual flow of the page. 159 | 160 | You shouldn't change the default keyboard navigation order, do not use tabindex values of 1 or greater. 161 | 162 | *** Empty links 163 | 164 | Links shouldn't behave like buttons. 165 | 166 | If you leave a link element without or with an empty "href" attribute, it won't become focusable and keyboard users aren't gonna be able to use them. 167 | 168 | *** Skip content 169 | 170 | If there is some repetitive or boring section your users may want to 171 | skip, provide an internal link to the next "interesting" element. 172 | 173 | ** General 174 | 175 | These may fit in none or more than one of the previous sections. 176 | 177 | *** No JavaScript 178 | 179 | Some users won't have JavaScript activated. Check if everything makes 180 | sense with only HTML and CSS. 181 | 182 | If your menu or navbar relies on JavaScript to toggle, leave it open 183 | by default so anyone without JS can use it. If there's JavaScript, you 184 | can always close it as soon as the page loads. 185 | 186 | *** Font size 187 | 188 | Use always relative font sizes! Don't set your font size with static 189 | values like pixels. 190 | 191 | Don't disable zoom on your website so your users can make the text as 192 | big or small as they need it. 193 | 194 | * Resources 195 | 196 | - [[https://adrianroselli.com/2021/06/using-css-to-enforce-accessibility.html][Using 197 | CSS to enforce Accessibility]] 198 | - [[https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/][WebAIM Screen 199 | reader survey]] 200 | - [[https://levelup.gitconnected.com/wcag-2-1-simplified-how-to-make-your-website-accessible-1cfadd03d20d][WCAG 2.1, Simplified: How to Make Your Website Accessible]] 201 | - [[https://www.w3.org/WAI/people-use-web/user-stories/][Web 202 | Accessibility Initiative: Story of web users]] 203 | - [[https://wave.webaim.org][WebAIm Accessibility checker]] 204 | - [[https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/][WebAIm Contrast checker]] 205 | - [[https://www.udemy.com/course/web-content-accessibility-guidelines-wcag-21-simplified/][(Udemy course) WCAG 2.1 / 2.2 Simplified With Examples by Stefany Newman]] 206 | - [[https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey9/][WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey 9 results]] 207 | - [[https://www.deque.com/blog/top-5-rules-of-aria/][Top Five Rules of ARIA]] 208 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------