Accordions are useful components in web pages for temporarily hiding content until it’s needed. But is it possible to make an accessible accordion component? Here’s an illustrated walkthrough of the code pattern that I prefer…
I’m delighted to announce that our 5 star-reviewed book on embedding accessibility into your business-as-usual processes is now available on Kindle. Those who have read it, love it. So if you want more Hassell Inclusion insights, and case-studies from 20 more top accessibility experts from all over the planet, it’s a must have. Find out more…
As part of our company’s 10% giving, we have recently been to Ethiopia to raise money for Ethiopiaid. While we were there, we visited the local projects they support to find out what life for people with disabilities in Ethiopia is like, what accessibility looks like there, and what we could learn from to help this growing nation support the lives and ambitions of its disabled population. Here’s what we found out…
People arrive in accessibility from all sorts of directions. You don’t have to have a background in development, or testing. You could equally arrive from governance, user testing, or marketing. The beauty of accessibility is that it takes people with all sorts of skillsets. All you need is passion, a place to learn your skills, and a place to apply them. So we asked some of our podcast team how they arrived in accessibility, and what they love about it that makes them such passionate advocates. Here’s what they said…
Christmas is coming fast. So how does Santa relate to accessibility? The Christmasify WordPress plugin allows web sites to add a selection of Christmassy items: snowfall, Santa on his sledge moving across the screen, some Christmassy tunes playing, festive decorations for images, and a Christmassy font for the headings. A bit of seasonable fun? Yes. But adding this plugin (and others like it) can cause serious accessibility issues for significant numbers of your site visitors. So can the plugin’s accessibility (and Christmas) be saved?
We often meet people who are desperate to gain knowledge in accessibility. In our team at Hassell Inclusion we’re lucky to have international experts who have over 70 years of accessibility experience between us. We’ve created accessibility standards and help a diverse range of clients to apply those standards to their work every day of the week. We wanted to start opening up some of that well of experience, so people who want to know more about accessibility can benefit. That’s why we’ve created the Digital Accessibility Experts Podcast. Here’s episode 1…
Is accessibility becoming an important part of your digital product development? Something that you’re spending increasing time and effort on? In this blog, Hassell Inclusion’s CEO Jonathan Hassell interviews Debra Ruh from Ruh Global Communications on how embedding accessibility in your processes may be more effective than just chasing compliance – anything else is just not sustainable
WCAG 2.1 has now been published. Many people are talking about what’s in it. But the more important question is: what’s in it for you? Here’s a background to why we needed a new accessibility standard, what we recommend organisations should do about moving to it, and some hints and tips from our experience of helping our clients use it so far…
Despite our aversion to change, new versions of websites and apps are being released at an increasing rate. Product Managers do this to add new functionality, restructure creaking information hierarchies, or just to keep up with current design trends. However, whenever you change a digital product there will be a period in which your users will feel uncomfortable, as they have to re-learn how to use it. Even if the new site is more accessible than the previous one, if it’s structured differently you can actually lose disabled users, as the challenge of re-learning how to use a site can be a big challenge. So how can you prevent this?
in 2001, when I first started working in accessibility at the BBC, one of the key things we thought about was the aim to make text as simple as possible. Using Plain Language. In WCAG 1.0, this was a single-A requirement, recognising it as one of the most important aspects of web accessibility. But WCAG 2.0 downgraded it to be AAA, which everyone forgets. So can IBM’s Content Clarifier remind us of the key text accessibility requirements we’ve forgot?