The numeronym “a11y” stands for digital accessibility. My interest is not primarily technical accessibility, but the overall mindset, processes and practices of designing an inclusive and universally useful digital future.
This looks like a very interesting impulse for more inclusive UX research:
Fable released a tool called the Accessible Usability Scale , which we have made freely available. It is specifically meant for conducting research with assistive technology users. The AUS is a 10-item […]
While WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 are the current standards demanded by many legislative frameworks, work is well under way towards the next version, WCAG 2.2, which can also be expected to become the overall baseline at some point. Hence, this review of the drafted requirements is an interesting read. For UI […]
yatil.net 
As with any fields of design, confirmation bias can stop us from seeing the reality. Eric Eggert points out how (in this field of design, too, one may add) only verifying solutions with real users – in this case people with disabilities – will lead to good results. […]
Starting with an analogy to tech in orienteering sports, Lawrie Phipps looks at the excluding factor of the growing reliance of a certain stack of technology:
[…] practices in education have shifted, and we now have more technology as a default. That technology will have a […]
a11yproject.com 
Hands-down the most comprehensive treatment of semantic HTML heading structures, with special focus on accessibility, this How-to by Rian Rietveld answers close to any questions both beginners and advanced users may have. Side note, as it’s closely related: a very specific use case – the […]
“This is WCAG” is a community-driven effort (GitHub repo) to translate the WCAG criteria for accessible websites into plain english, actionable test statements:
It’s not a catch-all list for things which you feel should be accessibility failures but aren’t. This […]
#a11y friends: pattern or anti-pattern?
<p id="k">Kicker</p>
<!-- some other cruft, e.g. img -->
<h2 id="h" aria-labelledby="k h">Heading</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum …</p>
instead of:
<h2>Kicker</h2>
<!-- ... -->
<h3>Heading</h3>
<p>Lorem ipsum …</p>
Any major cons? Thanks!
Joschi Kuphal and some of his contacts discuss the optimal HTML semantics for a “kicker” (the little pre-heading on top of a headline, sometimes also called “eyebrow”; “Dachzeile” in German) from an accessibility perspective. Some very interesting nuggets and […]
essentialaccessibility.com 
While high contrast is important for accessibility, this article is a good reminder why overdoing it is not a good idea:
There is a myth about white text over black backgrounds being the best color contrast combination for accessibility, but in reality, white text on black backgrounds […]
codeenigma.com 
“Is dark mode impacting your users”, Maygen Jacques asks in this article about some less-considered aspects of designing for “dark mode” — specifically the impact of fuzzy vision from white text on black background for users with astigmatism:
Let’s […]
SourceData visualization cares disproportionately far too much about designing for colorblindness relative to other disabilities that are more common (visual impairments included).
— Frank ⌁ (@FrankElavsky) January 18, 2021
(A thread on disability, race, and patriarchy in data visualization.)
In this 2016 post, Mike Hoye presents a “Minimum Viable Set of User Stories” as a baseline of what software needs to enable to qualify as an MVP. It includes items such as User changes gender User is managing an addiction User is not always, and/or or not reliably, connected to the […]
Let's do a quick #a11y review of the first website for each voting category for @AWWWARDS' best of 2020.
This Twitter thread by Eric Bailey points at an issue that the inclusive design community is well aware of, but that is ignored at large by the audiences of these “Best Websites of …” competitions and top-lists: A lot of (I’d go as far as to say: the majority of) websites celebrated by design agencies and decorated with “design awards” are lacking even the most basic consideration of accessibility. Eric is not doing thorough a11y audits, just some quick and improvised testing of keyboard accessibility (focus styles), colour contrast etc. – these are issues even a junior web developer could notice within a few minutes. […]
Terence Eden tells the story of a young woman who, forced by circumstances, has to use a public website using a tiny gaming device’s browser. And it works. Because designers did their job:
The PSP’s web browser is – charitably – pathetic. It is slow, frequently runs out of […]
Accessible Palettes has over 50+ AAA funky colour palettes for you to use in your next project!Furquan Ahmad, inspired by colour schemes of football teams and certain places around London, created colour palettes that meet the w3C web accessibility guidelines. For […]
A tiny little demo that tries to resemble the experience of a person with dyslexia:
A friend who has dyslexia described to me how she experiences reading. She can read, but it takes a lot of concentration, and the letters seems to “jump around”. I remembered reading about […]
responsibleweb.app 
Joy Heron uses “responsible” (a portmanteau of “responsive + accessible”) to present a concise introduction built around designing HTML with both responsiveness and accessibility in mind. It covers a good portion of the basics and I could well imagine this as a valuable […]
I’m always happy to randomly stumble upon accessibility updates on websites — today I noticed that caniuse.com (the most comprehensive resource for web developers to assess feature availability in different browsers) updated their colored tables with new cell backgrounds: […]
As I am currently working on an inclusive project with a focus on reaching disadvantaged populations, last week’s Creative Mornings Berlin meetup featuring a talk by Lena Alfter on typography for dyslexic people could not have come at a better time. Lena Alfter, a young designer from Germany […]
