Universal Access (Accessibility)

Terms:

• Accessibility: being able to access something (implies disability)
• Universal Access: making sure everyone can use something (inclusive of all)
• Inclusive design: designing to covere the needs for everyone, keeping in mind any special situational, temporary, or permament accomodations
  • Microsoft has an amazing document (PDF) on this exact topic.

Cockpit-related accessibility documents

• (Installing NVDA on Linux)[https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/wiki/Accessibility:-Installing-NVDA-on-Linux]

Resources

• MDN Accessibility overview
• WebAIM
• The A11Y Project: A community-driven effort to make web accessibility easier.
• Section 508
  • HTML checklist:
    • HHS section 508 checklist
    • WebAIM section 508 checklist
    • Section508.gov Accessibility improvement
  • Development Methodology for Section 508 Compliance (pdf)
• Testing accessibility with real people
• Simply Accessible articles
• Screen reader reliability tests @ PowerMapper

Specific

HTML-related

• Tabindex
  • summary: use 0 or -1, but nothing higher
• Skip link
• ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)
  • ARIA @ MDN
  • WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1
    • Editor's Draft (more recent WIP version of the above)
    • First rule of ARIA club is to not use ARIA, unless there's no other way (that is: if there's a semantic element that provides the feature, use that instead — it's much prefered and simpler than marking up everything with ARIA)
  • Landmarks
  • Articles
    • Landmarks: HTML5 vs. ARIA
    • AIRA tabs (danger!)
    • Don’t Use ARIA Menu Roles for Site Nav
      • "A properly-coded web page navigation menu needs no ARIA. Once you add ARIA, however, you have put yourself on the hook to handle some complex interactions."
      • "Somehow many developers have come to the conclusion that a web page is inaccessible unless it uses ARIA. This is a combination of patterns that do not use semantic HTML, a misunderstanding of ARIA, and not having practical experience with assistive technology."
      • "Tutorials often get it wrong, such as the always useless W3 Schools in its Bootstrap documentation. Not that Bootstrap is off the hook, given that its 2.x documentation recommended menu roles and I still see that code copy-pasted into projects today."

Testing framework

• aXe: https://www.axe-core.org/
• Accessibility Developer Tools: https://github.com/GoogleChrome/accessibility-developer-tools

Browser add-ons

• aXe Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/axe-devtools/
• WAVE (WebAIM): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wave-accessibility-tool/
• Tota11y: Accessibility toolkit: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tota11y-accessibility-toolkit/
  • Based on Tota11y by Khan Academy: https://khan.github.io/tota11y/

Desktop screen reader

• Orca is included in GNOME
  • speech-dispatcher-flite adds a better voice for Orca (which is used once it's selected)
  • orca -s lets you configure Orca, including the voice used

Web screen reader

• Epiphany (GNOME-Web) can use Orca
• Chrome has a plugin called ChromeVox

A quick guide to ChromeVox

ChromeVox is an extension for Chrome, made available directly by Google. The extension has one of the nicest sounding voices on Linux for screen reading, as it uses the Google voices you're possibly familiar with on Android devices. While it's not one of the most common screen readers, it should help to give you the general feel of what using a screen reader is like, and help to show problem areas on websites and webapps.

ChromeVox's default action key is shift+alt. All commands require usage of this key combo. (It can be changed if you prefer another shortcut.)

After installing ChromeVox, it is enabled. It can be disabled or re-enabled by using the shortcut key and the a key (shift+alt+a).

Use shift+alt+arrows to jump around on the page. Often, but not always, the unprefixed arrow keys can also work.

shift+alt+n, letting go of keys, and then a special key like ; lets you jump to the next ARIA landmark. Likewise, shift+alt+p jumps back to the previous item. (You can jump to links with shift+alt+n,l; tables with shift+alt+n,t; headers with shift+alt+n,h; and so on…)

Start reading a page with shift+alt+r. You can then navigate with shift+alt+arrows to jump around spatially. In reading mode, you're also able to directly click items to jump to that area.

Note: Knowing how to use ChromeVox, especially the reading mode and toggle shortcuts, is useful if you want to have any web page read out loud, even if you're not specifically using the tool for accessibility reasons. (This is actually an excellent example of inclusive design.)