Power to the people, freedom for your code

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Freedom For Your Code

Eric Eggert, Knowbility · AccessU · May 2019

Eric Eggert

Eric Eggert is a Web Developer and Teacher who works with Knowbility and the W3C on improving the Web for People with Disabilities, and everyone else. My name is Eric Eggert and I work with Knowbility and the W3C to improve the Web for People with Disabilities. I work with Knowbility and they donate 50% of my work time to W3C as a fellowship.

Web Development

My background is standards-based web development and I focus on accessibility for over 10 years now, and teaching about my experience and learning is very important to me. Web development is complicated…

• Talking & Planning

• Graphic Design (of an image of a website)

• HTML/CSS/JavaScript

• CMS

• Content

• Iterations

• Performance

• Security
• Hotfixes

• Data protection

• Quality Control

• Accessibility

…and often is carried out in less-than desired ways: After talking and designing, implementing is often done before performance, content, security, data protection and, yes, accessibility, are considered.

Accessibility is a sign of good quality.

And that despite that we all know that accessibility is a sign of a good process and caring for it can result in a process that produces better quality websites.

“Designing inclusive software results in improved usability and customer satisfaction.” — Microsoft’s app developer guide

Donʼt take my word for it.

Accessibility must be a foundational value

But that also means accessibility needs to be a foundational value in the process and everyone needs to live it and embrace it.

[alt: Neil Patrick Harris with a stack of papers that he arranges neatly, saying “hopes and dreams” on the cover. Then throwing it away behind himself.]

Accessible Web Development is Complicated

WebAIM Million

Only 2.2% of the top 1 million websites are not inaccessible according to a study by our friends at WebAIM. Thatʼs bad.

Observations

• 60% of the 1 million home pages had ARIA present.
• Home pages with ARIA present averaged 11.2 more detectable errors than pages without ARIA.
• Pages with a valid HTML5 doctype had significantly more page elements (average of 844 vs. 605) and errors (average of 61.9 vs. 53.3) than those with other doctypes.
• 2.1M layout tables were detected compared to only 114k data tables.

More Complex == Less Accessible

Taming that complexity comes with more complexity

Many developers that get the task of implementing complex widgets add ARIA in an attempt to ensure accessibility. But that makes it even more complex.

[alt: Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who, saying “I am too nice. This is what happens when you try to be nice.”]

Screen Reader Differences

“VoiceOver and Safari remove list element semantics when list-style: none is used.” — Scott O’Hara: “Fixing” Lists

[alt: Four Doctor Who gifs, all saying “What?”]

“This was a purposeful change due to rampant ‘list’-itis by web developers.” — James Craig, Apple, bugs.webkit.org

What does it mean for me as a web developer that Safari is not reading lists when they don’t look like a list?

Nothing.

A Time Line

• 2014: First Commit
• 2015: Additional Code
• …
• No Changes
• …
• 2019: The Web Notices

“Customers seem much happier in the 3 years since this change went in.” — James Craig, Apple, bugs.webkit.org

dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com

We realized for a long time that websites do not need to look the same in every browser.

The same it true for screen readers: They don’t all need to produce the same output.

Screen readers have extremely granular verbosity settings. In VoiceOver, you can chose between Medium, Low and High verbosity. Users can chose individually the level of verbosity they are comfortable with.

The same goes for punctuation. Some users might opt to hear most or all of the punctuation, some only to hear a couple.

You can even overwrite certain abbreviations or symbols. You can even make VoiceOver pronounce GIF as jiff, if you want to.

There is no Control.

[alt: Three Doctors Who putting on sunglasses with Caption “Deal With It”]

Other Differences

Go <figure>

[alt: Text with a figure that shows a South African Swallow and a European Swallow. They have differences which would be described in the alternative text while the figure caption reads: “Left: South African Swallow, Right: European Swallow.”]

Image source, 2003 via Scott O’Hara

JAWS has the best support for announcing native figures and their captions, though support is not perfect or consistent depending on the browser and JAWS’s verbosity settings.

IE11 requires the use of role=”figure” and an aria-label or aria-labelledby pointing to the figcaption to mimic native announcements.

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Edge* won’t announce the presence of a figure role at all, regardless if ARIA is used or not.

*EdgeHTML-Version as published in 2018.

Chrome and Firefox offer similar support, however JAWS (with default verbosity settings) + Chrome will completely ignore a figure (including the content of its figcaption) if an image has an empty alt or is lacking an alt attribute.

Testing NVDA version 2018.4.1 with IE11, Edge, Firefox 64.0.2 and Chrome 71, there was no trace of figures.

<figure role="figure" aria-label="Caption for the figure.">
  <!-- figure content. if an image, provide alt text -->
  <figcaption>
    Caption for the figure.
  </figcaption>
</figure>

<!--
  aria-label for macOS VoiceOver + Chrome
  role="figure" for IE11.

  IE11 needs an accessible name (provided by aria-label).
  If not for the fact VO + Chrome doesn't support an
  accessible name from aria-labelledby, that attribute
  would have been preferred / pointed to an ID on 
  the <figcaption>.
-->

Presently, mobile screen readers won’t announce figures, nor Edge unless paired with Narrator (sort of), or any browser paired with NVDA.

Thanks, Scott!

How do you figure? | scottohara.me

ARIA can help, but not in every situation.

Accessibility is not only Screen Readers

Most non-Screen-Reader assistive technology does not work well with ARIA.

How Dragon Naturally Speaking works with ARIA » Simply Accessible (2014)

Screenshot courtesy of Eric Bailey

This screenshot shows a couple of links: Normal links, placeholder links without href, links that are faked using ARIA, even one without a button. On the right, thereʼs a paragraph of text with a styled ARIA link in it (Non-underlined dark blue text link in black text paragraph.)

Screenshot courtesy of Eric Bailey.

This is the same page with High Contrast Mode enabled. Only real links are colored differently compared to the normal text. ARIA links have the same color as the text.

The same goes for buttons – when you use aria-disabled=true, the disabled button will not look inactive, like a button that has the disabled attribute set. This can confuse users.

Users!

Knowledge Levels Vary Greatly

Users often don’t know what their computers can do for them.

Other Users hack their assistive technology to work with inaccessible sites.

Some users write style sheets and JavaScripts to change websites to their needs.

Users are somewhere on this spectrum between type of disability, accessibility support of the tools they use and the proficiency that they have to actually use those tools.

Test with Diverse Users

Give Users Agency

Allow use of assistive technology that suits a particular user’s needs.

Try not to prescribe how to use a component.

Use HTML & CSS to describe elements.

Don’t expect any proficiency from users.

Don’t break conventions!

Users get a lot more tools to use!

Reader Mode

This is reader mode in Safari. Clicking on the reader mode icon in the top left transforms the page (in the first screen shot) to an easy to read layout that focuses on the content of the page.

You can change fonts and colors to your liking.

Reader Mode

Native Support:

• Safari (since 2010, can set to default since 2015)
• Firefox (2015)
• Edge (2015)
• Chrome (soon)

This is the reader mode in Firefox.

It can read the content to you, which is important for users with cognitive disabilities.

It also has theme options.

More Website Settings

You can nowadays set different default settings for a website. Here I set to use reader mode when it is available, enable content blockers and never auto-play video on medium.com.

Itʼs also possible to get an overview, and change, the settings on a site basis.

OS

As in Operating System

OS Settings

The Operating System, here macOS, has a diverse set of settings, including “invert colors”, “reduce motion”, “use greyscale”, “increase contrast” and “reduce transparency”. We can use those settings on the web:

prefers-reduced-motion Media Query

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
  * {
      transition: none !important;
      animation: none !important;
  }
}

Support

Support across browsers is very good.

On Windows …it’s complicated

Source: Patrick H. Lauke, Twitter, ThreadReader

prefers-color-scheme Media Query

:root {
  --color: #333;
  --bgcolor: #eee;
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  :root {
    --color: #eee;
    --bgcolor: #333;
  }
}

html {
  color: var(--color);
  background-color: var(--bgcolor);
}

DEMO

We* also get a lot more tools to use!

• Designers & Developers

Media Queries Level 5(?)

inverted-colors

• none
• inverted

prefers-reduced-transparency

• no-preference
• reduce

prefers-contrast

• no-preference
• high
• low

forced-colors

• none
• active

Environment MQs

light-level

• dim
• normal
• washed

environment-blending

• opaque
  • The document is rendered on an opaque medium, such as a traditional monitor or paper. Black is dark and white is 100% light.
• additive
  • The display blends the colors of the canvas with the real world using additive mixing. Black is fully transparent and white is 100% light. For example: a head-up display in a car.
• subtractive
  • The display blends the colors of the canvas with the real world using subtractive mixing. White is fully transparent and dark colors have the most contrast. For example: an LCD display embedded in a bathroom mirror.

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics

DEMO

See Doug’s Session Yesterday!

Scalable Vector Graphics

• Can adapt to the viewport (or embed size).
• Can use the font color of the text.
• Can have “real” text in it.

<details> & <summary>

<details id="examples">

  <summary>
    <h2>Examples</h2>
  </summary>

  <div>

    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing
       elit. Doloribus non amet perferendis quasi similique 
       impedit maxime, iusto fuga magni. Similique sint a 
       expedita esse alias voluptate illum porro placeat 
       est?</p>

  </div>

</details>

<details id="examples" open>

  <summary>
    <h2>Examples</h2>
  </summary>

  <div>

    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing
       elit. Doloribus non amet perferendis quasi similique 
       impedit maxime, iusto fuga magni. Similique sint a 
       expedita esse alias voluptate illum porro placeat 
       est?</p>

  </div>

</details>

An Accordion in 5 Lines of JS

Nice :focus Styles

• JavaScipt
• We don’t need JS.
• Thanks currentColor!

:focus-within

Thank You!

Eric Eggert

Web: yatil.net

E-Mail: mail@yatil.net Social: @yatil