“Nothing About Us Without Us” may be a long-standing maxim within the disability rights movement but a sizeable proportion of creators of digital content appear yet to receive the memo.
Most people take websites for granted. They pay bills, book flights and download white papers online with relative ease. But not everyone assumes that digital tools are designed with them in mind, and that’s a failure for everyone.
Domino’s Pizza Inc. won’t be able to evade a lawsuit claiming it doesn’t ensure blind people can order food through its website and mobile app.
Blue Badge Style is a website and app created by Fiona Jarvis, who believes that accessibility can and should be stylish. The Blue Badge Style app reviews the accessibility of venues in and around London; including bars, restaurants, galleries, hotels, theaters and more. The Blue Badge Style app is available from iTunes and Google Play for free. The Blue Badge Style website also reviews travel destinations, products, mobility aids, interior design and fashion for people who are less able. Blue Badge Style reminds us that beauty and elegance should be truly inclusive.
Easy Chirp is a third-party web-based twitter interface that provides an accessible alternative to the Twitter.com website. In addition to being more accessible for people with disabilities, Easy Chirp also works with older browsers like IE6, lowband Internet connections, and without JavaScript. Features of Easy Chirp include; visible and accessible links, simple and consistent layout and navigation, a proper heading structure, large default text size and high color contrast, text that re-sizes without breaking, access keys to main menu items, accessible forms and data tables.
This video from Ability Net explores the problems that keyboard users and screen reader users can face when attempting to navigate through an inaccessible website. Issues such as non-descriptive link titles, skipping over links, and no visual differentiation marking which link is currently selected can make navigation impossible for many users