August 28, 2023 • Issue #359

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Featured: European Accessibility Act: What you need to know

"Weirdly, not many people have heard of it, but the scope of it is huge! So lets look at it in more detail. I'll try to explain what it means, especially for private sector organisations, and I'll also share some tips to help you prepare for the deadline in 2025, so you're not left scrambling at the last minute!"

Read more of European Accessibility Act: What you need to know.

Sponsored: Key considerations for accessibility in WordPress

Equalize Digital is excited to announce the release of a new “front-end highlighting” feature for its WordPress Accessibility Checker plugin, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker is software that adds automated accessibility testing into the WordPress content management system, which powers more than 41% of the web. Released in early 2021, the plugin is open source and offers a free version available for anyone with a WordPress website via the WordPress plugin directory.

NASA funds development of front-end highlighting feature for Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker.

News, resources, tools and tutorials

• What happens when developers are liable for accessibility? (blog post - accessarmada.com)
• How organisations respond to accessibility monitoring (blog post - accessibility.blog.gov.uk)
• Main-ly speaking (blog post - dev.to/colabottles)
• European Accessibility Act: Article 32, and why it sucks! (blog post – craigabbott.co.uk)
• Where to put focus when deleting a thing (blog post – adrianroselli.com
• Progressively enhanced form validation, part 2: Layering in JavaScript (blog post –cloudfour.com)
• Playbook for Universal Design (resource – universaldesignguide.com
• A11y Cat (resource – a11ycat.net)
• How to provide accessibility in your native Android app with Jetpack Compose | Part 2: Scaling, text size, focus order, labeling (blog post – thedroidsonroids.com

New to A11y

Whitney Lewis covers another topic that comes up frequently in accessibility work: A beginner’s guide to accessible tables. Whitney and company at Pope Tech continue to create helpful beginner material. This post outlines the difference in tables, and why it matters.