WebAIM April 2024 Newsletter

Read this newsletter online at https://webaim.org/newsletter/2024/april

Feature

Web Accessibility in the 2024 Presidential Campaigns

WebAIM's John Northup ran the US presidential campaign websites through the AIM (Accessibility IMpact) testing process to determine which scores the best.

Upcoming WebAIM Events

• Document Accessibility Course - May cohort is now open for registrations.
• Virtual Web Accessibility Training - May 7–8
• AccessU 2024 - May 13-16 - Full-day document accessibility workshop (f2f & virtual)
• University of Guelph Accessibility Conference (virtual) - May 29–31 - Full-day document accessibility workshop (virtual)

Resources

ADA updated to include technical standards for web and mobile

This update will require WCAG 2.1 A/AA conformance for public entities starting in 2 or 3 years, with some exceptions.

Latest WebAIM's Million – some thoughts

Another WebAIM's Million, this time with different webpages. A tiny improvement, but more complexity at the same time. Can design annotations help preventing some issues that are still rising?

How screen readers read special characters: an update

Screen readers interpret what is on the screen. They can read most text easily and accurately, but how do they handle special punctuation and characters? Let's find out!

Exploring the Power of ARIA Live Attribute in Web Accessibility

Aria-live attribute enables assistive technologies such as screen readers to convey content updates to a screen reader user, improving the user experience by keeping them informed of the changes happening on the page.

The Complete Guide to Captioned Videos

This guide will dive into why captioning matters, how it provides a huge ROI, 10 rules for creating great captioned videos, and how to caption your videos.

A complete guide for content creators to start making accessible content

As content creators, we also have a lot of power to either make content accessible for our users with disabilities or (often unknowingly) create barriers that make it difficult or impossible for them to access content.

How to test 2.4.11: Focus Not Obscured (Minimum)

Success Criterion 2.4.11: Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) requires that interactive controls are not entirely obscured by author-created content, at the point when they receive focus.

Building a culture of accessibility

Building an accessible culture you can be proud of often starts with HR professionals, project and product managers, and leaders within your organisation.

Images as the first thing in a button or link

An accessibility problem I encounter regularly is where the text of an interactive element like a button or link is preceded with an image, and the image is accessible.

Long Alt

Keep your image alternative text brief, devoid of special characters, empty of URLs, and ideally in one language.

Quick Tip: Web accessibility and technical debt

The 2024 WebAIM Million report shows that the number of home page elements (links, buttons, paragraphs, divs, etc.) is increasing at a rate of about 10% per year to an average of 1173 elements per page. The most popular home pages tend to be the most complex. Much of this is driven by the increased use of 3rd party frameworks and libraries, rather than in-house developers writing code themselves. This increased technical debt and reliance on external code poses barriers to accessibility and usability. Reining in this technical debt may allow web accessibility to accelerate.

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• Keyboard operation with browser plug-in
• Modal dialogs and page titles
• Meaningful Sequence in SPAs
• Interactive video transcript with search feature

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WebAIM is a non-profit organization based at the Institute for Disability Research, Policy & Practice at Utah State University.