When a friend generously gave me some saffron recently, it presented me with an opportunity to make crème brulée with a little extra magic in it. crème brulée is ridiculously easy to make, exudes classic style, and even has an element of danger about it... so even if (like m...
Many websites provide keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. Keyboard shortcuts are useful things to have, but the way in which they’re provided is often problematic for Windows screen reader users.
Websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google provide keyboard shortcuts for repe...
The CSS before/after pseudo-selectors can be used to insert content into a page. In some situations this technique is a useful thing to do, but how do browsers and screen readers handle the generated content?
Quick recap: The before/after selectors insert content either befo...
Search engines have ways of extracting meaning from content, but they're prone to error because information on the webb can be presented in so many different ways. Marking up information so it's easier for search engines to index is a good thing to do, and thanks to the voca...
When a web application has a session timeout, it’s a good idea to warn users about the impending timeout and give them the opportunity to do something about it. It’s therefore important to make sure that all users know when the warning notification appears.
When you set the ...
The 11th in a series of posts that bring together the two sides of my blog: Food and technology. I’ve asked the great and the good from the web standards community to share their favourite recipes. This bundle of awesome Chinese dishes is from Henny Swan.
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Makes:...
There are a handful of ARIA1.0 attributes that can be used to indicate relationships between elements, when those relationships can’t be ascertained easily from the DOM. One such attribute is aria-controls.
The aria-controls attribute creates a cause and effect relationship....
TPAC is the annual gathering of the W3C. It was held at the Santa Clara Marriott between 27th and 31st October 2014.
It was the week that HTML5 became a W3C Recommendation, the week we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the web, and 20 years of the W3C itself.
It was also a ...
Breakfast at the weekend can be delightfully indulgent, and sometimes the simple things are the most tempting of all. Throw in some interesting company, a little conversation and this uncomplicated breakfast, and that's my idea of heaven on a Sunday.
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Makes: Two ...
Traduction française
Windows screen readers have multiple modes of interaction, and depending on the task being carried out they’ll automatically switch to the most appropriate mode. This post explains why Windows screen readers behave the way they do, and how your code can ...
The subject of screen reader detection has been under discussion lately. It isn’t something I’m comfortable with, so I’d like to share the reasons why.
I don’t want to share personal information with websites I visit
My disability is personal to me, and I share that informat...
The Cyber Streetwise website was launched by the UK Home Office in January. Developed by Nudge Digital, Cyber Streetwise is a high profile website intended to change attitudes towards online security. It is also a complete travesty when it comes to accessibility.
The Cyber S...
Potato dauphinoise is ridiculously easy to make, gloriously indulgent and absolutely delicious. It goes well with anything from a lamb roast to a good steak, but my favourite is potato dauphinoise with confit of duck!
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Makes: Four helpings
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes...
There is an unusual problem with Jaws and Internet Explorer that causes the word "region" to be announced before every field in a form. Fortunately there is a workaround until the problem itself is resolved.
The situation arises when you have a form inside a container with r...
The tenth in a series of posts that bring together the two sides of my blog: Food and technology. I’ve asked the great and the good from the web standards community to share their favourite recipes. This beautifully written Italian recipe is from Joseph Karr O'Connor.
Inform...
Most current screen readers support ARIA to one extent or another, and many now support some features of HTML5 as well. With ARIA and HTML5 making increasing amounts of semantic data available to screen reader users, it’s really easy to inadvertently overload people with too...
The ninth in a series of posts that bring together the two sides of my blog: Food and technology. I’ve asked the great and the good from the web standards community to share their favourite recipes. This easy pasta dish is from Graham Armfield.
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Makes: Two or thr...
The Image Description extension re-introduces the longdesc attribute to HTML. Although most people recognise that longdesc is flawed, finding a viable alternative has proved surprisingly difficult. For now longdesc is the best solution we have, but in the interests of findin...
HTML5 includes a handful of sectioning elements that give documents a robust semantic structure. The header, footer, nav, article, section and aside elements give different regions of a document meaning. Amongst other things, that meaning can be understood by screen readers,...
This recipe is fabulous for brunch on Christmas eve, or any lazy weekend when you’re feeling indulgent. Cheating is perfectly acceptable if you don’t want to make the Hollandaise sauce from scratch, but it tastes even better when you’ve done it all yourself!
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Mak...
