Ghost Gatsby Starter - Marco's Accessibility Blog

BlockEditor, Gutenberg, GutenbergMobile

A few quick tips on Gutenberg on mobile devices

The new WordPress block editor is also available in the WordPress app for iOS and Android. It uses the same basis as the editor on a self-hosted or hosted WordPress site, but is a bit simplified. And it is accessible. Here are a few quick tips to get around it. Enable it first You may first have to enable it. You’ll find the setting under each blog/site you have in the WordPress app. It is called “Use the new visual editor”. Check its checkbox, or turn on its toggle switch, to use it. Now when

AirPods, AirPodsPro

My review of Apple AirPods Pro

Last week, I got my set of AirPods Pro. And after using them for a few days in various situations, can say: Best active noise cancelling headphones I’ve ever used! Apple released AirPods Pro earlier this autumn, and I was very curious to get my hands on them. I have always been a fan of the AirPods, even though the first generation still had quite some lag with VoiceOver. But I was totally sold on Apple’s wireless future from early on. Unlike many other blind users, I was never sad to see the 3

a11y, accordion, HTML, WebDev, widgets

Call to action: HTML needs more native rich widgets

Over the weekend, this post by Dave Rupert [https://daverupert.com/2019/12/why-details-is-not-an-accordion/] made the rounds, and I totally agree with what he is saying. In his post, Dave showcases a problem with the gap between intent and developer assumption about what a certain element or set of elements, are intended or should be used for, and what not to be used for. In this case, the details and summary elements being used as accordions, or not. If you are running his example with Firefo

The Number 15

Today, we passed the two thirds mark of this crazy project [https://marcozehe.de/2019/11/22/my-extended-advent-calendar/]. It is Sunday, December 15, the third advent. Time to reflect a bit on the number 15, which takes a bit of a special place in my life. I was born on April 15, 1973. The checksum of 15 is 6, which is the product of the very first two prime numbers, 2 and 3. 15 itself is the product of the first odd prime numbers, 3 and 5. The checksum of my full birthday is 30, which is the p

AccessibilityInspector, WebDev

Some fixes in Accessibility Inspector in Firefox 72

Firefox 72, currently in beta, received some fixes to the Accessibility Inspector [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Accessibility_inspector] this week. Here they are. The first fix is to a longer standing issue. If you opened Accessibility Inspector by right-clicking an element and choosing Inspect Accessibility Properties, keyboard focus would not land on the Inspector or Properties tree view, but in limbo somewhere on the document. You had to tab a couple of times to get focus t

A quick introduction to using Gutenberg

Late in November, I published a personal opinion on the state of Gutenberg accessibility [https://marcozehe.de/2019/11/27/my-thoughts-on-gutenberg-accessibility/]. Today, I’d like to give an introduction to Gutenberg from a screen reader user perspective. Gutenberg, the WordPress block editor, is the new way to create content and build sites in WordPress. It is a rich web application that uses many modern techniques such as dynamic updates, toolbars, side bars and other items to completely upd

landmarks, widgets

If you ARIA label something, give it a role

TL;DR: As a rule of thumb, if you label something via aria-label or aria-labelledby, make sure it has a proper widget or landmark role. The longer version is that several elements created extraneous amount of announcements in screen readers in the past that were not really useful. Especially in the ARIA 1.0 days where a lot of things weren’t as clear and people were still gathering experience, this was an issue for elements or roles that mapped to regions, multiple landmarks of the same type on

Happy birthday, Mom!

Yes, my Mom has her birthday today. She’s 70 now. And I’ll go see her and the whole extended family on Sunday to celebrate. But don’t you worry, the Sunday blog post is already planned. 🙂 And that’s all for today, folks. 🙂

MailboxOrg, OpenXchange, Privacy

mailbox.org is giving new customers €6 until Jan 10, 2020

My personal favorite e-mail provider mailbox.org [https://mailbox.org/en/] is giving away Christmas vouchers until January 10, 2020, for each new customer registration. Details if you read on. Mailbox.org is an e-mail and calendaring/office suite provider based in Germany. They are very privacy focused, run on renewable energy exclusively, and are committed to using Open Source wherever possible. They are promoters of open standards such as IMAP and SMTP, CalDav, CardDav and WebDav for their of

NVDA 2019.3 Beta 1 is available

NVDA 2019.3 beta 1 has been released today [https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2019-3beta1-now-available-for-testing/]. It is a huge milestone in the history of this free and open-source screen reader. With this release, there are a ton of under the hood changes that have all kinds of far reaching consequences. The most significant are the move to Python 3 from the Python 2 programming language, which is being discontinued and all support is ending. The second is a major refactor and enhancemen

Clipboard, ClipboardHistory, Windows10

How to use the extended clipboard in Windows 10

Since the update from October 2018, (Version 1809), Windows 10 has had an extended clipboard feature. Here’s how you turn it on and use it. Turn it on With this feature, the last 25 text bits you copied or cut to the clipboard will be available to paste. You can either just use the clipboard history for one computer, or synchronize across multiple devices logged into the same Microsoft account. But you have to turn it on first. On each computer that should participate, do the following: 1. Op

ads, Adsense, GrantForTheWeb, WordAds

The myth of getting rich through ads

Some of you may have noticed that since May, my blog is displaying ads here and there. It was kind of an experiment, and here are my conclusions after six months. When I got sick in March, I came down so hard that it wasn’t clear for a long time whether I would recover enough to be able to remain fully employed. More on that at another time maybe. However, this led to my looking at my then current blog situation. I ran three blogs. This one, a German technically focused and one where I blogged