Ghost Gatsby Starter - Marco's Accessibility Blog

The switch back to Windows has been reverted - quite some time ago actually

This is a post I should have written quite some time ago, but never got around to doing so. But since I like to follow-up with things I wrote on my blog, it’s time I tied up this loose end. In February of 2014, I wrote a post titled Switching Back To Windows [https://www.marcozehe.de/2014/02/07/switching-back-to-windows/]. It reflects thoughts, frustrations, and other factors I had had with the OS X platform at the time. However, as it turned out in the following months, these frustrations wer

Improvements in accessibility for Mac OS X in Firefox 41

During a big Mozilla event in June in beautiful Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, a few team mates, contributors and I had the chance to work on some improvements to what Firefox exposes to VoiceOver on the Mac OS X operating system. These improvements will be in Firefox version 41, currently in beta, which will be out in September. Tables Semantics for HTML tables have not been exposed to VoiceOver at all so far. This is changing in Firefox 41. Modeled after what Webkit exposes, table struct

CapsLockKey, JAWS, NVDA, VirtualMachine, VoiceOver, Windows

How to map your Mac's CapsLock key to a NVDA or JAWS key in a Windows virtual machine

OK folks, this is hopefully it, the ultimate way to map the CapsLock key of your MacBook to be used as a NVDA or JAWS modifier key in a virtual machine running Windows. The problem The MacBook’s keyboard has no insert key. The insert key, however, is the main modifier key used by screen readers on Windows. This stems from the era where computers all still had big keyboards with number pads, and even laptops were still big enough that most of them had these. In newer, tinier models, these have

Accessibility in 64-bit versions of Firefox for Windows

Over the past two weeks, Trevor, Alex and I worked on 64-bit support for Firefox on Windows. I am pleased to announce that we were successful, and that Win-64 versions of Firefox Nightly builds [http://nightly.mozilla.org] should now work with screen readers. So if you have a 64-bit edition of Windows 7, 8.x or 10 Preview, and run NVDA, JAWS, Window-Eyes or other screen readers that support Firefox, you should be able to uninstall the 32-bit version of Firefox Nightly if you have it installed, a

GoogleApps, GoogleDocs, GoogleDrive, iWork, Microsoft, OfficeOnline, OneDrive, OpenXchange

An update on office solutions in the browser and on mobile

Regular readers of my blog may remember my January 2014 shout out to Microsoft [https://www.marcozehe.de/2014/01/22/wai-aria-showcase-microsoft-office-web-apps/] for implementing great accessibility in their Office Online offering. Later in the year, I also gave an overview over the accessibility in Google apps [https://www.marcozehe.de/2014/07/08/accessibility-in-google-apps-an-overview/]. Now, in late April 2015, it is time for an update, since both have made progress. We will also take a loo

Facebook, GooglePlus, IdentiCa, InclusiveDesign, SocialNetworks, Twitter, Yammer

Social networks and accessibility: A not so sad picture

This post originally was written in December 2011 and had a slightly different title. Fortunately, the landscape has changed dramatically since then, so it is finally time to update it with more up to date information. Social networks are part of many people’s lives nowadays. In fact if you’re reading this, chances are pretty high that you came from Twitter, Facebook or some other social network. The majority of referrers to my blog posts come from social networks nowadays, those who read me vi

dialog, WAIARIA

Advanced ARIA Tip #2: Accessible modal dialogs

One question that came up more and more in recent months is how to create an accessible modal dialog with WAI-ARIA. So without further ado, here’s my take on the subject! An example To lay the ground work for some terms we’ll be using, let’s look at an example. A dialog is basically a sub window of an application that asks a question, requires some input, or allows to set options etc. Desktop applications have dialogs of all shapes and sizes, but there are some unique properties that distinguis

encryption, https, tls

Blog change: Now using encrypted connections

This is just a quick note to let you all know that this blog has switched over to using encrypted connections. The URLs (web site addresses) are now redirected to their encrypted counterparts, starting with https instead of http. For links to posts you may have bookmarked, it means that they’ll be automatically redirected to their encrypted counterparts, too, so you don’t need to do anything, and permalinks will still work. For you, this means two main things: First, you can check in your brow

development, Extension, TenonIO

Quickly check your website for common accessibility problems with tenon.io

Tenon.io [http://tenon.io/] is a new tool to test web sites against some of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/] criteria. While this does not guarantee the usability of a web site, it gives you an idea of where you may have some problems. Due to its API, it can be integrated into workflows for test automation and other building steps for web projects. However, sometimes you’ll just quickly want to check your web site and get an overview if something you did

SoftwareQuality

Apple are losing their edge also in accessibility quality

This post was originally published in January of 2015, and has last been updated on April 10, 2015, with latest information on the mentioned problems in light of the OS X 10.10.3 and iOS 8.3 releases from April 8, 2015. Over the past couple of days, a number of well-known members in the Apple community raised their voices in concern about Apple’s general decline in software quality. Marco Arment (former “Mr. Instapaper” and now “Mr. Overcast”) started out by saying that Apple has lost the funct

Apps, the web, and productivity

Inspired by this public discussion on Asa Dotzler’s Facebook wall [https://www.facebook.com/asadotzler/posts/10152572392803347], I reflected on my own current use cases of web applications, native mobile apps, and desktop clients. I also thought about my post from 2012 where I asked the question whether web apps are accessible enough to replace desktop clients any time soon [http://www.marcozehe.de/2012/07/06/are-web-apps-accessible-enough-to-replace-desktop-applications-any-time-soon/] . Duri

Your must read post for this week

This goes out to all my readers who are web developers, or who work with web developers closely enough to hand this to them. It’s Monday morning, and for this week, I have a must read post for you which you will now bookmark and reference and use with every single web component you build! No, this is not a suggestion, it’s an order which you will follow. Because if you don’t, you’ll miss out on a lot of fun and grattitude! I’m serious! So here goes: Web Components punch list [http://www.paciel