I've spent a week cosplaying as a disabled user. And I hate it. A couple of months ago, I attended a private talk given by a disabled colleague of mine. "Everyone should believe disabled people's stories about accessibility problems," she said. "But, given that people don't, here's what I want you to do. Spend one…
Continue reading →I was in need of a new laptop, so I bought a cheap ChromeBook - mostly because Amazon could deliver it the same day. Sadly, the trackpad was broken. Before I sent it back, I thought I'd try using a mouse with it. That's when I discovered that accessibility is very much a second thought…
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I've blogged before about how backward the Co-op bank is - sadly, they've not improved in the last few years. I needed to close down my business bank account. I hopped on to online banking, provided all my details, went through 2FA with a physical token, remembered my mother's maiden name and began searching the…
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When I'm bored, I like to search websites for the "Lorem Ipsum" placeholder text. It's a quick way to find discarded pages and test content. I was particularly confused that the UK's Post Office had a dozen pages containing that little Latin phrase. A quick dive into one of the pages, found this enlightening snippet…
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Accessibility for Everyone (ISBN: 978-1-937557-61-4) by Laura Kalbag. Published by A Book Apart A brilliant look at why accessibility is so important - and the practical steps everyone can take to ensure it is at the centre of web design. Rating:5/5 Reviewed by Terence Eden My mate Laura has written a book! She has very…
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This is a blog post about user interfaces. I was wandering along the beach one day, when I noticed some clever chap had drawn some arrows in the sand. Can you guess where they led? The more astute of you will have realised that these are not human drawn arrows. They are, of course, footprints…
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Twitter has recently improved the accessibility of its site. When uploading an image, a user can add alt text - a short description of the image for people with visual impairments. Here's an example: This is a test to see if alt-text in images is searchable on Twitter.alpaca omnithorp pic.twitter.com/JHgCSaXpKd — Terence Eden (@edent) February…
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Is email dead? I don't think so - but I know lots of people who either don't have an email account or deliberately don't check it. And why should they? Is email a requirement for modern life? All the major chat apps - WhatsApp, Line, Signal, Wire, Skype - only require a mobile phone number.…
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Cheques (checks if you're American) are an amazing legacy technology. Invented in the 17th Century, they immediately transformed the financial landscape. They allowed anyone to transfer both vast and trivial sums of wealth with ease. Whole industries grew up around them - one of my first jobs was programming binary loadlifters repairing computerised cheque-readers -…
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I love my keyboards. I mean, I have an unhealthy obsession with them. I spend a lot of time typing and the cramped keyboards which come with most laptops and MacBooks just don't cut it for me. Their poor ergonomics leave my wrists in pain. For years I was a devotee of the Microsoft 4000…
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