Lost in Translation: Tips for Multilingual Web Accessibility 🔗
Bienvenue! Internationalization and localization efforts have a lot in common with web accessibility. Both are domains of usability with the express g [...]
Ben Myers
Posts
Build a Blogroll with Eleventy 🔗
Recently, inspired in part by a conversation Claudia Snell was having with folks in the Frontend Horse Discord server, I set up my blogroll, a list of [...]
I'm a Spotless Giraffe. 🔗
This post contains no AI-generated text or images, but does discuss experiments I've done in the past with AI art generators. For more info, read my s [...]
How I Write Alt Text for Code Snippets on Social Media 🔗
Oh, hey! It's a "how to write alt text" post. This is something of a rite of passage for accessibility bloggers. That said, I don't rely on alt text i [...]
The Curious Case of “iff” and Overriding Screenreader Pronunciations 🔗
I recently responded to a call for accessibility guidance on Mastodon. The author, a logician, frequently includes the abbreviation iff — short for "i [...]
The Web Needs a Native .visually-hidden 🔗
One of the strangest artifacts of web accessibility to me is the .visually-hidden utility class. You might also know it as .sr-only (or possibly as .s [...]
Create Shareable Automatic Captions for Live Online Events with Web Captioner 🔗
⚠️Warning:Deprecation Notice As of October 31, 2023, Web Captioner has been sunset. I've left this article up, but unless someone hosts a fork of the [...]
A First Look at the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act Bill 🔗
Introduction This week, Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. John Sarbanes introduced a digital accessibility bill called the Websites and Software Applicati [...]
Style with Stateful, Semantic Selectors 🔗
Introduction In web development, we frequently need to style elements to visually indicate some state they're in. We give form fields red outlines to [...]
How I Doubled My Lighthouse Performance Score in One Night 🔗
Special thanks to Matthias Ott, whose post about enjoying meta-updates about personal sites was the encouragement I needed to go ahead and blog about [...]
How to Fix Your Low-Contrast Text 🔗
What if the web got better over six weeks? The WebAIM Million report for 2022 identifies the six most common accessibility defects WebAIM found on the [...]
Build a Twitch Chatbot for Sharing Your Content Using Algolia Search 🔗
Over the past year of streaming Some Antics and over the past several years of blogging here, I've amassed a minor backlog of content that I sometimes [...]
Ben's Humane Guide to Technical Blogging 🔗
Read the original thread! This blogpost started out as a Twitter thread. If you'd like to read through that instead and respond to those tweets, feel [...]
On the ‹dl› 🔗
Introduction The <dl>, or description list, element is underrated. It's used to represent a list of name–value pairs. This is a common UI pattern that [...]
Takeaways From "Adapting Comics for Blind and Low Vision Readers: A Roundtable Discussion" 🔗
I was fortunate enough to be able to sit in on San Francisco State University's panel on making comics accessible to blind and low-vision readers. The [...]
Takeaways From Axe-Con 2021 🔗
This week, Deque Systems hosted the inaugural Axe-Con. I wish I could have been able to attend more sessions, but the sessions I did attend were fanta [...]
I Finally Understand Eleventy's Data Cascade. 🔗
This is a living document! What follows is my mental model of how Eleventy aggregates data for templates. It's subject to change as I learn more and m [...]
RSS Readers: Yet Another Case for Semantic Markup 🔗
The other day, after I published my article about skip links, I remembered I needed to validate my RSS feed. I had received some feedback several mont [...]
Implement a Skip Link for Navigation-Heavy Sites 🔗
TL;DR If your pages contain many links or elements before the main content, consider adding a link to the very beginning of the page to help keyboard- [...]
aria-label, aria-labelledby, and aria-describedby: What's the Difference? 🔗
Introduction ARIA is a set of HTML attributes designed to tweak how a webpage is exposed to assistive technology. It can be… a lot. There are presentl [...]
Out With The Old, In With The New 🔗
Introduction This summer, months after my previous post, I decided to give this site a complete overhaul. I started from scratch in a brand new codeba [...]
Maintaining Focus Outlines for Windows High Contrast Mode 🔗
TL;DR If you're overriding browsers' default focus styles with outline: none;, consider using outline: 3px solid transparent; instead. This is a quick [...]
Lexical and Dynamic Scope 🔗
Introduction Consider the following JavaScript and Bash snippets. Ask yourself: what value will the JavaScript code log? Why will it log that? With th [...]
CSS Can Influence Screenreaders 🔗
Introduction Let's say we're building a shopping list app. As we build out the app, we decide to style the list, stripping out the bullets that the br [...]
New Year, New Terminal: Alias Your Directories the Unix Way 🔗
This article covers how to alias your directories on Unix. You may be interested in the Windows way. Introduction I admit it. I'm a sucker for creati [...]
New Year, New Terminal: Alias Your Directories the Windows Way 🔗
This article covers how to alias your directories on Windows. You may be interested in the Unix way. Introduction I admit it. I'm a sucker for creati [...]
What Is ARIA? 🔗
Introduction It's no secret that today's websites are increasingly complex. Webpages now more closely resemble dynamic, living applications. Developer [...]
The Accessibility Tree 🔗
Disabled users can and do use your page with a variety of assistive technologies. They use screenreaders, magnifiers, eye tracking, voice commands, an [...]
How (Not) to Build a Button 🔗
Buttons and hyperlinks are the cornerstones of the internet. Buttons allow users to interact with web content and links allow users to discover more c [...]
How Domino's Could Topple the Accessible Web – Part 1: Public Accommodations 🔗
This post is the first in a three-part series on web accessibility in American case law, and the impact Robles v. Domino's Pizza could have on that la [...]