📯 letter@marcus.io Issue #3: Web (app) accessibility only

Hello y'all 👋

This issue took some time, but is mono-thematically and all about web accessibility. A good trade? 😜

Podcasts

Back in May, I stated that there is a good podcast on accessibility missing - it turned out that I was very wrong. Over the last weeks I discovered two great ones, namely:

A11yRules by Nicolas Steenhout. At regular intervals, he interviews well-known names from the webwork- and accessibility-scene, such as Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, Laura Kalbag, Eric Eggert. At first, I thought I could pick a particular episode to recommend, but I learned this is impossible. So choose any episode, learn and enjoy!

My second #a11y podcast recommendation is the "EBU Access Cast", published by the EBU (a European NGO representing the interests of blind and partially-sighted people in Europe). They have just started so there are only two episodes available. But since their focus is on Assistive Technologies, I guess this podcast is going to be a great resource to the community.

Checklists and starting points

If you deal with accessibility, you won't get around the subject of WCAG. And although the whole standard text (and explanations) are accessible at w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines (and there's even an "At a glance" section), sometimes you need neither the very long nor the very short form - but something in the middle. The Yale University provides just that - a considerably handy WCAG checklist: complete, but as short as possible. And, the best part, you can choose your role (developers, visual designers, content editors) and filter the checklist items by it.

Last week I saw part of an interesting discussion on Twitter - at first, it was about inclusive project management tools, but then it kind of shifted towards accessible web apps in general. My (in retrospect) unnecessarily sarcastic comment on it lead to an interesting thing: Hans from Scrumpy reached out to me and it became clear that one of the communication problems of web app accessibility is supplying a starter point. So I wrote an article on the topic: "Building accessible web apps - where to start?", fully aware that is not the ultima ratio on the topic. But the article gained some traction if you look at the retweets (thanks again!). If you find this helpful and interesting, please share! If you find it incomplete (I bet it is), please reach out to me via @_marcusherrmann on Twitter or letter@marcus.io.

Further links

This is an older article but belongs in every bookmarking stack: "7 solutions for creating more accessible SVGs" from simplyaccessible.

Also, I stumbled upon a great article on "Sticky elements: functionality and accessibility testing" from the great team at gov.uk. Don't except a clear yes/no answer at the end of the article whether sticky elements are good or bad for accessibility - as is often the case: it depends, it's somewhat a matter of context and availability of empty space.

That's it for this issue!

Best wishes and read you next time,
Marcus