LessFussDesign blog

Archive for July, 2009

31 Jul 2009

Accessible Twitter: how it should have been done to start with

One day the next big thing on the web that has everyone all worked up will be accessible and built to web standards from day one. Until that day, we have people like Dennis Lembree (the man behind Web Axe [external link]) to thank for making what many take for granted freely available to an even wider audience. With the help of some friends [external link], and the Twitter API, Dennis has created an accessible version of Twitter called, unsurprisingly, Accessible Twitter [external link]. Continue reading »

6 comments
28 Jul 2009

BBC Glow

When Alan Partridge asks Tony Hayers what he thinks of regional detective dramas Shoestring, Taggart, Spender, Bergerac and Morse, and Tony Hayers says “There’s too many of them”, Alan replies “That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is, ‘People like them, let’s make some more of them’”. The BBC has a similar attitude when it comes to javascript libraries, it seems. A few weeks ago they released Glow [external link] under the Apache license, giving us all a chance to spread some of the magic dust that goes into the BBC site over our own creations. But far from being another framework for wow-effects, Glow has the edge in two important areas: cross-browser support and accessibility. Continue reading »

1 comment
25 Jul 2009

Screen readers and radio buttons: using HTML fieldset and legend

You can go a long way to making a web form accessible by making sure every input field has a label. But with a set of radio buttons this ain’t enough. Use labels for each of your radio buttons and the various options will be read out, but how does a screen reader user get the question they’re supposed to be answering? Easy. Use fieldset and legend HTML tags, a simple – yet underused – way of getting your forms to make sense for screen reader users. Continue reading »

6 comments