Notices by Accessibility Awareness (a11yawareness@disabled.social)

When creating PDFs, avoid using "Print to PDF." A screen reader user may still be able to access the text of PDFs created this way, but heading structure, alternative text, and any other tag structure will be lost. Using "Save As" or "Export" can preserve these tags.

Many live with the limitations of not understanding numbers and the impact that has on everyday life. Laura Parker's Accessible Numbers project offers guidance on how to design services and write content for people who need help with numbers.

https://accessiblenumbers.com/

Many screen readers can produce a list with all the headings on a page. This allows users to browse the list and jump to a specific heading on the page. Write down that list and structure it. Does it make sense if you read it out loud?

Structure content to guide users and help them quickly find what they need. Organize content logically, and break content into short sections that reflect natural stopping points. Write headings that help readers predict what is coming.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/page-structure/

Sighted users often use bold or large fonts to create the appearance of headings in documents. People using screen readers have no way of understanding these visual cues. Use heading styles from the styles menu to correctly format headings.

Don't buy into the myth that "accessibility is only about adding alternative text to images." Alt text is important, of course. But there is so much more to accessibility, including headline structure, functional controls, color contrast, link text, plain language, and more.

If you pair light colors (yellow text on white background) or dark colors (dark blue text on black background), users will struggle to read your content. Understanding color contrast will help you better serve all users, especially those with low vision.

https://webaim.org/articles/contrast/

People who want to make the web accessible need to understand the many different ways that people with disabilities use the web. This W3C resource offers a good introduction to how disabled people navigate the web, and barriers they commonly encounter.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/people-use-web/

A transcript is the only way to make video or audio content accessible to someone who is both deaf and blind. Transcripts can be converted into braille, to be read on a refreshable braille output device.

Many struggle with writing alt text for charts and other other data visualizations. Amy Cesal's "Writing Alt Text for Data Visualization" hammers home the importance of explaining the chart type, the type of data, and the reason for the chart.

https://medium.com/nightingale/writing-alt-text-for-data-visualization-2a218ef43f81

When writing alt text, ask yourself if you would picture an approximation of the image if it was described to you over the phone using the alt text you've written. Doing that exercise can be a good way to determine if you're on the right track.

Intentional misspellings of words can confuse people. This includes people with cognitive and reading disabilities, and those learning the language. Depending on how much the word is misspelled, screen readers might not pronounce it like the actual intended word.

There are few clear accessibility standards for people with cognitive disabilities because the range of these disabilities is so huge. Experts have avoided one-size-fits-all approaches, but Gershon Blackmore offers some tips that will help.

https://www.levelaccess.com/blog/cognitive-disability-the-next-frontier-for-web-accessibility/

Overlays are widgets or technologies that promise to improve a site's accessibility with third-party source code. More than 900 accessibility advocates and web developers have signed an open letter to explain the limitations and dangers of these products.

https://overlayfactsheet.com/

Some people need to change the way text is displayed in order to read it. This includes changing size, spacing, font, color, and other properties. When people customize text, the text should re-flow so they don’t have to scroll horizontally to read.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/perspective-videos/customizable/

Ensure text is readable in data visualizations and information graphics. Small text is generally harder to read, and should be avoided where possible. Make sure the text is not obstructed by other chart elements, and has sufficient contrast against its background.

Automatic captions make it difficult to watch videos because the viewer is forced to decipher misspelled or mistranslated words that appear in a string of text without any punctuation. These can be distracting and disorienting. Always edit your captions before publishing.

Some people may be unable to use a mouse, and instead rely exclusively on keyboards, or use assistive technologies such as speech recognition, head pointers, mouth sticks, or eye-gaze tracking systems. If a website is accessible only to mouse users, these people will be excluded.

Automated captions and transcripts can save time so that you don't have to manually transcribe on your own. But automated captions and transcripts aren't 100% accurate, so they need manual editing before you publish them.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/captions/#positioning-and-styling-captions

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.