Notices by Accessibility Awareness (a11yawareness@disabled.social)

When writing alt text, focus on what is actually in the image. Any relevant information that isn't describing the image itself should be in a caption below the image, not in the alt text. This includes photo credits, permissions, and copyright information.

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.

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.

Your site's users need enough time to interact with content and fill out forms. People with disabilities such as blindness, low vision, dexterity impairments, and cognitive disabilities might need more time for things such as forms. Allow users to turn off or extend time limits.

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.

You don't necessarily want to use the exact same alt text each time a specific image is used. Alt text must consider the context of the image and why it's being included on a site, post, article, etc. In other words, alt text depends on where you're including the image and why.

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.

Color contrast is the difference in brightness between foreground and background colors. You can check your color contrasts with the WebAIM Color Contrast Checker to determine if people with low vision can tell the colors apart and see your content.

https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

Overlays are widgets or technologies that promise to improve a site's accessibility with third-party source code. More than 1,000 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/

Get in the habit of bringing up accessibility at meetings, in stand-ups, and in demos. Bring up things you've done to address accessibility. Likewise, don't be afraid to ask, "Have we tested this on a keyboard?" or "What's the experience like on a screen reader?"

The BBC's Accessibility Guide has several resources, including step-by-step instructions to using assistive technologies. The resource includes insight into several assistive technologies, including VoiceOver, JAWS, NVDA, TalkBack, ClaroRead, and Dragon.

https://bbc.github.io/accessibility-news-and-you/assistive-technology/testing.html

You don't necessarily want to use the exact same alt text each time a specific image is used. Alt text must consider the context of the image and why it's being included on a site, post, article, etc. In other words, alt text depends on where you're including the image and why.

A common question about alt text is whether or not it's appropriate to mention attributes like race or skin tone. A common response is, "It depends." In this post, Tolu Adegbite explains how race can be relevant and important in providing context.

https://medium.com/shopify-ux/the-case-for-describing-race-in-alternative-text-attributes-a093380634f2

"Can I Play That?" is a website focusing on the intersection of web accessibility and video games. The site is a resource of reviews, features, and news coverage of accessibility within video games. The site is aimed at both players and developers.

https://caniplaythat.com/

You don't necessarily need to say "image of" in your alt text for users to know it's an image. Screen readers will announce that it's an image. But it can help readers to specify if it's a hand-drawn image, Polaroid, infographic, screenshot, chart, map, diagram, or so on.

Your site's users need enough time to interact with content and fill out forms. People with disabilities such as blindness, low vision, dexterity impairments, and cognitive disabilities might need more time for things such as forms. Allow users to turn off or extend time limits.

Avoid writing text that has every letter alternating between uppercase and lowercase. This is difficult for sighted readers to comprehend, especially users with reading or cognitive disabilities. Screen readers won't know to read this, so it will often be gibberish.

Instructions for forms should appear at the beginning of the form. Some users may not notice instructions if they appear at the end of the form. If a form field requires data in a certain format (for instance, a date field that requires “day/month/year"), provide examples.

Everyone who works on a website has a role to ensure the site and its content are accessible. This resource from Vox Media breaks down some accessibility tasks by job role, including content creators, designers, developers, project managers, and testers.

https://accessibility.voxmedia.com/