Notices by Adrian Roselli (aardrian@toot.cafe)

“Sassy Outwater-Wright: Accessibility Champion and More, Dies at 42” by @LFLegal:
https://www.lflegal.com/2025/07/sassy-outwater/

The “and more” is doing a lot of work there, because Sassy was so much more.

#accessibility

Looks like a lot of incompetence from Texas officials may have resulted in many / most deaths:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/texas-flood-local-response.html

Because they don’t learn lessons:
https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-flooding-evacuations-hurricane-helene

And Noem purged FEMA call centers the day after the flood while otherwise dodging accountability:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/climate/fema-missed-calls-texas-floods.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Vk8.r96a.4fjLaR8OXWTV&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Arbitrary and capricious.

Noem delays FEMA flood response (including search & rescue) in Texas by three days:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/fema-texas-flood-noem

Noem is using that slow response as an excuse to cut FEMA:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5393277-noem-fema-elimination-texas-flooding/

This is what the administration does — defunds orgs, blames them for it, justifies to end or privatize them.

The day before the floods, Texas Observer laid out the stark reality of Texas’ denial and Trumps cuts:
https://www.texasobserver.org/trump-texas-doge-cuts-disaster-aid/

But instead of connecting the dots, people are threatening a political cartoonist for maybe insulting dear leader:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/11/buffalo-cartoon-flood-threats-00448272

Woof. 5 years since I kicked off my “[overlay] Will Get You Sued” series, which helped lead to a million dollar fine earlier this year by the FTC against accessiBe for its constant lies.
https://bsky.app/profile/overlaytimeline.com/post/3lss6jbuwec27

Yes, I’m taking some credit for that.

#accessiBe #overlay #accessibility #a11y

Remember, Trump’s DoE is trying to roll back accessibility requirements for buildings (Section 504).

@LFLegal wrote about this and her 9 June update links to a newer comment template:
https://www.lflegal.com/2025/06/energy-department-rollback/#article-updates

All comments due 16 June 2025.

#accessibility

@ricmac What “more information” do you mean? The page you link points to the WebAIM million, which explains and lets you look up sites:
https://webaim.org/projects/million/

Watching someone twist themselves into knots to try to spin LLM gibberish as anything other than nonsense is a sad testament to the lack of critical analysis in tech press nowadays.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/google-searchs-made-up-ai-explanations-for-sayings-no-one-ever-said-explained/

• US Citizen,
• arrested in Tucson,
• held for 10 days,
• seemingly deprived a phone call,
• family not told.

https://news.azpm.org/p/news-articles/2025/4/18/224512-us-citizen-in-arizona-detained-by-immigration-officials-for-10-days/

ICE seems willing to lie after grabbing Americans off the street almost like it has a quota but no consequences.

• US Citizen,
• held in jail at ICE request,
• despite birth certificate proof,
• and traffic misdemeanor dropped,
• under state law that is blocked.

We’ve known Trump / ICE will do this to US citizens. Could be any of us.

• https://georgiarecorder.com/2025/04/17/georgia-born-man-held-for-ice-under-floridas-new-anti-immigration-law/
• https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-born-citizen-detained-ice-immigration-florida-rcna201800

Thinking of adding to my blog posts where the social share buttons usually go:

“Don’t share: Twitter, Facebook. Because fuck them and giving them my content for free.”

@mattmay I wish I knew how.

Imagine your local government sends this:

𝑇𝑠𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑖 𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔: 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆. Updates to come in the next hour. Stay calm.

Now imagine the impact on screen reader users.

End of thread.

#a11y #accessibility

I made the thread into a post so you can share it with your social media manager or your mom or whatever:

“Don’t Use Fake Bold or Italic in Social Media”
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/03/dont-use-fake-bold-or-italic-in-social-media.html

#a11y #accessibility

VoiceOver / iPadOS 18.3.1 / Safari

Doesn’t announce the fake bold nor fake italic.

I’ve shared 6 screen reader experiences.

The takeaway should be DO NOT use sites like YayText•com to make fake bold or italic text (whether on Bluesky, LinkedIn, etc.).

If you’re a tester, you may see the speech logs show the characters. These are lies: https://adrianroselli.com/2020/08/speech-viewer-logs-of-lies.html

Now…

TalkBack 15.2 / Chrome 133.

Announces the fake bold and fake italic as if it is regular text. TalkBack started doing this in 2021.

VoiceOver / macOS 15.3.1 / Safari 18.3.

Doesn’t announce the fake bold nor fake italic.

I’m using default settings. Some users will have different settings, but understand screen reader users have the same range of skill & experience with their kit as everyone else has with their own kit.

Try with your built-in screen reader. Resources: https://adrianroselli.com/2022/11/your-accessibility-claims-are-wrong-unless.html#SRs (anchor link)

Narrator / Windows 11 24H2 / Edge 133.

Doesn’t announce the fake bold nor fake italic.