February 2023 Newsletter
Hello Newsletter Subscribers!
Everyone has a newsletter and apparently so do I. It's a bit dusty and I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with it. I expect it to be relatively sporadic. Feel free to email me (mail@yatil.net) if you have any ideas or feedback. Of course, if I can improve the accessibility here, let me know as well!
WCAG 2.2 – the saga continues
I've taken a deep dive into the suggested success criteria and evaluated what's currently proposed. I think most of the SCs are OK, but the Focus Appearance SC still troubles me because it is still so vague.
My article: New WCAG 2.2 features rated (Opens in a new window)
Alastair Campbell’s response: Focus Appearance thoughts (Opens in a new window)
My video where I explore a “simple” use case for conformance (43:21) (Opens in a new window)
I said it in my article, and I say it here again: The Working Group generally has done a good job, but this is far from my ideal to make it easy to do the right thing.
New blog post: Automated testing won’t solve web accessibility (Opens in a new window)
In my latest blog post, I wrote about the limitations of automated testing tools.
I think we’re in a situation where accessibility is put into packages that are convenient to sell. Companies like to buy tools because they are cheaper than educating their developers and testers. But it leads us more than ever to a “green ring mentality” – where people’s main concern is to make the tool happy.
If those tools miss out on WCAG AA criteria, websites might look “accessible” internally while in practice there are many serious issues still left. After all, you can still only see what you measure.
Let’s make that clear: In capable hands and with supervision of knowledgable people, who know what they are measuring, automated tools can be a good supplement to a testing practice. But they cannot stand on their own, at least for now.
Some links
The amazing Eric W. Bailey has also a newsletter called SC 2.4.4 (Opens in a new window). Such a clever name! He also wrote this insightful article on how technical choices can actually prevent users to achieve their goals (Opens in a new window).
Henny Swan wrote a great simple introduction to WAI-ARIA (Opens in a new window) on the Tetralogical blog.
The APPT project has interesting stats on mobile accessibility feature use (Opens in a new window).
Tom Scott has looked into my soul with his latest video about AI (Opens in a new window).
Thank you
Thanks for subscribing to this newsletter and a special thanks for the people who are supporting me with Steady contributions. You know who you are.
These contributions and the support of each and everyone of you makes this independent work possible.
👋 Eric
