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The Accessibility Newsletter

It's autumn in the northern parts of Europe where this email is crafted. Have you met any hedgehogs? I met one in the summer who was doing some business under some stairs. Did you know that baby hedgehogs are called hoglets? I love the sound of that word.

Report from an inclusive design audit

For some reason it seems like Heydon Pickering end up in many of my newsletters. Maybe because he does a lot of cool things? That must be it!
So what has he done now? Well, besides putting together a book from his blog-articles on inclusive components he has also done an incluside design report for a company called Bulb. The report is public and available for everyone in the form of a website. We can all learn from it.
I wish every company doing audits would do something like this!

Being inaccessible is discrimination

Back in spring 2017 I wrote about the Swedish Social Insurance Agency being sued for being inaccessible. This was a case of discrimination and not (as I guess many of us would expect) something about the laws and regulation for accessibility within the public sector.
As a person who has worked with websites within the public sector in Sweden I know that discrimination does exist. And to be honest I'm quite happy that Sweden finally has a case that shows that it's not ok. Because yes, the trial is finally over and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency needs to pay a fine. If you are interested in reading the full verdict it's accessible (in swedish) as a pdf.

Nobody is everybody

I did not know that the wheelchair icon was created in the city where I live. But I know now after reading this article about the symbol for everybody. Yes, the symbol is debated and even though you might be one of the people who think it should change into something more inclusive this article is still worth reading and not only for the historical aspect of it.

Webinar tip: WCAG 2.1 with Léonie Watson

Inclusive Design for 24 hours!

One of my favorite online things are back. We are talking about ID24 which is an online webinar going on for, yep, you guessed it, 24 hours. By the look of the schedule it's going to be great.
But how do you stay awake all those hours so you can be there for every single talk?
Any tips?

More Accessible Wordpress Themes

There is a lot of sites built on Wordpress out there and there are also a lot of themes. Some good some not so good. Of course if you have the time, knowledge and energy you might be able to build your own theme but for a lot of us that's hard. So I was happy seeing that Ben Sibley has compiled a list of themes claiming to be accessible. If you do end up using one of these themes, or any theme for that matter, remember to still test it properly because like anything web there are always room for improvement.

A web of anxiety

David Swallow who works at the Paciello Group has written an article about what is triggering anxiety. Things like count downs, accidentally liking someone’s photo on Instagram or just being follow around the web by ads. It can be a little bit annoying for some people but way more serious for others.
I'm really happy that this topic is getting some attention and there will also be another article, not yet published, that will talk about what we can do to avoid it. Can't wait to read that one!

Video tips: Accessibility at a Glance

It is not a feature

If you are reading this newsletter you already know this. Accessibility is not a feature. But what I think we need to take away from this article called it is not a feature by Ethan Marcotte is the important message that people aren't their disabilities and we need to stop talking about it like that's the case. Ever heard or used things like "screen reader user" or a "person navigating with the keyboard"? People are, as the article says, more diverse, more complicated than the software they use. True!

Inclusive design and how to implement it

These are three articles written by Matt May who works at Adobe. The first one is about accessibility, universal design and inclusive design. The second article has a focus on inclusion and how it doesn't stop at accessibility. The third article goes into ways of implementing inclusive design.
And yes, I think you should take some time, maybe get a nice cup of tea and read these three articles. When you are done start thinking about what you can do at your workplace today.

This is the end of The Hedgehog. If you liked this consider sending the subscription-link to your friends and colleagues. If you have suggestions or feedback you can email me or find me on Twitter as @t12t or @kolombiken.

- Ida

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