Design and development posts

Quick Response (QR) codes are graphics that can be scanned to direct people online to complete an action or find content. This blog post explores considerations and provides guidance for creating accessible experiences with QR codes.

TalkBack only announces role information for a relatively small number of user interface (UI) elements within native apps. When comparing this behaviour against web content, this can often give the (false) impression that these elements must have been coded incorrectly and therefore need to be "fixed".

This blog post looks at when it is acceptable for a role not to be announced, the roles that TalkBack does announce, and what this means for conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

A design system is a library of styles, components, and patterns used by product teams to consistently and efficiently launch new pages and features. A good system has accessibility embedded throughout and includes documentation, guidelines and implementation notes for accessibility.

A list is generally agreed to be a series of words or phrases that are grouped together for a reason. That reason might be to remember the items we want from the store, to share our top five favourite movies, or to write down the steps needed to complete a task.

Most websites have common areas of content like a header and footer, a main content area, and one or more navigation blocks. Sighted people can identify these areas based on the way they're styled and the content they contain, but people who are blind cannot do that quite as efficiently. Landmarks, like headings and lists, offer screen reader users a more comparable experience for identifying and navigating between different areas of content.

Session timeouts are designed to protect privacy and security, but if they’re implemented incorrectly, they can prevent people from completing tasks on a website.

Well structured content helps everybody understand and navigate documents. When coded properly in the HTML, headings, lists, and landmarks help people who use screen readers (software that reads what’s on screen) both scan and navigate pages.

Colour is a valuable tool for communicating meaning. But if you can't see colour, then meaning is lost. Always plan to use colour to convey meaning in combination with another means of identification.

Good contrast is about using colours that provide enough variation between the content and background. This is particularly important for people who have conditions that affect vision or colour perception, as well as people browsing on mobile in different light conditions.

Text descriptions are primary content, and when images do not have a text description, anyone who cannot see the image will not know its purpose. This means people may be unable to access content or perform related tasks.