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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 1h

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.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 14h

Screen readers are software applications that convert on-screen content into audio, reading aloud what’s displayed on your laptop or mobile screen. In this blog post, @tetralogical.com debunks common myths about screen readers.

tetralogical.com/blog/2025/10...

Common misconceptions about screen readers - TetraLogical

Screen readers are familiar to many in digital, but how they work in practice can be less clear. In this post, we shed some light on the topic.

tetralogical.com

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 1d

In presentations, talk at a moderate pace and enunciate. Pause between phrases, sentences, and questions so people can read the captions and respond. Have speakers take turns and state their name before speaking. This helps everyone, including people captioning in real time.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 1d

When picking fonts, use simple, familiar, and easily-parsed fonts. Avoid character complexity and ambiguity. Use a limited number of typefaces, fonts, and variations. Consider spacing and weight. Ensure sufficient contrast between the text and background. Avoid small font sizes.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 1d

Some people may be unable to use a mouse, and instead rely exclusively on keyboards, or use assistive technologies such as speech recognition, head pointers, mouth sticks, or eye-gaze tracking systems. If a website is accessible only to mouse users, these people will be excluded.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 3d

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 3d

Automatically updating content can be extremely distracting, especially for users with vestibular disorders or attention difficulties. This could force users to scroll through page content to not see the animation, or to just look away. Allow animations to be paused or stopped.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 4d

When writing alt text for an image of text, it's not enough to just write "screen shot of text from article." Sighted users get to know what is in that screen shot, so why don't blind users deserve the same? The alt text should include all the actual text in the image.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 4d

Color contrast affects readability on the web and in print. It is especially important for users who are low vision or for users who are colorblind. Good color contrast means all users can see your content no matter the device they’re using or the lighting of their surroundings.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 5d

When you make the pitch for accessibility, be prepared for pushback. There are several myths and misconceptions, so it's good to be aware of what they are and how to dispel them.

a11ymyths.com

Accessibility Myths

A small project debunking common accessibility myths.

a11ymyths.com

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 5d

If you're new to captioning videos for your content, you might feel as if you don't know what you don't know. Meryl Evans' "Does Your Video Make These 6 Common Caption Mistakes?" is a great resource to help make your captions better.

meryl.net/common-capti...

6 Common Caption Mistakes: Is Your Video Guilty of Any?

Your captioned video has standard captions that are accurate and in sync with the audio. It could be making one of these six mistakes.

meryl.net

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 6d

Chartability is a resource to help make data visualizations and charts more accessible. It's organized into principles with testable criteria aimed at making sure people with disabilities are able to access data.

chartability.fizz.studio

Chartability

chartability.fizz.studio

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 7d

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.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 8d

Verbalize what is on the screen in online presentations so as to help those who can't see your screen. Some may be blind or have low vision, and unable to read the screen-share contents using assistive technology. Others may be calling in or have bad internet connections.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 8d

Vestibular disorders affect people's balance as well as their visual perception of their world around them. Don't make animations, sliders, videos, or rapid movement start automatically, as autoplaying elements could trigger a bad reaction in people who have vestibular disorders.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 9d

If your organization has Slack, Teams, or any other messaging program, you should have a dedicated accessibility channel. This would be a great way for everyone on your team to learn together by sharing links, posing questions, and reviewing alt text, among other things.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 10d

Audio descriptions are necessary for making videos accessible. They narrate the crucial visual elements that would be necessary for understanding the plot without the ability to see the screen. They describe non-verbal cues like gestures, facial expressions, or eye contact.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 11d

Capitalization affects how people read hashtags or how people hear them on screen readers. Use #camelCase or #PascalCase in hashtags instead of lowercase. You could have #DoctorWhoRewatch ("Doctor Who Rewatch") or #doctorwhorewatch ("doctor whore watch.")

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 11d

Some people have disabilities that are directly based on the way they understand and interpret numbers. In this post, Ricky Onsman explains some of these disabilities, who is affects and how, and what web creators can do about it.

www.tpgi.com/making-numbe...

Making Numbers in Web Content Accessible - TPGi — a Vispero company

Numbers are a key part of web content. It makes sense, then, that when we use numbers, they must be accessible.

www.tpgi.com

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 12d

Alexa Heinrich's Accessible Social is a free resource for digital marketers, communication professionals, content creators, everyday social media users, and anyone who wants to learn how to make their content accessible for people with disabilities.

www.accessible-social.com

Accessible Social

Accessible Social is a free resource and education hub that helps marketers and content creators learn about accessibility and how it relates to social media.

www.accessible-social.com

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 12d

Generic descriptions don't convey the information or context sighted users get from the image. Examples like "election results," "group of people," "screenshot from Google," or "city skyline" may be technically be true, but they don't provide information and context.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 13d

That's a good clarification, thanks for asking. The screen reader will read the link text.

Here's more context based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines:

www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/U...

www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/U...

Understanding Success Criterion 2.4.4: Link Purpose (In Context) | WAI | W3C

www.w3.org

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 13d

If possible, use "direct labeling" in your data visualizations and charts. This means positioning the labels directly beside or adjacent to the data points. This is better than color coding your charts, as your information would likely be lost to someone who can’t see color.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 14d

Hyperlink text should make sense when read out of context. Screen reader users can navigate from link to link, and can listen to links in a list. When navigating this way, only the link is read. So "click here" or "read more" won't make sense.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 14d

Automatically updating content can be extremely distracting, especially for users with vestibular disorders or attention difficulties. This could force users to scroll through page content to not see the animation, or to just look away. Allow animations and updating content to be paused or stopped.

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