accessibility

Please don’t do CAPTCHAs like this anywhere.

#WebDev #Accessibility

I encountered this logging into my AutoDesk account this morning. In addition to 3 pages of this stuff, I had to use a password and was sent a code to my email address.

NV Access is very excited to launch: “Accessibility Testing with NVDA”

This new package includes:

• ‘Accessibility Testing with NVDA’ training module,
• Printable reference sheets
• Resources for further reading
• A WCAG reference guide
• A badge you can display on your website or in your email.

A comprehensive resource for all involved in accessibility testing. Available now: nvaccess.org/product/…

How am I supposed to add alt text to uploaded audio files straight away?

The new desktop design now shrinks them to an unclickable thumbnail in the editor. Neither the ‘…’ menu nor the alt text button is visible.

Posting them as they are and then adding the alt text later doesn’t work either (apart from using another app, client or web interface).

Or am I missing something entirely?

Mastodon v4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06

Windows testers wanted: an early alpha of AAE, the Accessible Android Emulator, is ready to try on Windows.

AAE lets blind people create, run and test Android virtual devices without sighted help. Every device has a screen reader from its first boot, takes your keyboard, and plays its audio through your computer.

This is a very early build. It hasn’t been run by anyone but me yet, things will break, and parts of the Mac app are still missing.

What’s there:

• Setting up Google’s emulator and tools for you, no Android Studio needed
• Creating, starting, stopping, copying and wiping devices, with Backtalk or your own screen reader
• Device mode: your whole keyboard goes to Android, Alt Tab and the Windows key included, while NVDA and JAWS keep their own keys. Control Windows Escape brings it back
• Gesture mode: screen reader gestures from the keyboard
• Installing apps, the clipboard both ways, screenshots, the device’s volume
• AAE’s messages spoken through NVDA, JAWS or Narrator
• Updates itself, so you’ll be offered the next stable release

Not there yet: the accessibility inspector, speech log, device log, shell, apps and accessibility services windows, snapshots, battery and location. The aae command line, installed alongside the app, does all of these meanwhile. Open a command prompt in AAE’s folder and run aae help.

You need Windows 10 or 11 on an Intel or AMD processor (not ARM), with Windows Hypervisor Platform turned on in Windows features. AAE isn’t signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn you: choose More info, then Run anyway.

Download the installer:
github.com/aaron-gh/accessible-android-…

Release notes and the Mac build:
github.com/aaron-gh/accessible-android-…

If something goes wrong, Help, Save Diagnostic Report makes a text file you can read before sending. Tell me which screen reader you use, and whether AAE’s messages were spoken. Replies here or GitHub issues are both fine.

I’m reading a horror book in Braille.

Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it.

When accessibility testing with screen readers, I love hearing them read Lorem Ipsum. I get a little chuckle every time.

and here it is, my new software for #Windows. I wrote it for myself but I thought, maybe it would be useful for someone else.
Meet #PlanCake, software to read Markdown and annotate it in place.
Do you have a long Markdown document, like a plan, a piece of documentation or your personal notes? Open it in PlanCake as a normal document. If you use a screen reader, you can navigate by headings, lists, tables and links, as usual.
Since PlanCake renders GitHub flavored Markdown, you can check and uncheck tasks in task lists straight away.
click or press Enter on a block of text (including list items and table cells), and you can add quick notes (also supporting Markdown!). Notes are saved in the file itself, with markers you set in settings. By default markers are set to [usernote] and [/usernote]. Want rather a single marker for user notes that go to the end of line? Set the opening marker to something like !USERNOTE! and leave the closing marker empty.
You can also add, edit and delete notes by using context menus.
By default, all of your notes are also shown in a list (F6 for keyboard users, right pane of the window for sighted users).
You can use command line, you can paste files from clipboard (or drag them into the window), you can open files by link, export them to HTML, export your notes to JSON if needed.
It’s super convenient to annotate plans for AI assistants (hence the name), but it’s absolutely not restricted to this task. Writing a book in Markdown and want to add quick notes for yourself? Are you a book editor working for an author? Add comments in PlanCake!
Works flawlessly with Debussy, my set of #ClaudeCode skills: github.com/Oire/debussy.
Website: plan-cake.oire.dev.
GitHub: github.com/Oire/plan-cake.
Do you like my software? Consider donating: oire.org/donate, or sponsor on gitHub. Thanks!

It’s finally here: Paperback 1.0! My fast, fully accessible ebook and document reader is now out on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, with iOS following the second Apple decides to actually look at it. The changelog is once again way too big for any post, so here are the highlights:
New platform: Linux! As an AppImage or a tarball, with desktop integration so documents open straight from your file manager.
New formats:

Comic book archives (.cbz).M4B and MP3 audiobooks, split into their chapters.Man pages, both man and BSD mdoc, gzipped or not.reStructuredText.Windows Write (.wri) files. Thanks, Mastodon.WinHelp (.hlp) files. Yes, really.Word 6 and Word 95 documents.Big new stuff:

OCR for scanned PDFs, using the engine built into Windows and macOS. Press Enter on a scanned page, or batch OCR a whole range of pages with Ctrl+Shift+O.MathML in EPUB and HTML is now rendered as AsciiMath via MathCAT. Jump between formulas with M and Shift+M, and open the original MathML in a formula view with enter or space.Find All, listing every matching line so you can jump right to the one you want.Tables, Lists, and Pages views in the elements dialog.Mark a spot with Alt+F9 and copy everything from there to where you are with Alt+F10, no more shift-arrowing through 40 pages.Audio book playback speed, from half speed to 3x.Any document can now be opened in the web view.Headings are drawn at a size matching their level.Relative Go To: +n and -n in Go to Line, Page, and Percent.Heading navigation from the table of contents for EPUB, MOBI, and CHM books with no headings of their own.A Ukrainian translation.Plus a mountain of fixes, especially to PDF (I still hate PDF), MOBI/AZW3 books, which are now much faster and no longer cut off at 20 MB, FictionBook, and large books in general.

And of course, the mobile apps. They open every format the desktop does, with seamless read aloud using your choice of voice, background audio book playback, navigation by headings, pages, links, tables and more, a sleep timer, export, and keyboard shortcuts that match the desktop. They’re $19.99, once, per platform, and buying them is what pays for the work on Paperback. The desktop versions stay free.
Desktop downloads: paperback.dev/downloads
Android: play.google.com/store/…
Full changelog: paperback.dev/readme.html
Huge thanks to everyone who tested, filed bugs, translated, and put up with me during this development cycle. Enjoy! #Paperback #accessibility #blind

I love hearing screen readers try their best with lorem ipsum. It’s one fun part of accessibility testing. It always gives me a little chuckle.

One can argue that using those questionably ethical technologies is just that, ethically questionable. I would very much agree.
And yet… We’ve had the internet for a good 35 years now, things haven’t exactly improved, see also the webAIM Million. See also #Foss project after #floss project with absolutely zero regard for #accessibility until it’s way too late.

Ethically questionable, sure, but I can not in good conscience blame anyone who’s waited half their life to finally see things improve only to be disappointed taking things into their own hands.
Switch away from big tech? People can’t. Pick up any old alternative when a tool of choice funds the far right? People can’t.
Stop funding the billionaires? People very well might not be able to.
And that lovely bit of entrapment was all human-wrought. No AI, or i’m sorry, AL, required.
This is the world we live in, and these are the hands we’re given. Don’t like it? Send a PR and fix it.

If you give people #accessibility advice and they won‘t have any questions about the implementation, chances are they are ignoring your advice.

If you really want to tell disabled people to use an open source or alternative thing instead of the proprietary thing, you better make damn well sure that open source or alternative thing is at least screen reader friendly as a bare minimum when it comes to disability access if you’re the developer.

If you’re a user of the open source or alternative thing, encourage the developer to do better than the proprietary developers on all disability developments, even when the developer tries to make the excuse that they are not a large corporation and can’t afford the accessibility developments.

If you can’t figure out why disable people continue to use proprietary thing when open source or alternative thing exist, shut the fuck up and do a lot more reading instead of replying.

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Als Spezialist für digitale Barrierefreiheit mit technischem Hintergrund und 13 Jahren Berufserfahrung bin ich das Bindeglied zwischen Design und Code. Ich erarbeite zugängliche Interfaces, erstelle Analysen und Testkonzepte und teile mein Wissen.

Festangestellt, unbefristet, hybrid/remote in Berlin, ~32h/Woche.

(Weitere Infos unten.)

Gerne boosten. 💕