In this Smashing TV webinar recording, join Léonie Watson (a blind screen reader user) as she explores the web, and find out about some unexpected properties of HTML elements that not only have a huge impact on accessibility, but also turn out to be pretty good for performance, too. We felt that the webinar was so valuable that we would open it up so that it’s free for everybody to use. Hopefully, it will serve as a resource for the whole web development community to understand how — and why — semantic markup matters.
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Web Standards, and the documentation to support them, provide huge insight into ‘the why’ and ‘the what’ of the world wide web. They are a fantastic resource for any web developer and help people build stuff for the web that is functional, accessible and cross-compatible. In this article, we take a look at the history of Web Standards, how to use them in your work and ways you can get involved in making them. In this article, Amy Dickens will give you an introduction to web standards, as well as ways you can get involved in contributing to new and existing standards. Let’s begin!
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A sighted user puts himself in the shoes of a non-sighted user. In this series, Chris Ashton attempts to use the web under various constraints, representing a given demographic of user. I hope to raise the profile of difficulties faced by real people, which are avoidable if we design and develop in a way that is sympathetic to their needs. Today, Chris experiences first-hand difficulties that visually impaired users face and describes what we can do as web developers to help.
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WordPress has a brand new content editor called “Gutenberg” that is going to shape WordPress for years to come, and it should allow more designers and front-end developers into the ecosystem. This should be welcomed with open arms. Well, if and when it is fully accessible, anyway. In this article, Andy Bell explains why it’s a movement (not just a new editor) and what’s happened and how this sort of situation might be avoided by others in the future.
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When you prepare for your next presentation, use these tips on how to tweak your slides and your talk so that everyone gets the most out of it. In this article, Allison Ravenhall brings you tips that will make a big difference to your whole audience. Your slide content, design, and how you present can all affect how well the crowd gets your message, if at all. This is particularly true for those with physical and cognitive conditions. Making subtle changes to what you show and your script will help all attendees to get the most out of your hard work.
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At SmashingConf Toronto, attendees got to participate in live performance and accessibility audits with our speakers Marcy Sutton and Tim Kadlec. Marcy took two example components, built using React, and walked us through how these components could be made more accessible with some straightforward changes, and Tim demonstrates how to test the performance of a site, and find bottlenecks leading to poor experiences for visitors. Watching an expert assess these critical areas can help you to perform your own audits.
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Automated accessibility testing is a process where you use a series of scripts to test for the presence, or lack of certain conditions in code. These conditions are dictated by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), a standard by the W3C that outlines how to make digital experiences accessible. Automated accessibility tests are a great resource to have, but they can’t automatically make your site accessible. Use them as one step of a larger testing process. Today, Eric Bailey will take a deep look into accessibility testing.
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Learn about the basics of animation in After Effects by animating one of the most famous type characters and the state of the iMessage App Store in 2018 when it comes to stickers. In this article, Simon Schmid brings you a step-by-step guide of setting up a canvas in After Effects and then he will go through with the animation. You’ll also read about how well the app containing more than 30 animated stickers worked and what some of the specific issues are you might be having on the App Store for iMessage.
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As designers, we have a real opportunity to provide valuable meaning to these assistants but we’re still trying to work out where the technology can add real benefits to the user. There are folks all over the globe who are unable to easily complete everyday tasks for themselves. Luckily, developers and designers can help by experimenting with voice technology that empowers them to complete tasks that others may take for granted.
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Developers conduct AB tests, accessibility audits, unit tests and cross-browser checks. Once you’ve solved a problem, you don’t want to repeat that effort. By building a reusable component library, we can continuously utilize past efforts and avoid revisiting already solved design and development challenges. In this article, Oliver Williams looks at augmenting HTML with components that have built-in functionality and styles. He’ll also show you how to make these custom elements reusable across projects using NPM.
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