Now that Windows Live Messenger has essentially been swallowed up by Skype, I find myself suddenly a lot more interested in how I might more efficiently and effectively use the official Skype client. I was very surprised when the official Skype account on Twitter replied with this very handy list of Skype for OSX keyboard shortcuts. Looking through the list, there’s definitely a few I didn’t know about.
Tag: a11y
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Accepting physical credit card payments, the accessible PayPal solution
For many small businesses, the inaccessibility of payment solutions have often posed barriers to accepting physical credit card payments. More recently, services such as Squared and PayPal have entered the arena with solutions that provide small businesses and individuals the ability to accept physical credit cards using a small device connected to an OS or Android device. Although ultra portable and ultra convenient, these solutions traditionally pose accessibility challenges as well, because the card reader devices connect via the headphone jack and this disables speech output which may be needed for accessibility.
Although I wasn’t able to make a great deal of headway with the Squared solution, I did have success with PayPal’s. In the following audio demonstration, I’ll show how PayPal’s solution works with VoiceOver and will describe how to overcome it’s accessibility challenges.
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Can you hear me now?
I’m posting this file to complement my earlier post concerning the accessibility of Tumblr’s embedded media player. If you’re able to hear this, please let me know which screen reader/OS combo you’re using? -
First Glance at Firefox Accessibility on OS X Snow Leopard
First Glance at Firefox Accessibility on OS X Snow Leopard
It’s great to see that advances are being made in terms of VoiceOver accessibility. Cudos to those making it happen. 🙂
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Please help improve Tumblr accessibility
I sent the following Email to Tumblr’s support address, and would appreciate if others would do something similar. Although not unique, Tumblr uses a flash-based player when playing uploaded audio and video content, a player which for many is completely inaccessible. Currently, Tumblr does not provide any download, or play links in standard HTML format. If you agree with my below Email, please retweet, reblog, repost — whatever it takes to focus attention on this issue. On behalf of me, myself and I, not to mention many other blind folks, I thank you. 🙂 Steve ***original Email*** After constantly seeing Tumbr blogs popping up everywhere, I decided to jump on the band wagon and get one of my own. I’m a blind Mac user and was initially very impressed with the accessibility of the Tumblr site. Obviously accessibility will vary depending on which theme is used, but content seems accessible regardless of theme — that is, *most* content. One huge problematic area I’ve found for blind users is the embedded audio/video player which, due to its being Flash based, often is completely inaccessible. Depending on how Flash is coded, screen readers often can’t identify various controls and in many instances, can’t recognize the Flash object at all. I realize Flash is here to stay and although accessibility improvements might be possible for the existing player implementation, would like to suggest other alternatives. Ideally, in addition to the Flash player, links could be added either to play, or download content. If these links were standard HTML, all screen readers would have access. Going beyond accessibility, these links would provide access to those using mobile platforms, iPhone comes to mind. Anotheralternative would be to have the post autoplay. Youtube and twaud.io both function this way and although their controls are technically not accessible, at least their content can be heard. I sincerely hope implementing an alternative to the flash-based player can happen, Tumblr is otherwise an absolutely fantastic service. Thanks, Steve