August 2020 - Sheri Byrne-Haber's Blog

Tilted sign that says “Back to Basics” hanging on black chalkboard

Ten basic accessibility facts

All accessibility managers should be comfortable communicating the following facts and the reasons behind them. Fact #1: All accessibility (digital and physical) is a civil right. The Americans with Disabilities Act is a civil rights law for people with disabilities.…

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Lorem Ipsum cookie banner template — “Our Cookie Policy” OK I agree button

Cookie banners and accessibility

Yes, these do matter, especially if you are using a cookie banner to handle your privacy disclosures, super especially if you can be sued in California. What is a cookie? Cookies are small text files created by a website that…

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Air plant with spiky green leaves, bare roots, and purple and pink flowers

Books on Disability Resiliency

Fictional and real-life accounts of disability resiliency that pass my sniff test as a disabled person Part one of a two-part article: Read part one “My favorite books on accessibility and related topics.” What makes a good disability resiliency book?…

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Man sitting in small working space with laptop looking frustrated

All the reasons you might not have gotten that job

Many of which have nothing to do with you. I have spent some time over the last few months mentoring people finding themselves out of work courtesy of COVID. Some of them have applied to jobs at VMware; others are…

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Building an “accessibility brand”

Meaningful accessibility discussions happen when you are not in the room. Having a personal accessibility brand can help deliver your message in your absence. Branding isn’t just for companies anymore. Post-pandemic, in our almost-completely digital world, a personal brand is…

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Whiteboard that says “To-do list: Pivot!”

Pivoting to fully remote accessibility testing

Five months into the pandemic w/ no finish line in sight, temporary changes must be reassessed and made permanent to improve productivity. We are now five months into the pandemic. That is enough lived experience to have determined that: This…

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a room with an office from old science fiction movie

Sci-fi and Accessibility

There is a non-obvious connection between the two We had our monthly team meeting earlier this month. There were introductions (we had new team members) and some ice breakers where people were called on to answer a question from our…

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When an airline breaks your wheelchair you lose more than equipment

I wish this were rare. It isn’t. As many other wheelchair users and I have documented, chairs get damaged far too often. I have publicly said my chair is damaged on about one out of every ten flights. When you…

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Why Sticky Navigation Can Undermine Accessibility

“Sticky navigation” or “sticky nav” is a software design and implementation technique in which a header, menu, or other element remains fixed to the top or side of the screen as the user scrolls. Sticky navigation is extremely popular, especially…

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Why Americans with Disabilities Should Consider Entrepreneurship During Economic Upheaval

Economic downturns affect people with disabilities more severely than the general workforce. When companies cut costs, workers with disabilities often face disproportionate layoffs, hiring freezes, and workplace barriers that make it even harder to re-enter the job market. Then, if…

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Designing for Dyslexia: Accessibility Requirements and Best Practices

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, reminding us that accessible design directly influences how millions read and engage with digital content. Dyslexia impacts fluency, comprehension, and reading comfort, but careful accessibility practices can lower those barriers. Although there isn’t a single “fix,”…

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Why Every Search Needs an Announced Empty State

We’ve all done it; Run a search and found no matches. Sometimes it’s because of a typo. Sometimes, it’s that there truly is nothing that matches what you are looking for. People without disabilities can easily find their mistakes or…

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Why training alone is never the solution to ableist behavior

There is a three-party storyline that frequently appears in social media: Disabled person goes to a retail outlet (or school, hospital, restaurant, church or any other place of public accommodation). Someone at this location treats the disabled person horribly. The…

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Accessibility Considerations for Off-Site Navigation and Downloads

When a website links to content it does not own or control, it is easy for assistive technology users to miss that they’ve ended up on a different domain that likely has different accessibility, privacy, and security controls than the…

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Sometimes the Best Accessibility Fix is a Usability Fix

Teams often arbitrarily divide work into two piles: “UX defects” and “accessibility defects”. That split creates the belief that accessibility is an add-on rather than a dimension of good design. In practice, accessibility gains often come from fixing ordinary UX…

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Why Separate Guest and Logged In States Create Accessibility Barriers

Do you have differing logged-in and logged-out experiences for your users? Do you merge the two when someone logs in? If you don’t, you are creating accessibility barriers. People often think of accessibility as something that happens on the surface…

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Why You Need to Close Open Objects When Users Navigate Away

Imagine opening a dropdown, expanding an accordion, or opening a dialog box, then following a link that loads a new object. The old object is still programmatically marked as open. That means it lingers in the accessibility tree. If you…

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