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…
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…
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…
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,”…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…