Beyond Manual Audits: How Automation Strengthens Accessibility
Accessibility issues often appear quietly: After a plugin update, a new comment, or a small content change no one notices. Manual audits catch the big, complex problems, but...
Meryl Evans
Meryl Evans is an accessibility consultant at Equal Entry. Profoundly deaf since birth, she has been a caption pusher since getting her first caption decoder in 1983. She is based in Plano, Texas.
Headaches with FCC Reporting on Captioning Problems Per CVAA
When the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) came out, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added a process for reporting captioning problems. Not...
Implementing an Accessible Virtual Twin for Learning in Virtual Reality
Christian Cousquer has worked in digital accessibility for 17 years. He’s an accessibility and immersive technology consultant in his company called Ilargia. He’s an information...
Accessibility Options in Virtual Reality Gaming: A Case Study with Myst
There’s no such thing as 100% accessibility. There will always be at least one person who prefers something different from the majority. If there’s one thing video games are known...
Reading a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) or Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR)
Procurement officers and employees responsible for purchasing products for a company may request an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) based on the ITI Voluntary Product...
Creating Accessible iOS Apps: An Action Plan
It can be overwhelming getting started with accessibility in Apple iOS. The operating system has so many features, tools, and APIs. This is where the action plan will be helpful....
Accessibility Virtual Reality: User Studies with Children and Seniors Presentation
VRTogether designed a virtual reality social game that is designed to alleviate loneliness and improve a person’s well-being. Equal Entry worked with Azalee Group to see if using...
Mapping the Disability Tech Market with Perkins School for the Blind
The Howe Innovation Center is part of Perkins School for the Blind. The center is named for Samuel Gridley Howe, the founding director of Perkins. He was a visionary for his time...
A Deaf Person’s Dream of Seeing Captioned Broadway Show Realized … Or Was It?
I came to New York to see my first-ever captioned live Broadway show. I’ve seen captioned movies at the theater. But I had never attended a live show that had captions. Once, I...
Automatic Captions: Our Experiments and Best Practices
The number one rule for high-quality accessible captioning is readability. After all, if nobody can read your captions, then none of the other rules matter. People put so much...
How to Create an Effective Tactile Graphic
While in New York City, Thomas Logan and I went to New York University’s Ability Project. It’s an interdisciplinary research space dedicated to the intersection between disability...
iOS 16 Accessibility: How to Use Live Captions and Accessibility Shortcuts
Testing iOS 16 Live Captions (beta) revealed that it has bugs. The post details how to solve the annoyance of the floating button using an Accessibility Shortcut, but the core...
Accessibility in a Virtual World Before Oculus
Accessible virtual worlds existed before virtual reality (VR) headsets. Virtual Ability has been designing accessible virtual world spaces for over 15 years. The team at Virtual...
What Are the Top 6 Problem Spots for Blind Testers in Accessibility Testing?
In digital accessibility, the team of accessibility specialists includes blind team members who exemplify the spirit of digital accessibility. These accessibility specialists also...
Captions: Humans vs Artificial Intelligence: Who Wins?
Automatic captions are often the subject of many jokes. They’re also the cause of viewers’ ire. Mirabai Knight wants to change that by educating people on the value of human...
Top 6 Things to Ensure Your Virtual Reality App Is Accessible
Thanks to the crisis, virtual reality growth is multiplying. Global spending on extended reality including virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, software, and services...
How to Determine If a Company Knows About Digital Accessibility
An organization held a training session for more than 400 attendees. The purpose of the training was to educate attendees on digital accessibility. In the audience were a few...
Accessibility Virtual Reality Meetup: What Is It Like in Spatial?
Accessibility Virtual Reality (A11yVR) Meetup has held many of its meetups in Mozilla Hubs. We’ve had one in AltspaceVR. And now we’ve tried our third virtual reality environment...
How It’s Possible to Create an Accessible Tactile Drawing
Thomas Logan and I met with Chancey Fleet at New York Public Library’s Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. We explored the library where we found many books filled...
Virtual Reality Accessibility: The Importance of Comfort Ratings and Reducing Motion
What is “Comfort Rating” and why is it important? Think about when you start watching a movie or a TV show. It’s common to see content rating at the start of the show. In the past,...
Adapting VR Games for People with Disabilities | Accessibility VR Meetup Recap
Beat Saber, Job Simulator, AudioShield, BoxVR, and many more games are engaging and very immersive. But they haven’t been accessible for everyone… until now. Players with...
Why Motion on Websites and Digital Content Is a Problem
Have you ever attended a presentation where a slide has an animated clip (GIF)? And it keeps repeating itself? Or on social media where a comment has an animated GIF that plays...
Deaf Tech: Travel Through Time from Past to Future | ID24 Recap
Inclusive Design 24 (ID24) is a free 24-hour online event for the global community for sharing knowledge and ideas in inclusive design. Deaf technology and accessibility tools have...
Voice Content, Multimodal Accessibility, and the Story of Ask GeorgiaGov | Accessibility NYC Meetup Recap
On September 14, 2021, Accessibility New York City hosted a Meetup entitled “Voice Content, Multimodal Accessibility, and the Story of Ask GeorgiaGov.” In this presentation,...
Accessible Virtual Reality: Advice from a Deaf Person on How to Make It Better
Typically, I never shy away from new software and technology. However, the thought of diving into virtual reality (VR) feels daunting. Still, that doesn’t damper my excitement in...
How to Hire Awesome Sign Language Interpreters and Make Attendees Happy
“If you had to choose, would you have a human captioner or an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter at a live online event?” Equal Entry’s Owner Thomas Logan asked me. My...
Why Winn-Dixie Doesn’t Matter Recap
In April of 2021, the eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals released its decision in Gil v. Winn-Dixie. Many advocates proclaimed it was a major blow to disability rights and some...
Q&A With Rich Schwerdtfeger, Co-Creator and Former Chair of the W3C WAI-ARIA Accessibility Standards
Rich Schwerdtfeger was the CTO for Accessibility at IBM and chairman of the board for Knowbility. He helped develop the first GUI screen reader for the IBM PC. Rich has led...
What We’ve Learned from Hosting VR Meetups in Mozilla Hubs for One Year
Equal Entry founder Thomas Logan had the good fortune to present at one of the first virtual reality education-related conferences. After he presented at Educators in VR, he...
What It’s Like for a Deaf Person at a Captioned VR Presentation
Editor’s note: For the purpose of this article, captions and subtitles are interchangeable. Captions are the text that appears on the screen capturing the audio. Almost a year ago,...
This Is What Happened at a Captioned Virtual Reality Webinar
With many employers switching to remote work and schools moving online, it’s no surprise there’s an explosion of video and conference calls. With that in mind, I’m thankful for two...