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5 ways to experience digital accessibility on Global Accessibility Awareness Day

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As today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), we thought that we would encourage some involvement amongst the community so that you can gain a first-hand awareness of accessibility. We hope this is an eye-opener and maybe a little bit of a mid-week challenge.

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New updates by Twitter client app Twitterrific enhance accessibility for vision impaired users

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Twitterrific, a Mac OS X and iOS client for the social networking site Twitter, has launched a host of new and improved accessibility features for people who are blind or vision impaired for its app update yesterday. This recent update has seen a vast improvement in the app’s use of VoiceOver and image sharing.

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Accessibility improvements

According to iTunes, the accessibility improvements listed below have been made to the application.

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Twitter supports alternative text for images sent via app

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Twitter has announced that images tweeted from its iOS and Android apps can now include alternative text, ensuring that users of assistive technologies such as screen readers can understand the nature of the visual content.

Two screen shots of the composer for Twitter on iOS. The first showing the new "Add description" button overlayed on an image thumbnail in the composer, and the second showing the composition of alt text for an image. Image credit: Twitter

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Social media for those with a disability gets 2016 update

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The ground-breaking 2012 ‘SociAbility’ review into social media for those with a disability has had a much anticipated update. The Media Access Australia website now includes important new information on the varying accessibility challenges and practical fixes across all popular social channels. Project leader Dr Scott Hollier believes that it is destined to be the go-to resource on social media for people with a disability and those who provide care, support and advice.

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Ten years of accessibility on Twitter

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Popular social media short-blogging site Twitter is 10 years old and over its life it has gone from being accessible to less accessible and back again. This story reflects a common pattern in accessibility.

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In his blog, Robin Christopherson traces the accessibility of Twitter in ten tweets, showing the ebbs and flows as new features were developed.

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Call for participants in new Twitter and communication disabilities study

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A new Australian study into the ways in which people with communication disabilities use the social media platform Twitter for information exchange has been announced.

Left hand holding a smartphone with the Twitter logo, map in background representing communication around the world

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Now you can tweet accessible images

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Accessible Twitter service Easy Chirp used Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2014 to announce a new feature that allows users to tweet images with a description attached. This tool will make it radically easier to include screen reader users in social media.

Increasingly, exchanging images on social media is a fundamental way people interact online. The popularity of trends such as memes has meant that much of the information people share online is locked away in an image, beyond the reach of a screen reader.

Easy Chirp was developed by WebAxe founder Dennis Lembree as an accessible Twitter client. The service offers an alternative interface to Twitter that made up for Twitter’s inaccessibility. As Twitter has become more accessible, Easy Chirp has continued to offer features specifically suited to blind users.

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Accessibility improvements on Twitter

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Social media tool Twitter has announced its efforts to make its website twitter.com more accessible to people with disabilities.

Their first blog, released yesterday, outlines improvements they have made to keyboard navigation on the website. According to the Twitter blog, pressing the K or J keys will now allow you to navigate between tweets. While using the Tab and Shift +Tab key will allow you to move between links within a tweet. Keyboard shortcuts allow people with mobility impairments to navigate the website through a button, providing an alternative to using mouse navigation.

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