I've just reached the Plantagenets in the amazing "The History of England" podcast. Brings back memories of when I built a sample presentation called "The Kings Are Here", which could be controlled using touch, touch with short movements, a mouse, a keyboard and a switch. youtu.be/TsnnNrIovMQ

Another cool thing you can do with Accessibility Insights for Windows is programmatically interact with the UI Automation control patterns supported by the elements in your UI, in the same way a screen reader does. accessibilityinsights.io/docs/windows...

Accessibility Insights didn't report any issues with this app's UI, but that's because the UI is completely imperceivable to Accessible Insights. A screen reader doesn't know the UI exists.

Don't forget folks, in a few seconds Accessibility Insights for Windows can highlight potential issues with your app UI. Here it reports 4 nameless elements in game UI. accessibilityinsights.io/docs/windows...

All I did was add a few SemanticProperties.HeadingLevel to my #dotmetmaui Accessible Solitaire app, and hey presto, the Narrator screen reader can present a list of headings in the app's Settings page. learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/maui/...

I've just fixed a bug with the accessible name of the target card piles in the #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app, on three platforms. Three times the testing, three times the publishing, but only one code change required!

It's interesting to consider how different screen readers announce the same UI. The #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire Settings page uses the Switch control and this is how the control gets announced... VoiceOver: "switch button" TalkBack: "switch" NVDA: "toggle button" Narrator: "toggle switch"

Accessible Solitaire V2.6 is now available for all of iOS, Android, and Windows! Now the in-progress game is saved when the app's closed, so the game can be continued when the app's next reopened. apps.apple.com/tr/app/acces... play.google.com/store/apps/d... apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pdft...

Goodness me. After upgrading VS/MAUI/Xcode/MacOS/iPadOS my app STILL crashes with a "No parameterless constructor" for MediaElement on my iPad. I'm absolutely out of ideas, and I can't update my Store app until I've figured this out. Hopefully I'll be more productive gardening this morning.

If there's one thing the industry still seems to struggle with (despite it hardly being rocket science), is showing text that has a reasonable contrast against its background. Here's Accessibility Insights for Web reporting 51 contrast issues on one page. accessibilityinsights.io/docs/web/ove...

Hmm, now that the MediaElement is working in my #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app, its UI appears outside the app too. If I can't prevent that completely, I should at try to least to stop it when all the sound options are off in the app.

At last! I've got sounds working in my #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app. Turns out I needed to bump up the minimum supported OS. Playing the game now brings back memories of recording while shuffling playing cards at the breakfast table. play.google.com/store/apps/d...

A screen reader user suggested that left/right arrow key presses should move keyboard focus between dealt card piles in the #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app. So what could I do but update the app? Any feedback you or people you know may have, is always welcome. apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pdft...

1/2 I'm looking forward to writing a short article sharing thoughts on developing the #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire for Windows app. Now that the Accessible Solitaire app is available at all of the Microsoft, Apple, and Android app stores... apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pdft...

Hmm, according to the Apple analytics, the published iOS Accessible Solitaire app is crashing on average a couple of times per day. So I really need to sort this out. It's time I learned how to include debug symbols in the published app and then figure out what to do with the resulting data.

A few notes on my #dotnetmaui dev setup: www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-se...

And going back to that "Screen reader announce game state" button in the #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire game, this is what happens when you click it while a screen reader's running...

I just tried playing Accessible Solitaire using the Windows On-Screen Keyboard with its Scan mode and Navigation layout. I think it might be possible to play the game, but I do wonder how it might be made more efficient. Unfortunately I'd say it's really difficult to see which is the active OSK key.

Ok, you can use Accessibility Insights to check your #dotnetmaui Windows app's UIA hierarchy, properties, patterns and events, and know if that's all good, then that's encouraging for your iOS and Android apps too. But what does all that stuff mean? Check this out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m4g...

The touchpad on my laptop has finally given up the ghost, such that I can no longer click and drag with it. So I'm relying on the keyboard more than ever. I've just discovered I can crop a picture in the Photos app using only the keyboard. Thank you Photos app team! #Windows11 #accessibility

1/5 Ha! Good times! I just pointed the VS Accessibility Checker to my #dotnetmaui app's Settings page, and it reported an issue. It said I'd violated the very important rule about an element's Name not including its ControlType. Your customers really don't want to hear lots of "... button, button".

My #dotnetmaui app's raising UIA FocusChanged events as I tab through the app, meaning Windows Magnifier can react by keeping the focused element in view. What's more, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Enter, Magnifier will speak the name of the element with focus. Good. support.microsoft.com/windows/use-...

When the "You've won" window appears in my #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app, the NVDA Speech Viewer shows that NVDA's trying to announce the window but then one of my custom announcements comes along and stomps on the original announcement. That's no good for the player so I'll have to fix that!

By default, I never want to set explicitly set font point/pixel sizes, rather I select something semantic like Title/Subtitle/Header. It seems that my choice that worked fine for iOS and Android, looks rather unusual in my Windows #dotnetmaui app. Something to investigate...

Windows #dotnetmaui apps can make accessing buttons super-quick thanks to support for access keys! It's not often that the UX can be improved so much with such a tiny code change! Eg windows:VisualElement.AccessKey="C". learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/maui/...

Accessible Solitaire for Windows is an exploration into keyboard efficiency, with and without a screen reader. I've a few more fixes to make before I start seeking feedback. There are so many more shortcuts I could add to support so many ways to reduce the number of steps it takes to move a card!

Curiouser and curiouser! When I programmatically set focus to the Grid containing the dealt card piles, keyboard focus seems to move fine, yet it also seems that no UIA FocusChanged event is raised. As such, a screen reader is unaware of the focus change and keeps silent. Something to investigate.

Back in 2018 I made this video showing how a screen reader can announce the face-down card turned up following a move in solitaire, youtu.be/EDbhezpXy_g. All these years later, the Microsoft Solitaire game now also announces this. This is just the sort of thing that makes my explorations worthwhile!

How about that! Has there ever been an app created from a template which has so much helpful accessible information as soon as the app's created? Don't forget to localise the strings as necessary prior to shipping. learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet...

Goodness me! I found the Tablet PC included in a list of Microsoft’s Most Memorably Forgettable Products. In 2009 I uploaded this video of my Herbi Writer app, with feedback like: "The kids that use the program really like it and ask if they can work with Herbi all the time." youtu.be/V9USzz1-snQ

Now that I have a Windows version of the Accessible Solitaire app, I can use the very handy Accessibility Insights for Windows tool to call out some potential issues before I use a screen reader with the app. The UI hierarchy provided to screen readers seems to be a good semantic match for the game.

I've been making progress on the #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app for Windows. Here's the app running with its dark app colours and user-selected suit colours. Lots of adjustments yet to make, but I'm looking forward to user feedback to help me prioritise the work ahead!

I've been working on a first version of Accessible Solitaire for Windows. This is made possible of course by the handy #dotnetmaui multi-platform support. The app's not published yet, but related details are at the end of github.com/gbarkerz/Acc.... I'm really looking forward to feedback on this!

I'm working on the Windows version of my #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app, and I've spent soooo long not managing to style a keyboard focused CollectionView item. And perhaps I can't, github.com/dotnet/maui/.... Woe is me.

Sharing some thoughts around app accessibility, www.linkedin.com/pulse/net-ma.... Please spread the word on the apps, as I'm always looking for feedback to help me prioritise the work ahead.

I've updated the Accessible Solitaire app to include new features and some fixes to the screen reader experience, github.com/gbarkerz/Acc.... I hope to write a related article next week. And to top it all, I've just noticed the ratings at the Apple Store. 1 rating of 1 star. Time to put Yazz on!

Like I said, I won't be offering Yellow as a suit colour until I support configurable card background colours too. Accessibility Insights reports a contrast of 1.073:1 for Yellow on White, which is far, far too low. www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/U..., www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/U...

Smashing! With the latest #dotnetmaui Community Toolkit update, I can show the large card popup again following a long press on a card, and also show the customised tinted suit colours. learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet...

1/2 While wiring up a junction box this weekend, I wondered if UK electricians playing the #dotnetmaui Accessible Solitaire app would customise card suits to show brown, blue, green and yellow. But wait! What would www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/U... have to say about that?

1/2 I got feedback from a local vision-related organisation suggesting my #dotnetmaui solitaire app should support long-press on a playing card to zoom the card, so I'm working on that now. But wait! What does WCAG say about timeouts? www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTAN...

1/3 I'd got myself into a bit of a bind with my very convoluted bindings. Something about it was leading to my colour tinting working on the playing cards in Debug but not Retail. However, following some very, very helpful code cleanup by @bijington.bsky.social, the tinting's now working in Release!

Hi @thewissen.io, thanks again for the pointer to your awesome article on font generation! It looks like my SVGs aren't suited to the process. I tried converting one in inkscape before uploading it to icomoon, but haven't managed yet to generate a resizable font glyph. I'll keep experimenting!

My #dotnetmaui Settings page is unwieldy so I thought I’d tidy it up with Expanders. But Accessibility Insights reports that on Windows the interactable Header is only text from a screen reader's perspective. So I'll not be using Expanders until I can verify that it's accessible on iOS and Android.

1/2 I recently got some great feedback suggesting the colours shown on the Accessible Solitaire's playing cards should be customisable. So while at the #dotnetmaui event last week, I asked people how I might do that. Someone very helpfully pointed me to .NET MAUI's IconTintColorBehavior.

Hey devs! If you convey important info only through a variety of colourful shapes in your #dotnetmaui app, there's a good chance your app's going to be unusable to many people. I just downloaded a colour picker which is completely invisible to screen readers.