The end of the year is here. Time to put your money where your heart is.  Make an individual donation through Givebutter (https://givebutter.com/buildnews). Want all the ways to donate? Check our website (https://equalaccesspublicmedia.org/support-us/).

We just made it official. We updated our Bluesky handle from @eapmstyleguide.bsky.social to @eapmstyleguide.org.

Public service announcement: words have meaning. The autism community has largely defined autism as a neurodivergent identity. Autism/autistic has meaning. Austism spectrum disorder is a diagnosis. This has parameters. ASD (F84.0) has meaning. eapmstyleguide.org/autism-autis...

You don't necessarily need to say "image of" in your alt text for users to know it's an image. Screen readers will announce that it's an image. But it can help readers to specify if it's a hand-drawn image, Polaroid, infographic, screenshot, chart, map, diagram, or so on.

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Do you love the Style and Accessibility Guide? Hate it? Haven't used it, but simply love taking surveys? Great! We're looking for you! Take our User Feedback Survey! eapmstyleguide.org#survey

Yes, we love the em-dash as much as the next journalist — and apparently as much as gen AI, so we're told. But did you know that a screen reader doesn't necessary read the em-dash?

To be, or not to be? Do you really need it? Oh, yes. You do need to know it.

This.

Are you a Style and Accessibility Guide patron? Not only do you help fund the Style and Accessibility Guide — and the people who contribute to it! — but you are part of building the only journalism accessibility guide out there.

Two years ago this month, we went from idea to reality. Help continue our work by donating $2 in honor of our second birthday.

Happy day after elections. With so many candidates focusing on affordability, we thought it might be helpful to post two terms: • minimum wage (eapmstyleguide.org/minimum-wage/) • living wage (eapmstyleguide.org/living-wage/) and a song.

Related: Have you ever heard of Protactile? It's an emerging language, developed by people who are deafblind.

When using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, don't just make text bigger and bolder to make it a heading. That will work for sighted users, but screen reader users will miss that and just hear it as normal paragraph text. Use actual heading styles, like level 1 through 6.

Did you get more rest last night? We hope no one wrested the extra hour of sleep away from you. eapmstyleguide.org/rest/

When possible, use simple and familiar data visualization techniques. Complex data visualizations can be visually appealing, but they can also be more difficult to understand. If a visualization gets overly complex, consider alternate chart types for the sake of understanding.

Some people replace the word "season" with "szn" or the word "please" with "plz." Not all sighted users will know what those spellings are supposed to mean, and many screen reader users won't, either. Many screen readers will read "szn" as S-Z-N and "plz" as P-L-Z.

We figured, as a new account, it's important to post a controversial opinion. So here we go. We love the Oxford comma. (It makes serial lists more accessible.)

People who want to make the web accessible need to understand the many different ways that people with disabilities use the web. This W3C resource offers a good introduction to how disabled people navigate the web, and barriers they commonly encounter. www.w3.org/WAI/people-u...

They tried to make me go to rehab And I said, "Great, but my HMO only covers outpatient physical therapy once a week for five weeks." And they said, "No, we meant an inpatient SNF." And I said, "Wait, these Amy Winehouse lyrics just got really confusing."

The same photo could appear on three different pages and require different alt text for each instance. The alt text for an image can vary, depending on the context of the image, its role on the page, and the intended message.

Are you still using all lowercase letters for multi-word hashtags? Hang on. We've got just the thing to improve your hashtag accessibility. eapmstyleguide.org/h... #BetterHashtagsForAccessibility #WeLovePascalCase #andCamelCaseToo

The #NoMouse Challenge is a global effort to raise awareness about accessible web design. Try using your website without a mouse. Use the keyboard instead. Is it possible to access all features and operate all buttons, sliders, and other controls? nomouse.org

This guy on social media ends a lot of posts by thanking people for their "attention to this very important matter" in all capital letters. Screen reader software may read that letter by letter. What is the best way to emphasize text anyway?

Screen readers are an assistive technology that interprets the information on a screen and translates it to either synthesized speech or Braille output. This helps blind people, people with low vision, and people with cognitive or learning disabilities. www.afb.org/blindness-an...

Hi. We're the EAPM Style and Accessibility Guide. You probably know us best from seeing posts about us by @equalaccesspublicmedia.org. We thought it was time we had our own account so we could bring you more daily tips on style and accessibility.

Vestibular disorders affect people's balance as well as their visual perception of their world around them. Don't make animations, sliders, videos, or rapid movement start automatically, as autoplaying elements could trigger a bad reaction in people who have vestibular disorders.

Hey! That's us!

A lot of big breaking news stories involve visuals, such as timelines of events, photos, memes, and screen shots. All of those images need alt text. Without alt text, screen reader users are left out. Today, the big event that is image-heavy and all over social media is the #NoKings protests.

Hello world! We got our own account! Time to spread style and accessibility to the masses! www.eapmstyleguide.org