OrteMenlo ParkSonstigesFacebook Accessibility
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day — an annual day to get people thinking and learning about how technology can help people with have a disability feel included, share their lives with family and friends and access information just like everyone else does. Below you can find an interview with Facebook Accessibility Specialist Matt King sharing more about why it's so important to raise awareness about accessibility.
In honor of the day, we're releasing new survey res...ults from Facebook users in 50 countries that found more than 30% of people reported difficulty in at least one of these areas: seeing, hearing, speaking, organizing thoughts, walking, or grasping with their hands.
At Facebook, we're always looking to better understand how people with disabilities use the platform so that we can build products that help reduce barriers and make it possible for them to connect with friends and loved ones and access information.
Open position, Software Engineer, Mobile iOS Accessibility
Apply online: https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/a0I1H00000LCHajUAH/
Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Through our family of apps and services, we're building a different kind of company that connects billions of people around the world, gives them ways to share what matters most to them, and helps bring people closer together. Whether we're creat...ing new products or helping a small business expand its reach, people at Facebook are builders at heart. Our global teams are constantly iterating, solving problems, and working together to empower people around the world to build community and connect in meaningful ways. Together, we can help people build stronger communities — we're just getting started.
Facebook is seeking a Mobile iOS Accessibility Engineer to focus on the accessibility of Facebook’s various product offerings. This person would work on the Accessibility Engineering team to improve accessibility infrastructure and compatibility of Facebook’s products with assistive technologies. This position is based in our Menlo Park headquarters. We are looking for passionate, empathetic engineers with strong experience developing sophisticated applications on the iPhone or iPad using the iOS SDK. The Accessibility Engineering team is dedicated to improving digital accessibility so that everyone has the power to build community and bring the world closer together. If this is your passion as well, then we look forward to hearing from you soon!
When you open your Facebook News Feed to learn what's happening with friends, family, and in your favorite groups, we want your experience to be delightful. It should be simple and easy; it should not feel like a lot of work to skim through the stories and interact with the ones you find most meaningful.
So one customization we made some time ago on iOS for VoiceOver users is streamlined feed navigation. Each time you swipe right to tell VoiceOver to read the next item, Voice...Over reads the most important elements of the next story in the feed. Even though each story contains many items that VoiceOver could individually focus, it takes just one swipe to hear the next story. If you want to explore all the elements in a story and use the buttons and links inside of it, you can double tap the story to open a screen where VoiceOver can focus each of the elements it contains. We call this customization of the VoiceOver feed reading experience "single-swipe feed navigation."
Recently, we started rolling out single-swipe feed navigation in the Android News Feed. So, if you are using an Android screen reader, instead of eight or more swipes to get to the next story in the News Feed, it will take only one. And, like on iOS, Android screen reader users can double tap to get to a fully expanded version of a story.
If you want to comment, like, love, or otherwise react, those actions are also just one gesture away. Android screen reader users can double tap and hold to pop up a menu of actions for the currently focused story. In iOS, simply swiping down when actions are the current rotor setting, which is the default, scrolls through the available actions. For example, swipe down once to scroll to "Like" and then double tap to like it.
Single-swipe feed navigation is rolling out gradually on Android. When you get it, let us know what you think.
Today we're announcing new face recognition tools that will help people who are visually impaired know more about who's in the photos they encounter on Facebook. Now, people who use screen readers will know who appears in photos in their News Feed even if people aren't tagged.
Two years ago, we launched an automatic alt-text tool, which describes photos to people with vision loss. Face Recognition is another way we're using artificial intelligence to make it easier for all people, regardless of ability, to access Facebook, make connections and have more opportunities.
Check out the demo to learn how the tool works.
Spotlight on Rafi Romero (Recruiting Products Engineer)
What do you do at Facebook?
I am an engineer on Recruiting Products and based out of the New York office. I work on building tools for recruiters so that they can more efficiently do their jobs. For example, we automate day-to-day tasks that help them, whether they're scheduling meetings or finding possible candidates.
...I'm also co-lead of the Differently Abled, an Employee Resource Group for people with disabilities. Any employee can join and our membership includes folks who have disabilities or have loved ones with disabilities.
How did you get involved with accessibility at Facebook and what have you been working on?
Because of my involvement with Differently Abled, one of my managers suggested that the engineering point of contact for accessibility on Recruiting Products would be a good fit for me. I thought it made perfect sense, allowing me to find overlap between my day job (coding) and what I do as co-lead of Differently Abled. One thing I like about this role is it has opened my mind and taught me a lot about people with varying physical abilities whereas at Differently Abled, I've been able to explore my passion for mental health.
This role has involved both prioritizing accessibility work and fixing bugs. For instance, earlier this year our Recruiting Products org had its semiannual “bug bash”, when all the engineers meet to address technical debt and one of the themes was accessibility. We needed a quantifiable goal, so we focused on specific locations in our code that have been marked as inaccessible and solved about half of the outstanding issues in this single moment.
What is one piece of advice you would give other developers on accessibility?
Learn to use a screen reader. It's a big wake-up call because suddenly you realize there's a whole other microcosm of the human experience that you might not have been aware of. VoiceOver offers a pretty good tutorial for Mac Users.
What do you do in your free time?
I spend a lot of my free time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I live half a mile away and try to go every weekend to experience the latest exhibits, where I particularly enjoy European paintings, Islamic art, and anything from the Eastern Mediterranean.
I also like playing video games (yes, I still play Pokemon Go and I've recently been hooked on the new Zelda game).
Facebook Accessibility hat Community Voices from Facebooks Beitrag geteilt.
After being paralyzed due to a rare neurological condition, Marisa Hamamoto used Facebook to connect with her community and explore her mission of making dance accessible to everyone. Together they built Infinite Flow, the first wheelchair ballroom dance company, dedicated to inclusion in performing arts as well as in everyday life.
For Marisa Hamamoto, dance is everything. Previously paralyzed due to a rare neurological condition, she miraculously regained her ability to walk, but made it ...her mission to make dance accessible to all. And after a powerful Messenger conversation, Infinite Flow - A Wheelchair Dance Company was born.
Mehr anzeigenWe're honored to share that Matt King, an Accessibility Specialist at Facebook, spoke at TEDMED about the importance of improving equity for people with disabilities, especially when it comes to technology. He joined a community of change-makers who are all passionate about making the world a healthier place and removing barriers imposed by disability.
Born with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a degenerative genetic disease that left him blind, Matt discussed how vital his connections ...are with others in the blind community. He highlighted opportunities and challenges that technology presents for people who have disabilities and how his journey to make technology more accessible led him to join Facebook where he's pushing boundaries in software accessibility for people with disabilities.
His hope is that through community and technology, we can create change that makes our society more inclusive to all people, regardless of their abilities. Matt’s talk will be available on http://bit.ly/2zKiYCe sometime during 2018.
Photo by: TEDMED and Jerod Harris
Facebook Accessibility hat einen Link geteilt.
We're excited to announce a new feature designed to improve navigation for people who use a screen reader or keyboard shortcuts on Facebook! From any page on www.facebook.com, pressing 'Alt + /' will activate our new Navigation Assistant. From the Navigation Assistant, you can jump to sections of the current page, other pages on Facebook or Accessibility resources. We hope that this will make navigating Facebook simpler and more predictable! http://bit.ly/2yzD1UR
Facebook Accessibility hat Community Voices from Facebooks Beitrag geteilt.
Tracy McGee Boyd used the power of community on Facebook to create a place for other moms like her. By sharing their stories and offering each other support, Mommies with Guides has become a group of women who empower each other through the shared experience of having a guide dog. http://bit.ly/2yvdQmE
Tracy McGee Boyd is a mother of four from Portland. She's also legally blind. Having never met another blind mom, she decided to create her own support community by starting Mommies with Guides
Facebook Accessibility hat einen Link geteilt.
We're excited to announce that Facebook now supports custom captions in videos on iOS! Another feature we added is scaling the caption size with the video player size, as the built-in video player does. So now, a video in landscape will display captions in a slightly bigger font size than a video in portrait. The settings are nested a few levels in so you'll need to: Open Settings > General > Accessibility > Subtitles & Captioning. http://bit.ly/2xPvuim
This year at @TEDMED, we're excited for speakers who are focused on improving equity for people with disabilities and who are working to make the world a more accessible place for all. http://bit.ly/2eMY0cJ
We’re honored to share that this week our accessibility team accepted the FCC Chairman's Award for Advancements in Accessibility (AAA) for our Automatic Alt Text technology, which describes photos to people who are blind or visually impaired.
The award was announced at the M-Enabling Conference in Arlington, VA, alongside the other AAA winners, including Amazon’s VoiceView, Ava App for People Who Are Deaf or Hearing Impaired and Media Inc.’s Integrated Described Video Best Pr...actices Guide.
We’re also happy to share that Teach Access was awarded an honorable mention for its efforts in bringing accessible design and development room into college classrooms, making it the second award that Teach Access has received over the past month.
Check out more about the award and winners here: https://www.fcc.gov/…/chairmans-awards-advancements-accessi…
Today, we’re excited to share a milestone in our efforts to make video content more inclusive: we’re enabling publishers to include closed captions in Facebook Live, helping people who are deaf or hard of hearing experience live broadcasts.
Live video gives people a window into what's happening around the world and has become one of the most engaging forms of content on Facebook. Bringing more captioning to real time videos is imperative for ensuring this content is useful and enjoyable for everyone.
Now, if your captioning settings are turned on, you'll automatically see closed captions on live broadcasts when they're available. The update is available in multiple languages across Android, iOS, and Web.
We're very excited to share that Teach Access, an initiative to include accessibility and universal design principles in the curricula of computer scientists, designers and researchers in undergraduate, graduate and continuing education, has won the Knowbility, Inc. award for Educational Achievement (https://www.knowbility.org/…/2017-honorees-heroes-accessib…/)!
Teach Access was created by a coalition of tech companies, universities and advocates for people with disabilitie...s. Its mission is to expand awareness and knowledge of accessible technology development in higher education through approaches such as faculty bootcamps, guest lectures, internships, challenge grants for research and curriculum development and industry partnerships. Teach Access also builds open source online learning tools that reflect and teach accessibility best practices. The tools are widely available to individuals, companies and organizations. In addition, Teach Access has developed job descriptions that include preference for accessibility knowledge to support recruitment activities and to extend the post-secondary foundation through “on the job training” in product and service development.
This is an extremely proud moment for Teach Access (http://teachaccess.org/) and its members and supporters as we continue our pursuit to bring accessible design and development skills into college classrooms.
Next week, the Facebook Accessibility team will be at the 32nd Annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in San Diego, CA. We’ll be giving three talks, covering a variety of developer tools and technical projects, as well as participating in a panel on the Teach Access project (an initiative focused on embedding accessibility into higher education programs: http://teachaccess.org/). Come say hello!
Automated End-to-End Accessibility Testing of Facebook Mobile Apps: http://w...ww.csun.edu/…/index.p…/public/presentations/view/155
Reduce Accessibility Coding Costs: http://www.csun.edu/…/index.php/public/presentations/view/77
Accessibility Debugging on Android with Stetho: http://www.csun.edu/…/index.p…/public/presentations/view/143
The Teach Access Project - 2017 Update: http://www.csun.edu/…/index.php/public/presentations/view/69
