Dear AccessWorld Readers,
Welcome to the September 2022 edition of AccessWorld! For this editor's notes, I thought I would share a tech tip that I've not seen discussed before. To take advantage of this tip, you will need to be using the Firefox web browser on Windows. If you encounter an accessibility issue that you cannot work around, you may be able to bypass it by turning off the page's style sheet. In simple terms, a CSS style sheet is essentially extra instructions that aid in determining the look of a page. With Firefox, there is a quick and easy way to turn this style sheet off, so that you can see the actual HTML page without the visual styling provided by the style sheet. In many cases, this might make it easier to access certain content that the sheet was obfuscating or hiding. For example, say I am trying to enter my credit card information on a shopping website but the fields for doing so aren't working with my screen reader. Turning off the style sheet might make these more accessible to me if it is turned off. Note that style sheets are used for a reason, and that a sight probably will look strange without them. For example, often there are various messages that a website can display depending what you are doing on the page, logging in for example. So in this case, there might be a message telling you that your username/password is incorrect, one to tell you that there isn't a name found for a given email address, etc. If you turn off the style sheet, you probably will see all of these messages, even if you shouldn't. That being said, turning off the style sheet for a given task and then turning it back on takes seconds and can be very useful.
Now that we've discussed the benefits of turning off a style sheet, how do you actually do it. In Firefox, open your "View" menu by either navigating to it or pressing "ALT+V". Now, either arrow down until you hear "Page Style"; You can also use the shortcut key "Y" to jump directly into this submenu. Once you open the "Page Style" sub menu, you will generally see two options, "No Style" and "Basic Page Style". Sometimes there might be other options, but these two are the options you will see in around 90% of cases based on my experience. Press enter on "No Style" to turn the style sheet off. If you want to turn it back on, go back into the "Page Style" menu and select the "Basic Page Style" option.
In other news, do you remember our article on the game Hearthstone back in October 2021? If you need a refresher, you can find the article here. Hearthstone accessibility is only possible due to the work of a single individual who goes by the moniker Guide Dev. Recently Guide Dev released an article explaining the work involved in making Hearthstone accessible. It is a fascinating read and illustrates different methods of providing accessibility to a complicated program like Hearthstone and their benefits and drawbacks. If you are a fan of Hearthstone or are interested in the processes involved in retrofitting accessibility for a complex program, it is definitely worth a read. Guide Dev spends countless hours keeping Hearthstone up to date and I'd like to give him a shout out for all of his hard work and dedication to making this game available for people with vision loss.
I hope you enjoy the September issue of AccessWorld and as always, thank you for being a reader of our magazine.
Aaron Preece
AccessWorld Editor and Chief
This article is made possible in part by generous funding from the James H. and Alice Teubert Charitable Trust, Huntington, West Virginia.
