I officially took over maintenance of Able Player, the accessible media player, on May 6th, 2025 – just a little over a year ago. A year has passed, and I feel like it’s time for an update on where things stand! From a code standpoint, it’s going great! I’ve released three major updates so far, and have just published the release candidate for the next major release. I’ve made a lot of changes, large and small. And now I’m releasing […]
Continue reading “Able Player: 1 year later” »Category: Accessibility
Chat about Able Player at CSUN 2026?
In two short weeks, I’ll be attending the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Anaheim, California. I’ve gone to this conference many times, and I know that it’s an amazing opportunity to connect with tons of people who are passionately invested in website accessibility. And during this trip, I’m hoping to gather information to help steer the future development of Able Player. I’m looking to book conversations with anybody who has considered using Able Player: I’m using Calendly to book meetings. […]
Continue reading “Chat about Able Player at CSUN 2026?” »Able Player 4.8 – Release Candidate & Call for Translators
I’m just getting the release candidate for Able Player 4.8 ready. This isn’t as large a release as the last one, but it does include some pretty significant changes! The most significant changes are in internationalization and in my progress towards removing jQuery and cookies. The release is currently scheduled for February 2nd, 2026; but could get pushed if there are new bugs in the release candidate that need fixing first. Internationalization Until this release, translations have existed as properties […]
Continue reading “Able Player 4.8 – Release Candidate & Call for Translators” »Judging severity in accessibility issues
We tend to agree easily that all accessibility issues are important, but we also acknowledge out of necessity that some issues are more critical than others. What we don’t always agree on is how to judge severity. There are very good reasons for that: it’s complicated! There’s no pretending that figuring out how important something is has an undercurrent of judging who matters more. But that’s not really what we’re doing when we try to decide what issues are more […]
Continue reading “Judging severity in accessibility issues” »Is it an evil overlay? How can you tell?
I’m approaching this story from the starting assumption that accessibility overlays are a problem. So I’m not going to spend time on arguments for or against the technology. I’m also making the assumption that we all agree that the tool itself must be accessible, and won’t discuss that question here. I am interested in one key question: where do we draw the line between a potentially useful tool and an evil overlay? What are the characteristics that make an overlay […]
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