Firefox 3 Accessibility Features

Get Firefox for free at Mozilla.com

The following is a listing of some of the latest accessibility related additions to Firefox 3 that will help to empower people to use, access, and view the Internet the way that they want to.

Update 7/8/2009:
With the release of Firefox 3.5 on June 30th comes some new accessibility features not covered in the documents provided below. Please visit Marco Zehe's blog for an overview of the new features.

The Firefox 3 Accessibility Features document is also available in PDF and ODT formats. The content in the document(s) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. Further attribution for the content on this page is listed below.

PDF icon Download Firefox 3 Accessibility Features PDF

OpenOffice icon Download Firefox 3 Accessibility Features ODT

Full Page Zoom

The Full Page Zoom feature in Firefox allows you to zoom in and out of web pages including images and other content. Firefox provides several ways to access this feature.

Zoom Buttons (since Firefox 4)
Right click on a toolbar > select Customize > Drag the Zoom Controls to the toolbar of your choice (Ctrl or Cmd + 0 to reset zoom).

Zoom Using the Keyboard
Hold down the Ctrl key (Cmd on Mac) and press the plus key to zoom in, and the minus key to zoom out. Ctrl or Cmd + 0 to reset zoom.

Zoom Using the Keyboard and Mouse
Press the Ctrl key (Cmd on Mac) and use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom text in and out. Ctrl or Cmd + 0 to reset zoom.

To zoom text only in Firefox, press Alt v + z + t
If your Menubar is not hidden, go to View > Zoom > Zoom Text Only.

Page Zoom Buttons Add-on For even more control of zooming, get the Page Zoom Buttons add-on for Firefox. It allows you to zoom in, zoom out, and reset zoom from a single button that can be placed on any toolbar.

Support for native themes

Firefox integrates tightly with your native operating system's theme. If you have set certain accessibility features such as high contrast mode then Firefox will honor these settings and display correctly for you.

Support of the ARIA draft standard

Firefox 3 improves upon the implementation of the W3C's ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) draft standard. With ARIA support rich JavaScript widgets used in dynamic Web 2.0 applications can be made as accessible to screen reader users as they are to everyone else. Toolkits such as the Dojo Toolkit are already successfully implementing ARIA and offering a richer Internet applications experience for visually impaired users.

Support for GNOME accessibility via ATK/AT-SPI

Firefox 3 introduces accessibility to the web on the GNOME Desktop, running on the Linux or Solaris platforms. For the first time blind and lowvision users can access the rich content the web offers today without having to leave their preferred operating environment or fall back on textbased browsers. Using the Orca screen reader (a standard component of the GNOME desktop) users have access to all content Firefox can render. Orca offers a range of convenience features that allow you to quickly jump to headings, tables, form field elements, and others. Alternative input software such as Jambu uses this technology to allow motor-impaired surfers access to the web. Firefox is the first browser to become accessible in a graphical environment under Linux and paves the way for many other Mozilla-based applications to follow.

Improved accessibility on Windows

Firefox 3 introduces IAccessible2, an extension to the well-known Microsoft Active Accessibility interface that allows screen readers to more tightly integrate with web pages. Through this new technology Firefox can expose more information directly through independent interfaces. Screen readers such as NVDA do not require the use of video interception technology to gain access to all relevant information. Voice dictation software can implement speaking of selected text without having to rely on direct screen manipulation. Once implemented in assistive technologies, IAccessible2 support will allow a broader range of web surfers to gain access to all content that is available on the Internet.

Credits

The Firefox 3 accessibility features content on this page and in the downloads is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license and is brought to you by AccessFirefox.org and the Mozilla Foundation, created by Frank Hecker and Marco Zehe. PDF created by Frank Hecker reformatted to ODT by Ken Saunders.