Tactile Times Advent Calendar

The Tactile Times Accessible Advent Calendar is back!!

For those of you who are already fans of the Tactile Times Accessible Advent Calendar, and anyone who might be looking for an accessible Advent Calendar that works with screenreader, it is back again, full of jokes and surprises for 2025, through the link below:

https://games.tactiletimes.org/advent

The calendar is aimed at young people and is fully-accessible with all major screen readers using a computer or a phone and you can also access it with a BrailleNote Touch. (I have included some shortcuts and navigation ideas that work with the calendar below). This Calendar and the content have been developed by young people who are blind and VI themselves and contributions are always welcomed from any young person who would like to hear themselves behind a door. To submit a joke, piece of Christmas music or poem performed by the young person just send a recording (voice memos etc) to [email protected] and then keep checking the calendar!

I am also sharing a lesson plan that Perkins School for the blind put together to practice screenreader navigation using this Advent Calendar

https://www.perkins.org/resource/accessible-digital-advent-calendar
  1. In JAWS, you can use Insert+F5 to get a list of all 24 doors on the page, press enter to select one, and then simply press the number 4 to jump straight to the door’s contents.
  2. Alternatively, you could use this is an opportunity to practice navigating tables. In any browser supporting quick navigation keys, just press the letter t to jump to the advent calendar (which behind the scenes is actually a table). After that, you can navigate around it either using JAWS table layer mode (Insert+Space followed by the letter T) or the AltControl Key to the right of your space bar in conjunction with the arrow keys.
  3. If you’re on a phone you can still practice rotor skills by setting the VoiceOver rotor to “headings” to find the table, “Form controls” to find the doors and more.
  4. You can also practice more general keyboard shortcuts in conjunction with the calendar. In Chrome for Windows Control+D will bookmark the page so you can come back later, and Control+M will play the audio file in doors that contain one.

Happy December all!