A presentation at Connect.tech 2021 in in Atlanta, GA, USA by Todd Libby
Making A Strong Case For Accessibility Todd Libby Slides: https://noti.st/colabottles/y0skmR/making-a-strong-case-for-accessibility @toddlibby
Thank You! #ConnectTech
Thank you, sponsors!
Who Are You?
Accessibility Engineer @ WebstaurantStore Front End/Backend Developer, Accessibility Advocate, W3C Member
https://webaim.org/projects/million/
“The design of mainstream products and/or services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible… without the need for special adaptation or specialized design.” — The British Standards Institution (2005) https://shop.bsigroup.com/upload/Download/30317424.pdf
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/#contrast-minimum
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/contrastminimum.html
Other Examples Other examples of practical di ital accessibility Scrollable interactive content Alternative text on images where necessary (infographics, charts, graphs) Sunlight when viewing mobile phone screen Other situational disabilities Broken arm g Child on lap
“The client doesn’t have the budget for it.” “We’ll get to it after launch.”
“The client doesn’t have the budget for it.” “We’ll get to it after launch.” “The people that use our product aren’t disabled.”
“The client doesn’t have the budget for it.” “We’ll get to it after launch.” “The people that use our product aren’t disabled.” “We don’t have disabled users.”
“You’ll be saving the company a lot of money when you do this from the start.” “When maintenance is needed, it won’t take the team as long to maintain the code because of accessibility and clean, semantic code.” “Your developers will feel less stress, less pressure, less headaches, less time spent reworking things.” “You’re less likely to be sued by an individual or individuals when they come across your product and they cannot access it.”
Buy-in How do I et buy-in from stakeholders, clients, collea ues? • Once you have stakeholder support, then you may see support trickle down to managers, then teams, and then individuals. • “You’ll be saving the company a lot of money when you do this from the start. When maintenance is needed, it won’t take the team as long to maintain the code because of accessibility and clean code.” • Cite instances from the lawsuits that have been won against Target, Bank of America, Domino’s Pizza, and others. • Live testing with disabled users are also another way to get buy-in across g g the board.
Organization Advocates Teams or individuals that advocate in your or anization • Having a person throughout each department or a team focused on accessibility. • Have an individual who is the liaison regarding accessibility. • Someone that can answer questions and work with others to practice the guidelines and work with others to make accessible products. • Help set up documentation and tooling, serve as an intermediary between g departments.
Assessment Assess the product and the proficiency within the or anization • Gauging the point where the product(s) are as far as how inclusive and accessible they are is a key priority. • What is the current state of the product? • What is the current state of the website or mobile application? • Getting the general idea of the level of knowledge that teams and people in the company currently have. 1. How versed are they in accessibility guidelines and practices? 2. Do they know anything about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? g 3. How much training do you have and will you need?
Training Maintainin A Written Record g • Of all accessibility training done • To meet requirements that apply to the organization • Great way to keep data on all training done in organization • Record the training and who trained and when it was completed • If there is no inter-organizational training use orgs that do training such as: • WebAIM • Deque • TPGi
Guidelines Consistent implementation • Reduces the amount of work • Reduces the amount of stress teams are under • Design systems ensure accessibility and inclusivity and the understanding of code better ffi • Accessible components reduce time to implement • Testing procedures implemented so people can do jobs well and e • Document guidelines in a collaborative manner using tools ciently
Standards Guidelines from different countries • American Disabilities Act (ADA) - United States • Section 508 (U.S. Government) • Accessible Canada Act (ACA) - Canada • EN 301 549 - European Union • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - Internationally • Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CPRD) • Article 9 • Article 21
Use Cases/Testing Hirin disabled people g • Test & record cases where disabled users are using the product • Present to colleagues/stakeholders • Outsource testing with companies: • Applause • Fable • Hire disabled people! • Teaching and advocating
Maintenance Accessibility is never done • Automated testing wherever possible with new releases or changes • Screen reader analysis before every release • Annual audits • User testing • Accessibility is never done! • Like the ever-evolving web, accessibility is always evolving
Now What?
Do The Work
“…our industry as a whole thinks less and less about accessibility (not that we ever had an A game on the subject), and talks less and less about progressive enhancement, preferring to chase the ephemeral goal posts of over-engineered solutions to nonproblems.” Jeffrey Zeldman - https://www.zeldman.com/2019/12/01/bluebeanieday2019/
A11y is a right. NOT a privilege. https://cottonbureau.com/products/a11y-is-a-right#/5254640/
Thank you! @toddlibby https://toddl.dev https://noti.st/colabottles/y0skmR/making-a-strong-case-for-accessibility
Accessibility is often overlooked or bolted on to the end of a project from the experiences in my career in web development and design. The case for accessibility is something we as people who create and build things for the web should be implementing and advocating for from the inception of a project to the release or handoff and beyond.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
The WebAIM Million Report. A report on the top one million home pages and the issues with accessibility with them.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Services offered by WebAIM for training.
Deque Systems, turn your staff into a team of web accessibility experts, either through instructor-led training or online courses.
Educate your staff on accessibility so they can integrate it into their workflows, leading to fewer problems down the line.
The beta site (a much better version) of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The United States Government website provides guidance to Federal agency staff who play a role in IT accessibility.
The official website for Canada as an act to ensure a barrier-free Canada.
The site for the European Standards Act.
The United Nations web page on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
Applause started by providing functional testing for Web applications and now provides a holistic approach to delivering digital quality and ensuring product excellence for the enterprise.
Fable connects people with disabilities for user research and accessibility testing.
for free. You
can too.