A presentation at Web Directions: Summit by Julie Grundy
Making Content Creation Tools Accessible Julie Grundy Senior Digital Accessibility Consultant at Intopia Summit 2022
An inclusive web needs to be built with inclusive tools
ATAG can help diversify your userbase With guidelines and feature suggestions
What’s ATAG?
ATAG is… the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines (https://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/)
So what’s an authoring tool? • Any website, app or other software • Which is used to make content for the web
So what’s an authoring tool? • Any website, app or other software • Which is used to make content for the web Julie’s opinion: ATAG should also apply to any digital product with more UI than content
ATAG is similar to WCAG… • Helps people with digital accessibility • Has principles, guidelines, success criteria • Hard to read
…but also different • It’s not required by law • It doesn’t apply to all digital products
ATAG has two parts To make authoring tools: 1. easier to use by people with disabilities 2. more likely to create accessible content
WCAG handles access to content ATAG handles access to creation
Introduction to ATAG Me on Intopia’s YouTube channel https://youtu.be/I1T849ZFJ5g
Plain-language ATAG guide ATAG: the standard for accessibility of content creation by Hidde de Vries (https://hidde.blog/content-creation-accessibility/)
What can we learn from ATAG?
Feature-level advice Contributed by people with disabilities
User research is gold but meanwhile, ATAG can fill in some gaps
Useful accessibility features • Extended keyboard controls • Error prevention and recovery • Documentation
Extended keyboard control
Toolbar pattern ARIA Authoring Practices Guide: Patterns https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/ example-index/toolbar/toolbar.html
Action Menu pattern ARIA Authoring Practices Guide: Patterns https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/ example-index/menu-button/menubutton-actions.html
Extended keyboard support Helps screen reader users and people with impaired dexterity navigate large amounts of UI efficiently
Error prevention and recovery
Hands-free coding Josh Comeau describes how he uses speech recognition and an eye-tracker https://www.joshwcomeau.com/blog /hands-free-coding/
Error prevention and recovery Helps people with impaired dexterity and with attention or memory deficits
Documentation
Documentation Two types: 1. How to find and use accessibility features 2. How to create accessible content
Documentation Helps people with disability find and use your accessibility features, and helps all of us make more accessible online content
Making accessible content We need accessible tools if we want people to make accessible content. ATAG can help you make your products accessible to everyone.
Making Content Creation Tools Accessible Julie Grundy • @stringy • @Intopia Let’s talk!
Did you know that an Undo button can be an accessibility feature? It is if your product is a content creation tool. Accessibility is as important for your admin and content creation tools as it is for front facing products.
If you’ve ever wondered what content creation features are useful to people with disabilities, or how you can help your creators to easily make more accessible content, then the ATAG (Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines) standard is what you need. It’s a bit different than WCAG in ways that are useful for web apps and software.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
A blog post by Hidde de Vries which gives his plain language interpretation of the ATAG standard. Start here!
Josh Comeau describes how he uses speech recognition and an eye-tracker to do programming work
The standard for making content creation tools accessible
for free. You
can too.