The following was developed as a resource bank used in my, Rebecca Parker, lesson on Digital Accessibility Testing delivered on March 13th, 2019 at Loyola University Chicago for Margaret Heller's Digital Humanities HCI course. In this lesson, we look at the laws surrounding digital acessibility, the implementation of digital accessibility testing, and the importance as well as recommended structuring of digital accessibilty statements. Please note the resources presented here are not exhaustive nor would I ever claim to be an accessibility expert. I am however a user of digital interfaces, a developer of digital environments, and an advocate for universal access to digital knowledge. I present the following information as a gathering of my personally-consumed knowledge of digital a11y from others (side note: a11y stands for accessibility because from the a-y there are 11 characters). My experience with Digital A11y comes from attending a week-long class at the 2017 DHSI in Accessibility and Digital Environments, co-chairing a Digital Accessiblity Conference at LUC, and from my personal efforts to develop digital a11y compliant content. As an advocate of accessibility, I have adopted the following habits:
- Take the opportunity to ask questions! -- Whether developing something that will be served publically online or simply researching my curiosities related to digital content I have found a question left unasked is the shortest route to failure. This means when I wonder how to make something more accessible because I am with someone differently abled than me then I ask them how they do it or how it could be better. Or let's say I find a feature on a website that makes it easier for me to interact with that digital content then I hunt down the code or the developer (on GitHub or wherever) and ask how and determine the considerations made.
- Consume A11y content! -- I follow on all forms of social media hashtags and profiles that output information regarding #digitalA11y, #a11y, and #universalaccess. The list of people and threads are endless on this topic because it affects so many people and by allowing it into my newsfeeds and dashboards little bits of accessibility information leak into my daily digital interactions.
- Advocate! -- For every digital a11y compliant website I visit or bit of accessibility information I consume I try to find a new avenue or new approach to spreading the word. Just as it takes one person to implement a11y in their digital content development, it also only takes one person (user or developer) to start the conversation around the considerations that need to be made promoting universal access to knowledge.
For those new to digital accessibility, my go-to place for definitions is the usability.gov Accessibility Glossary Terms webpage.
section508.gov IT Accessibility Laws and Policies webpage
NDPTC Section 508 Just-In-Time Training YouTube Video
section508.gov blog-post titled "Do Section 508 Accessibility Standards Apply to My Website?"
W3C Accessibility Standards Overview
How to Meet WCAG 2 (Quick Reference)
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) section 508 Standards and Guidelines
The two go hand-in-hand; we test our developments and then continue development based on our tests. Majority of my knowledge for doing this work comes from the The A11y Project Resources webpage, the WebAIM website, the Mozilla Developer Accessibility Webdocs, and from following @A11YChi on Twitter and the social media buzz around the annual blog-posts for 100 Days of A11y.
gov.uk blog-post titled "Dos and don'ts on designing for accessibility"
Minnesota IT Services Office of Accessibility - Accessibility Quick Cards
WebAIM Considering the User Perspective: A Summary of Design Issues
Deque Accessibility Heuristics, v1.0
A11y Style Guide
Periodic Table of ARIA 1.0 Roles built from W3C Accessible Rich Internet Applications github.io website
Google Chrome Developer's YouTube video titled "How I do an accessibility check -- A11ycasts #11"
WeCo Technical Guidance for Web Accessibility -- list of checklists
W3C Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List
Accessible-email.org -- email accessibility and usability checker
WAVE Chrome Plugin
HTML_CodeSniffer bookmarklet
Accessibility Developer Tools Chrome Plugin
Color Contrast Analyzer Chrome Plugin
Axe Accessibility Chrome Plugin
Essential Accessibility post titled "The Importance of an Accessibility Statement"
Informative article on the legality surrounding Accessibility Statements w/ links to examples of statements
W3C WAI Developing an Accessibility Statement
NDA Accessibility Statement Template
Nomensa Accessibility Statement Generator
T4 Accessibility Overview PDF
GitHub's front-end framework, Primer, Accessibility Principles
Omeka S Accessibility Statement
WordPress Accessibility Statement
Drupal Accessibility Features
#LUCDigiA11y2018 Conference Accessibility Statement