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Web Accessibility

Projected Time

About 80 minutes

  • 20 minutes for Lesson
  • 40 minutes for Independent Practice
  • 15 minutes for Check for Understanding

Motivation

Taken from a Medium article by Oyetoke Tobi Emmanuel:

The Web and Internet in whole is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of our life which includes: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation, and more. It is important that the Web be accessible to everyone in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. An accessible Web can help people with disabilities participate more actively in society.

Also, an accessible website is often one of the easiest ways to do business with many people with disabilities, for instance, people who cannot read print material, people who have difficulty going to a physical store or mall, and others. Furthermore, what you do for accessibility overlaps with other best practices such as mobile Web design, usability, and search engine optimization (SEO)

An accessible website gives access to information and interaction for many people with disabilities. That is, the accessibility barriers to print, audio, and visual media can be much more easily overcome through Web technologies.

I suggest reading “Social Factors in Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization” which shows how the Web impacts the lives of people with disabilities and Web accessibility as an aspect of corporate social responsibility.

Another important consideration for organizations is that Web accessibility is required by laws and policies in some cases. WAI Web Accessibility Policy Resources links to resources for addressing legal and policy factors within organizations, including a list of relevant laws and policies around the world.

Objectives

Participants will be able to:

  • Evaluate whether their website, app, or product is accessible with respect to visual, audio, motor, or cognitive impairments.
  • Determine changes that can make websites more accessible.
  • Implement those changes.

Topics to cover

  • What is accessibility?
  • Why is it important?
  • How do we design and build for accessibility?

Lesson

  1. Read through the a11y slideshow.

  2. Try navigating a website with your keyboard only. Start with www.trello.com.

Things to pay attention to:

  • How does it feel to navigate like this?
  • Is it easy to accomplish your goals?

Next, navigate a website you use often (e.g. GitHub, Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn).

  • Talk to a partner about what was easy, hard, or surprising.
  • How would you make it better?
  • What did they do that worked well?

Common Mistakes / Misconceptions

Myth: Accessibility is just for people with disabilities Fact: Accessibility benefits everyone using the web

Myth: We only need to consider color contrast when designing for vision impairments Fact: We also need to consider text size, line height, font,

Independent Practice

  1. Read about the Lighthouse extension - Lighthouse is an open-source tool by Google that gives you a way to analyzes web apps and web pages performance. It is integrated directly into the Chrome Developer Tools, under the "Audits" panel.
  2. Read the Accessibility section on the Google Developers Site through the "Accessible Styles" chapter.
  3. Download the aXe Chrome Extension.
  4. Follow the guide on How to Do an Accessibility Review

Supplemental Resources

Check for Understanding

  • Why is accessibility important?
  • What are some actions that make it difficult for a site to be accessible?
  • What are the main user goals/paths in your Portfolio Page?
  • Are they accessible?
  • Write down three specific things you can do to make your Portfolio Page more accessible.