Featured Post
04.02.2020
Accessibility is a complex topic and can feel overwhelming when you’re getting started. Our goal with this series is to help you take those first few steps, and share some of the things we’ve learned about bringing accessibility into our processes across teams and departments.
Start by making your focus progress, not perfection. You don’t have to be an expert to start making your site more accessible. If you fix one button, that’s progress. This is a journey and change takes time, and hopefully some of the things we’ve learned can help you along the way.
Left, right handed can opener, Right: Left handed can opener
Before we talk about what accessibility is, let’s take a look at what accessibility is not. Accessibility is not nice. To demonstrate what this Kat Holmes quote means, here are two images of can openers. One was designed for right and left-handed people. One was designed for people who are right-handed. The person who designed the one that works for more people didn’t do it as a feel good activity or out of the goodness of their heart. They recognized a product was excluding people and created a product that’s usable by more people.
“Accessibility is not nice.” -- Mismatch, Kat Holmes
Similarly, accessibility isn’t a feel-good activity. It’s taking the time to identify and confront the exclusion you’ve unintentionally built into your site. No one builds an inaccessible site on purpose in the same way that the person who designed the right-handed can opener probably doesn’t have a grudge against left-handed people. We’re human and we build things for people assuming others are exactly like ourselves. A great thing about Accessibility is that it forces us to learn about how other people use the things we make. And that in turn makes us better at making things.
Understanding accessibility on the web starts with understanding disability. A common misconception is that accessibility is just for folks who are blind.
When we talk about an accessible website, we’re talking about one that works for people who:
25% of people have a permanent or temporary disability, so accessibility is not charity for a small group of users. It’s good design, content and coding practices to better serve your entire audience.
The internationally used standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defined by the W3C (world wide web consortium). These are referred to as the W.C.A.G. or Wuh-kaag.
These standards have three levels: A, AA, AAA. AAA can have a bigger impact on design and be more challenging to implement. That’s why the AA standard is widely accepted as the standard level of conformance.
In the United States the federal government doesn’t require websites to meet a certain conformance level unless they’re receiving federal funds. Section 508 now points to WCAG. If you’re receiving federal funds, you must meet WCAG 2.0 AA.
For organizations that are not government funded, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that “places of public accommodation” be accessible. Federal judges have overwhelmingly ruled that the internet is now a place of public accommodation and businesses as well as nonprofits can’t discriminate based on disability.
2018 and 2019 have been record breaking years for web accessibility lawsuits, with filings happening every hour, so it’s important to prioritize accessibility on your site and to build it into your processes because the modern web is becoming increasingly accessible.
Regardless of the tools you use you need to include both manual and automated testing. Manual and automated tests are like reading a menu vs enjoying a meal. For examples of tools, check out the resources listed at the end of this post.
Manual tests determine whether the site does what it’s supposed to do and what the experience is like.
Once you’ve picked your testing tools, decide who’s responsible for using them and when. Here’s an example workflow for a simple button.
That might seem like a lot of testing, but we’ve discovered broken forms, donate buttons that didn’t work on mobile and all kinds of bugs by doing accessibility testing.
What’s next? Check out our post on Color Contrast >
Accessibility Impacts all of Us
Infographic and statistics from the CDC
The business case for Accessibility
Case studies with great stats for convincing stakeholders why accessibility has to be a priority.
Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design
A great book and blog about accessibility, inclusion and design
Questions? Comments? We want to know! Drop us a line and let’s start talking.
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