Yesterday kicked off day 1 of Accessibility Summit 2015, the annual online virtual conference organized by Environments for Humans.
For the sixth year, I co-hosted a meeting room at the University of Michigan, for web professionals in southeast Michigan.
Here are my takeaways from the sessions.
Accessibility Professional Certification
To kick off the first session of the day, Glenda Sims, Senior Accessibility Consultant at Deque Systems, shared her insights and thoughts about a digital accessibility professional certificate. She discussed requirements, potential barriers, and education.
The International Association of Accessibility Professionas (IAAP) has developed a roadmap for accessibility certification, with three levels of certification:
- Associate
- Professional
- Expert
Plans are for the Associate certificate to be launched sometime in first quarter of 2016.
Some of the concerns raised by Sims and attendees included:
- Cost, and potential to be exclusionary
- How certifications will be updated to reflect changing accessibility practices
- Validity of certification
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/641261295883427840
Future Bliss: Make a Circuit with Me!
Unfortunately, our technology failed us during Elle Waters, director of strategy at Simply Accessible, presentation.
From tweets posted during her talk, I learned about this video of Nicolas Steenhout’s wheelchair experiences in Portland, Oregon.
as well as the background behind the electric car that extends the range of a wheelchair user.
Web Accessibility WAI
Whatever your role on the web, designer, developer, content strategist, project manager, accessibility professional, there are Web Accessiblity Initiative (WAI) resources available to you, said Sharron Rush, executive director of Knowbility.
Launched in 1997, WAI is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Rush pointed out several helpful WAI resources, including:
- Easy Checks–A First Review of Web Accessibility
- Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) Report Tool–Website Accessibility Evaluation Report Generator
- Web Accessibility Tutorials, Guidance on how to create websites that meet WCAG: tutorials for designers, developers, trainers, content authors, and project managers
and encouraged attendees to get involved with the WAI by participating in groups, participating in and reviewing guidelines, sponsoring WAI, and more.
The Heart and Mind of Accessibility
When you evangelize about accessiblity, think about what it is that drives you to pursue accessibility, says Matt May, accessibility evangelist at Adobe.
Why do you care about accessibility? We need to express to people why it’s important.
How do you describe the need for accessibility? It depends on context, person, place, and goals.
Accessibility is hard work, and often leads to burnout. Find ways to overcome your frustrations, focus on successes.
Accessibility in an Agile World
Jesse Hausler, accessibility specialist at Salesforce discussed how Agile methodology challenges our ability to create accessible products.
Agile fails accessibility due to:
- Decentralized product ownership
- Teams control their own backlog
- Teams throw their accessibility debt into one big “accessibility” story
Without a good system, accessibility will always take a backseat to new features.
The executive mandate is not the solution, though they can remove blockers. You need to build an environment, create a culture to gain allies and raise awareness.
Tips to gain allies and raise awareness:
- Build a base of support from different roles in the organization
- Talk about it all that time. get other people talking about it
- Embed with one scrum team. Teach one scrum team how to ship accessible features. You’ve got to make it work at the micro level within the company.
Come up with a release plan that incorporates accessibility
Accessibility and the Language of Love
What if we changed the tone of how we speak about accessibility? asked Dale Cruse, Deque accessibility evangelist, in the last session for Accessibility Summit Day One.
Rather than speaking of accessibility in a negative way, using words like disabilities or handicapped, what if we chose to use positive words like abilities and capabilities?
Wouldn’t that change the entire accessibility conversation?
How do you want accessibility to make you feel?
How do you want it to make other people feel?
https://twitter.com/jr_roman/status/641346311241908224
If you want to learn more about accessibility, follow the #a11ysummit hashtag on Twitter today. Or consider purchasing a ticket and attend the online conference.
