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Takeaways from Accessibility Summit 2015 Day 2

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Attendees seated in Gallery at University of Michigan Grad Library

The second day of Accessibility Summit 2015, the annual online virtual conference organized by Environments for Humans, was a day of practical tips, resources, and information for web designers, developers, UX practitioners, accessibility specialists, content strategists, and project managers.

Accessibility Summit

For the sixth year, I co-hosted an Accessibility Summit meeting room this week at the University of Michigan for web professionals in southeast Michigan. Here are my takeaways from the Day 2 sessions.

Whitney Quesenbery on Usability Testing for Accessible UX

User research expert Whitney Quesenbery highlighted the importance of listening and learning from your usability testing participants. The best way to understand a problem is to see it firsthand.

When you recruit for your usability testing, recruit people, not disabilities. Look for aptitude, attitude, and ability.

Prioritize issues by their impact on people: those that stop users from using an app or feature, to those that are annoying, or minor.

A few tips for successful sessions:

  • Talk with participants about how they currently work, the products they use, and the features they like/dislike
  • Don’t distract participants during testing.
  • If participants are traveling to research location, ensure there is public transportation, parking, and space in room for wheelchairs or dogs
  • Whatever location you use, ensure there is a reliable Internet connection

Helpful resources shared during Quesenbery’s talk:

The Future of Web Accessibility

Having heard Jared Smith from WebAIM speak at past Accessibility Summit events, I was intrigued by the title of his presentation. And he didn’t disappoint.

His talk was a natural fit after Quesenbery’s talk, with comments about empathy, interacting with people with disabilities, and discussion of the recently released results of the 2015 WebAIM screen reader survey.

The future of web accessibility depends on our understanding of individuals with disabilities

Smith pointed out that accessibility without empathy will result in failure. You may have short term gains, but best efforts are gained by interacting with people with disabilities.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) levels don’t indicate user impact. If it’s a serious issue, it shouldn’t have to fit into WCAG criteria to be a valid issue.

More and better data on web accessibility is needed (usability testing, not just surveys). Did you know WCAG 2.0 contrast formula and requirements are based on 1988 and 1992 data/reports?

What Jared sees in the future:

  • Browsers support basic keyboard accessibility out of the box
  • Web developers learn basic accessibility through education and training (YES!)
  • Web accessibility is a feature in beta products, not added in the 4.x.x.x version

One other key takeaway from Smith: if you’re a designer or developer creating accessible solutions, share what’s working so others can learn.

Apple Watch Accessibility

Many attendees (me included) moved up to the front of the room for Paul Adam’s talk and demo on Apple Watch accessibility.

Adam walked through the setup of the Apple Watch for accessibility (no sighted person or plug in to computer required to enable VoiceOver or Zoom) and demoed many of the features on the watch.

Helpful features: VoiceOver supports 14 languages, you can get vibration alert notifications, and there’s an option to ping your iPhone (useful for when you can’t locate your phone).

For me, the highlight of his talk was when Paul showed how the watch worked with apps. The results indicate there’s more work to be done:

  • The Weather Channel app wouldn’t load at all
  • Yelp’s app displays the number of ratings, but skips over reviews
  • A missing label on the Amazon app results in the Apple Watch announcing “button”

Creating Accessible and Usable PDF Forms

If you’re responsible for creating public facing PDF forms, Joseph Krack, digital accessibility consultant at the California Department of Rehabilitation, has the tips and resources you need to know.

Be sure to have a screen reader available. Since screen readers users often stay in forms mode, you’ll need to create both a visual and auditory form.

When you write your tooltips, be aware there are no hard returns, and you can’t apply headings or lists.

Additionally, check your tabbing order to ensure it’s logical. And don’t rely on automated testing, include testing with people.

Want more information about creating accessible documents? Check out Joe’s How do I construct accessible documents? resource page.

Accessibility Testing Tools

Given so many different accessibility testing tool options, how do you choose? Based on his daily use of accessibility testing tools, Luis Garcia analyzed the tools and narrowed the choices by looking at tools that were:

  • Free
  • East to use
  • Robust

which resulted in a review of the following tools:

  1. HTML CodeSniffer
  2. Chrome Accessibility Developer Tools
  3. aXe, also aXe Chrome and aXe Firefox
  4. WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (online), also WAVE for Chrome and WAVE for Firefox
  5. Tenon, also Tenon for Chrome

Garcia explained and demoed the features each tool offered in terms of the number of accessibility checks, whether it was open source, if it explained the issue, offered suggestions for fixes, as well as whether the report could be shared (something I find useful for clients).

David MacDonald on Demystifying WCAG 2.0

For the last session of Accessibility Summit 2015, David MacDonald (WCAG team member and president of CanAdapt) had a short presentation about WCAG 2.0, history and future work and then opened up the session to Q&A. Great way to end the online conference.

He commented:

There’s been quite a bit of criticism of WCAG. We’ve been a victim of our own success.

I was impressed to learn that when WCAG was a work in progress, 1,200 comments were made on the 2006 WCAG draft. Every single comment was replied to.

MacDonald highlighted how the supporting documents fit together, and gave us preview of the rough mockup of the WCAG Quick Reference Guide.

Personally, I liked the layout of the new guide, with linked techniques, an ability to customize the layout.

Can’t Get Enough Accessibility?

Has the Accessibility Summit inspired you to learn more about web accessibility?

Here’s a few of my favorite places to learn more:

Photo credit: Michael Stork, University of Michigan

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