Making A Strong Case For Accessibility

Accessibility is often overlooked or bolted on to the end of a project from the experiences in my career in web development and design. The case for accessibility is something we as people who create and build things for the web should be implementing and advocating for from the inception of a project to the release or handoff and beyond.

The Four Principles of the A"POUR"calpyse

The web is accessible by default, and in this talk, I cover the four principles of accessibility. We'll start with a little history lesson on how POUR began and then we will take a walk through the four principles of accessibility, or "POUR". Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.

These four principles in WCAG 2.1 will be covered and explained to users of all levels. All recommendations that are made for accessibility best practices are based on the four principles of accessibility.

We will also cover some common areas where failures of accessibility lie and how decisions affect accessibility with some real-world examples of how the four principles of accessibility weren't achieved and examples of how they can be achieved.

Making A Strong Case For Accessibility

Accessibility is often overlooked or bolted on to the end of a project from the experiences in my career in web development and design. The case for accessibility is something we as people who create and build things for the web should be implementing and advocating for from the inception of a project to the release or handoff and beyond.

Accessibility Auditing: Getting Started with Accessibility

This workshop is for people that are just starting or want to get started learning accessibility and how to audit. Or for the people that are in Accessibility that want a refresher or are looking to change their workflows.

The overall points an attendee should take away and learn from this workshop are:

Differences between auditing websites and mobile apps;
What to look for when auditing;
The WCAG guidelines and best practices;
Tools to use and how to use them;
Differences between automated and manual testing;
Documentation of audits and scoring them for clients;
Using the data to make sites more accessible;
Workflows and toolkits that make for efficient auditing.

By the time the workshop has ended, the attendee should be able to go out and audit websites for accessibility.

Deceptive Patterns & FAST

Deceptive patterns (also known as "dark patterns") are all over the Web. I'll speak to the accessibility impact deceptive patterns have, how they create barriers for people with disabilities, neurodiverse folks, and everyone in some manner, and why we need to put "dark" patterns to rest as a monolithic term that has racial connotations, and my work in the W3C to have these published in WCAG3 to try and reduce harm on the Web. I will talk about Deceptive patterns (those UX patterns that are released with intent) and anti-patterns (those UX patterns released without intent) and what we can do about them. Due to the term being written in legal circles and widely accepted, I try and explain why I think those people behind the work need to change the language toward a more inclusive and applicable term.

I'll introduce people to the Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies (FAST) which advises creators of technical specifications on ensuring their technology meets the needs of users with disabilities. It primarily addresses web content technologies but also relates to any technology that affects web content sent to users, including client-side APIs, transmission protocols, and interchange formats. Specifications that implement these guidelines make it possible for content authors and user agents to render the content in an accessible manner to people with a wide range of abilities. Work is being done in the W3C to introduce these to FAST. I'll talk about FAST, what it means to accessibility, and to users, developers, designers, and everyone in-between in the organization.

I'll introduce people to the Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies (FAST) which advises creators of technical specifications on ensuring their technology meets the needs of users with disabilities.