Things I Wish I Knew When I Started in Digital Accessibility
With Billy Gregory,
@TheBillyGregory
This presentation uses an out-of-the box HTML slideshow script which by itself is unaccessible. Keybindings exist to traverse forward and backward with arrow keys, but focus never shifts as the slides advance. The slides themselves are well structured, so you can use a read all command to listen to everything linearly. My good buddy Karl Groves also added a live region which should work well for screen readers that support live regions. As you traverse through the slides using arrow keys, the slide's content will be added to the live region. If all else fails, you can also access the slideshow content by turning off CSS and JavaScript.
With Billy Gregory, @TheBillyGregory
With Billy Gregory,
@TheBillyGregory
this series of photos shows my progression through my 2013 CSUN talk
I knew early on that this was going to be an uphill battle, but those are the types of battles I relish taking on.
The problem isn't selling accessibility to a designer or developer, the issue is selling the value of accessibility to the client who is paying the bill and who ultimately needs to make accessibility a stated requirement.
The biggest lesson I've learned is that I should never treat one enterprise like another. Even though there may be some similarities, each organization stands on its own because of people and culture. While applying lesson from working with one helps, it's never enough. Each stands on its own.
One thing I learned after working in the field that I wish I knew from day one: How to understand different Project Managers.
Accessibility is a continuum. It is based on the user experience. It cannot simply be defined as pass/fail or accessible/inaccessible.
The direct link between Usability/User Experience and Accessibility. When I transitioned to usability, a light bulb came on and helped me see the direct connection to understanding how users interact with high tech interfaces BEFORE creating solutions. A second light bulb came on about 6 years ago: Creating User Stories and Personas as a means for better communicating user needs to software developers.
The images on this slide are from A Web For Everyone, by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery used with permission.
Always look for the source of the issue instead of spending a lot of time trying to fix stuff downstream.
Often times, there is no perfect development solution for accessibility; requires balancing options and compromising.
Looking back on what I know now, it took too long to be aware of interaction flow and focus management.
There's a load of focus on the big 3 things: alt attributes, tables, and form fields, but bad interaction flow & focus management is a usability problem for a much greater number of people overall.
I wish I knew that the HTML5 validator can check your WAI-ARIA code for incorrect attributes & structure.
Browser accessibility implementation support for HTML features is as important as assistive tech implementation support.
If there was one thing I wish I’d known about accessibility from the outset… It would be that there is a symbiosis between browsers and ATs.
Understanding the relationship between the DOM, the browser accessibility API and the AT is critical to understanding the UX for AT users. It’s a complex relationship, but it’s at the heart of so much of what goes wrong on the interwebs for people with disabilities.
Get into using screen readers today. Seriously. I know it looks daunting, but it’s really not as bad as it seems. Experiencing first hand how screen readers behave will expand your skills and understand of accessibility exponentially. But don’t limit yourself to screen readers. Try other tools too.
I wish I had taken time to learn and use assistive technology. There are great tools available that make interaction easier for everyone. When I see people using Siri for dictation and I'm still pecking away at the keyboard with one finger. Or when I had shoulder surgery and instead of using dictation I tried typing everything with one hand—and all my correspondence was in lowercase. AT should be integrated and mainstream, so everyone uses it.
Twitter.
The accessibility community is by design an inclusive group & receptive to all questions/inquiries. Its intention is to level the playing field ensuring that everyone has equal access to the same information.
It's the best resource you didn't know you already had.
How many people were already involved who I could learn from.
It probably sounds a bit silly now, but we didn’t have Facebook or Twitter when I first got involved. Back in the old days (heh, heh), we relied on email lists and conferences…and no one from accessibility was going to the conferences that I was attending.
That starting a monthly accessibility meet-up (Accessibility DC) and a yearly event (Accessibility Camp DC) was the easy part, while the hard part is keeping it going after five years.
I'd love to participate, however I can't think of any one thing to contribute. I mean, I already knew everything when I got into a11y.
