Day 30: Reminders of the Who, Why, and How of A11y

Published on 30 Dec 2018

• journal
• was
• people

After learning a bit this past week about principles and concepts to create JavaScript that is accessible, I used today as a chance to remind myself of who we are doing this for, why it's helpful to them, and how we can strive to meet them where they are.

Spending an hour of my time today, I used IAAP's Prepare for WAS online resources list to get me started.

• Read Introduction to Web Accessibility (W3C).
• Read Essential Components for Web Accessibility (W3C).
• Read How People with Disabilities Use the Web (W3C) with subsequent pages.

• Access to information and communications technologies, including the Web, is defined as a basic human right in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).
• Accessibility really involves the cooperative of several moving parts for it to work:
  • content
  • user agents (browsers, media players, etc)
  • assistive technology
  • user knowledge and experience
  • developers, designers, content creators
  • authoring tools, and
  • evaluation tools.
• I'm very familiar with assistive technologies when it comes to users being able to access websites. However, learning about adaptive strategies was new to me, though it rang true. Adaptive strategies include increasing mouse size, turning on captions, and reducing mouse speed. These techniques are usually how a user adapt with more mainstream technology.