100 Days of A11y
Day 85: The point - it's for people with disabilities, Part 1
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...if you don’t understand the challenges that people with disabilities face when using ICT products and services, you don’t _really_ know accessibility. Knowing what challenges people face is central to knowing how to reduce or eliminate challenges.
— Karl Groves, What does it take to call yourself an accessibility expert?
That about sums it up for me after working through the WAS Body of Knowledge. The only way one can evaluate websites well is to remember who could be using our sites and how their engagement and experience may differ from our own. That's basic UX (user experience) design, but with a focus on users with disabilities, which still encompasses a wide range of people and engagement strategies.
Things I accomplished
Permalink for "Things I accomplished"- Started over from the beginning of Deque's Accessibility Fundamentals: Disabilities, Guidelines, and Laws so I could go slower to take better learning notes.
- Updated my disabilities, strategies, and WCAG cheatsheet.
What I reviewed today
Permalink for "What I reviewed today"I'm trying to bring my focus back to the "who" part of my training. Without keeping them in the front of my mind, I will not be able to properly advocate for accessibility. Deque's course highlights the following disabilities:
- blind
- low vision
- color-blind
- deaf
- deafblind
- motor disabilities
- speech disabilities
- cognitive disabilities
- reading disabilities
- seizures
- multiple disabilities
Today I read through their explanations about various visual impairments. I found it helpful to revisit things I learned about in the past about users with low vision and identifying issues for keyboard users.
Blind
Permalink for "Blind"How they may interact:
- may navigate by headings, landmarks, links via screen reader software;
- listen for title and structure details of page via screen reader software;
- use screen reader software, keyboard, refreshable braille display, touchscreen, or voice commands for input or output
Developer considerations:
- content needs to be text or coupled with text equivalents (WCAG 1.1)
- site functionality must work with a keyboard (WCAG 2.1)
- markup must be structured well, using appropriate semantics (WCAG 1.3, 2.4, & 4.1.1)
- custom elements must express themselves with a name, role, and value (WCAG 4.1.2)
- dynamic changes in content comes with an alert for screen readers (WCAG 4.1.3)
- videos need audio description if the audio is confusing by itself (WCAG 1.2)
- active controls need to be clickable (WCAG 2.5)
Low Vision
Permalink for "Low Vision"Low vision is a spectrum. It varies in degrees and characteristics.
How they may interact:
- magnify the entire screen (with magnification software), zoom into web pages, or increase text size
- increase contrast or invert colors with High Contrast Mode or other software
- use screen reader to hear text
- navigate by keyboard or mouse
Developer considerations:
- popups, alerts, and errors should be close to the visual focus
- color should not be the only way to relay important information (WCAG 1.4.1)
- contrast of foreground and background should be no less than 4.5:1 (WCAG 1.4.3, 1.4.6, 1.4.11)
- don't disable pinch-to-zoom
- interactive components (links, buttons, input) need a visible focus and hover state (WCAG 1.4.13)
- controls need to look different (actionable) than text (WCAG 1.4.8)
Color-blind
Permalink for "Color-blind"This is not an either-or characteristic either. Degrees of color identification vary from person to person.
How they may interact:
- strategies to compensate may involve asking for help to distinguish colors
Developer considerations:
- color should not be the only way to relay important information (WCAG 1.4.1)