Educating Your Web Team: Accessibility for Chummies

Media

Presented at 3:30pm in Westminster I on Wednesday, November 20, 2019.

Speaker(s)

• Angela Hooker, Microsoft

Session Details

• Length of Session: 1-hr
• Format: Lecture
• Expertise Level: All Levels
• Type of session: General Conference

Summary

You've been working with your "chummies" for years on accessibility, and they still don't quite "get it." You give them rules, an accessibility audit reports, deadlines, and standards--but they're unsure of how to use these resources. Learn how to educate them for success so they can create accessible, usable digital media.

Abstract

Oh, those chummies--those wonderful colleagues of yours. You've worked with them for years and tried to teach them how to create accessible work, but despite the hard work you all have done, they still ask the same questions and haven't figured out how to create accessible digital media. Even with laws and requirements, organizational policies, spending big dollars on accessibility efforts, the outcome is still the same: inaccessible products.

Perhaps rethinking how we introduce our chummies to accessibility and how we help them achieve and maintain accessible, usable media will serve them better. Learn about effective ways to educate your chummies, how to approach accessibility classes, how to create tool kits for each web team role, how to take the sting out of the compulsory work, and more--to help your chummies to finally produce accessible and usable digital media.

Keypoints

1. Rethink the typical "drive-by" approach to accessibility.
2. Create tool kits and processes to help people succeed in producing accessible work.
3. Get people to think beyond minimum compliance, beyond imitating others, and bolt-on accessibility.

Disability Areas

All Areas

Topic Areas

Uncategorized, Web/Media/App Access

Speaker Bio(s)

Angela Hooker

Angela Hooker is a Senior Accessibility Product Manager at Microsoft, where she's built a center of expertise for accessibility, user experience, and universal design. She's brought her web management, development, design, accessibility, and editorial and content management expertise to the government and private sector for over 20 years. Angela also advocates for role-based accessibility and believes that teaching people how to incorporate principles of accessibility in their everyday work creates a sustainable program and produces the most accessible user experiences. In addition to accessibility and universal design, she supports plain language and web standards. Angela speaks on and writes about accessibility, user experience, and plain language.