Accessibility Testing for Everyone – No tools required

Scheduled at 9:00 am in Virtual D on Thursday, November 14.

Speaker(s)

• Becky Gibson, Lead Accessibility Specialist, UKG

Session Details

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

Summary

You understand the importance of accessibility, but how do you express it to others? You may not have the time, knowledge, or budget to perform a full accessibility audit. This session will teach you how to do basic web accessibility testing with no special tools or technologies. Demonstrate the issues with your web assets to others. Give people an Aha moment - help them to understand the need for and commit to accessibility.

Abstract

Experiencing barriers firsthand can educate others to the importance of accessibility. With just a bit of knowledge, a keyboard, and reasonable vision you can perform a base level of accessibility testing. Use this skill to show others the basic barriers and why they must be fixed. Demonstrate how lack of keyboard support or visual focus can prevent some users from navigating a site or completing a task. Turn off the sound and experience why captions are essential for Deaf and hard of hearing but also help people learning a new language, and those with cognitive disabilities. Change the font size and experience horizontal scrolling or truncation of text.

This session will teach you how to perform basic accessibility checks without the need to learn HTML, navigate with a screen reader, or install a browser extension. We will test live websites together to understand the issues and how they affect people. These are tests you can quickly perform to demonstrate issues to “non-believers”. Welcome everyone into the accessibility space and show them why access for all matters.

While we don’t want to rely on legal requirements to encourage others to adopt an accessibility mindset, it can help. Each of the tests provided will be referenced back to the appropriate success criterion within Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.2. This can provide the extra push that some people need to commit to accessibility improvements. Everyone can perform basic accessibility testing – come learn how.

Keypoints

1. Demonstrate how experiencing barriers first hand can influence people to embrace accessibility.
2. Basic accessibility testing can be performed by anyone without special tools.
3. Understand how basic accessibility issues relate back to Web Content Accessibilty Guidelines Requirements.

Disability Areas

Cognitive/Learning, Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Mobility

Topic Areas

Uncategorized, Web/Media/App Access

Speaker Bio(s)

Becky Gibson

Becky Gibson is a recognized expert in the field of digital inclusion and enabling accessible solutions. Her extensive career as a Software Engineer and Accessibility Architect at IBM impacted products, customer strategy, and industry standards. She is passionate about making Web and mobile applications usable for people of all abilities.

She participated in the creation of W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) and helped to develop and demonstrate the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specification. In her spare time Becky enjoys, traveling, paddle boarding, kayaking, reading, and playing with her cat, Circe.