Accessibility testing for everyone – getting started

Handouts

Scheduled at 9:00am in Penrose 2 on Tuesday, November 18.

#41427

Speaker(s)

  • Becky Gibson, Lead Accessibility Specialist, UKG
  • Bruno Torquato, Sr. Accessibility Specialist, UKG

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 5-6-hr
  • Format: Bring-your-own Device Workshop: After reviewing how to test for accessibility, students will install some accessibility testing tools and practice using them.
  • Expertise Level: Beginner
  • Type of session: Pre-conference

Summary

Come learn the basics of web accessibility testing. We will review methods you can use to test without any special tools. Next, we will explore tools that you can install and use for additional testing. You’ll also learn the basics of testing with a screen reader. Explore ways to record and communicate your test results. We will have time for hands on practice.

Abstract

Testing a website for conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA can seem daunting. We will start with a quick overview of WCAG then move on to how to test. Don’t let the 55 success criteria in WCAG Level AA intimidate you! This session will provide you with the skills to test many of these. We will cover items that you can test with some basic knowledge and no additional tools. We’ll cover keyboard, multimedia requirements, focus order, use of color alone, moving content, and more. Using a few tools will allow you to test more success criteria. This includes contrast issues, heading structure, missing alternative text, page titles or language, browser zoom and reflow, and text spacing. Finally, we will provide instructions in using and testing with two screen readers, NVDA for Windows and VoiceOver on MacOS. We will invite you to install these tools and practice using them on your own machines. We’ll provide hands on assistance as needed.

Keypoints

  1. Gain confidence in basic keyboard navigation and accessibility testing techniques
  2. Learn to use common tools for accessibility testing for color contrast, headings, and more.
  3. Understand how screen readers work, how users interact with them, and basic testing techniques.

Disability Areas

All Areas

Topic Areas

Other, Uncategorized

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. Becky currently works as a Lead Accessibility Specialist at UKG. In her spare time Becky enjoys, traveling, paddle boarding, kayaking, reading, and playing with her cat, Circe.

Bruno Torquato

Bruno has 16 years of hands-on knowledge at the intersection of Accessibility and User Experience. This wide-reaching focus has included digital accessibility, interaction design, user research, front-end engineering, organizational maturity, and everything in between. Bruno loves training and teaching! This has been a major theme at work, and increasingly, in the community. As a Senior Accessibility Specialist for UKG, much of the focus has been on scaling accessibility across a huge software suite. Naturally, that has included training many colleagues across product, design, engineering, and more. Outside of work, Bruno is enthusiastic about inclusivity, video games, music, and pixel art. This has culminated in the creation of a screen-reader accessible mobile game.

Handout(s)