Aligning Requirements for WCAG Success Criteria with Organizational Roles to Deliver Accessible Content

Handouts

Presented at 2:15pm in Independence on Thursday, November 17, 2022.

#36398

Speaker(s)

  • Jeff Singleton, Senior Manager, Digital Accessibility ADWeb, AbleDocs

Session Details

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

Summary

Accessibility is a team effort. Achieving accessible web content is all too often left to a few people and possibly just a single individual! Learn the steps to create an effective organizational policy and how to align all team members toward the same accessibility goal.

Abstract

Accessibility policies helps document and align an organization’s commitment to accessible content and helps all team members understand the company’s accessibility goals and milestones. Organizations commonly face two problems, however. First, the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are maddeningly vague and complex. Second, WCAG is primarily developer focused and doesn’t provide enough details for designers and QA teams. Therefore, solving these problems involves two steps:

  1. This requires creating a common set of objective requirements for each WCAG Success Criteria.
  2. Organizations need to identify the unique roles that wireframe designers, copy authors, programmers, and testers each play to accomplish those requirements.

We will also review some compelling benefits to this approach. Knowing what is required for each role that is part of the web content lifecycle also allows for organizations to provide more effective and targeted training…at less cost! Each team member in the lifecycle is now also accountable for their piece of the puzzle and if a piece is missing, team members will know where to look to obtain those details instead of making assumptions or even worse…doing nothing!

Keypoints

  1. Review best practices for an organization’s web accessibility policy to help align the team effort.
  2. Understand why WCAG needs to be extended to a clearer set of requirements beyond just policy creation.
  3. Learn how and why to implement clearer WCAG requirements into role-based requirement within organizations.

Disability Areas

Topic Areas

Accessible Course Design, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Jeff Singleton

Jeff Singleton has worked in the technology field for over 25 years and has been solely focused on accessible Information and Communication Technology (ICT) since 2008. He started his accessibility journey while working for Microsoft in the early 2000’s which included being a part of Microsoft’s Accessible Technology Group (ATG). Since he has worked with several organizations as an accessibility subject matter expert (SME) which has included supporting Federal groups, State and Local Governments efforts, large e-commerce organizations, as well as smaller businesses throughout the United States. He has been a regular speaker for the last 14 years at national and international accessibility conferences. Additionally, he has been involved in conducting digital accessibility reviews as part Section 504 reviews of agency grantees of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Section. Jeff is also a certified Title III ADA Coordinator.

Handout(s)