Presented at 11:30am in Colorado F on Thursday, November 9, 2023.
#38107Speaker(s)
- Rob Carr, Strategic Accessibility Coordinator, WebAIM
Session Details
- Length of Session: 1-hr
- Format: Lecture
- Expertise Level: Intermediate
- Type of session: General Conference
Summary
Testing a website to find out if it is accessible can be lots of things: daunting, complex, time-consuming, upsetting, intriguing, highly technical…the list goes on. For many, testing accessibility is not a full-time job. That compounds things. Let’s talk about some strategies and tools that you can use to add value to the accessibility conversation without artificially stopping it.
Abstract
Accessibility evaluation is something that, with practice, becomes second nature. It is incredibly detailed work requiring technical knowledge, patience, and knowledge of specific tools. However, for many, it is also not something that we do daily. It is just one of many things we need to do to help advance accessibility within our organizations. Time needs to be divided between evaluation and an array of other tasks. At the same time, anyone doing evaluation work is looking for cheat codes to help to cover more ground in less time. Or, at the least, we’re all looking to find ways to keep from being a bottleneck in our shop and keep things moving. In March 2023, Rob joined WebAIM and became part of its evaluation team in addition to his other responsibilities. Prior to that, though, he spent over eight years doing ad hoc evaluations for a diverse set of organizations. In this session, you will reap the benefits of his looking back on his previous role after learning quite a lot at WebAIM. The session will focus on both manual and automated approaches to testing. It will also focus on ways to approach evaluation work in a more strategic way. Several key decisions about the evaluation’s purpose greatly impact the effort required to meet the organization’s goals. Paying close attention to the “why” helps to expose ways to keep things moving. There are efficiencies to gain at almost every step of the process. We’ll start at the beginning and work our way through scoping, planning, performing, and reporting on accessibility in web properties.
Keypoints
- Efficiency begins before direct testing.
- One needs multiple tools to help to make evaluation quicker.
- Tailoring report formats to the intended audience reduces the need for re-work.
Disability Areas
All Areas
Topic Areas
Procurement, Uncategorized, Web/Media/App Access
Speaker Bio(s)
Rob Carr
Rob Carr is the Strategic Accessibility Coordinator at WebAIM. Rob has been in the digital accessibility space since 2010. He has spent loads of time training, consulting, and learning about digital accessibility topics large and small. Rob has worked with thousands of individuals and dozens of organizations on everything from accessibility in a single PDF to integrating accessibility into organizations’ digital strategies. Rob presents at national conferences, organizes the occasional conference, and tries to be more active and less snarky on LinkedIn.