Issue #5

Issue number 5 was sent on

Which accessibility problems do I fix first?

I’m sharing another tip previously published on my blog, called, Which Accessibility Problems Do I Fix First?

Which accessibility problems do I fix first? You’ve tested your site or application for accessibility and discovered you have a long list of problems. You have a set of priorities dictated by other forces, like a feature list, a revenue stream or company goals. How do you fit in accessibility? Maybe you should tack it on at the end? Focus on it in a separate sprint?

You don’t have to do any of that, or alter your goals or priorities. Of course, you do have to slot accessibility into your workflow. That’s where you should start – wherever it fits into your workflow. In a perfect world, you want to be testing code for accessibility problems before it’s committed and pushed to production. You want to involve people with disabilities in your design thinking and testing. But one thing at a time here.

Fix the problems you have in your design or code in the next swath of work you already plan on doing. Pick one area and focus on it. Fix it, and deploy those changes, even if you don’t fix all the problems. Repeat that process. Accessibility is a continuum, not just one step.

That area of focus could be keyboard accessibility, adding missing labels or whatever your testing reveals. The problems you should fix first should be a small selection of ones you have in front of you. And that selection should be related to the work you’re doing already. Make it a little better one section at a time.

Further reading: You Don’t have Accessibility Problems, You have Quality Problems

News and links

How Facebook Is Using AI to Help Bring Photos To Life For The Blind: “New AI technology can interpret the content of photos and provide more context than was possible before. But there’s still a long way to go.”

Accessibility Camp Toronto 2015 recap: Recently, the the 5th edition of Accessibility Camp Toronto took place, and attendee Shawn Hooper has a nice summary of the event.

Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group Charter: Recently, the W3C launched the ARIA Working Group. From the charter: “The mission of the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Working Group (ARIA WG, formerly part of the Protocols and Formats Working Group) is to develop technologies that enhance accessibility of web content for people with disabilities. This includes continued development of the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) suite of technologies and other technical specifications when needed to bridge known gaps.”

Accessibility Rocks: Heydon Pickering has put together a fundraiser benefiting NVAccess and Parkinson’s UK that combines, you guessed it, accessibility and rock and roll.

Twitter may be getting alt text functionality: It’s only a response from a Twitter employee, but there may be hope.

Resources, tools and tutorials

New to A11y?

Chris Coyier at CSS Tricks shares a video screencast on hiding content with CSS, an always tricky task when it comes to accessibility.

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