Mark Boyden - Hello, everyone! Big howdy to you from Austin, Texas here.
I'm Mark Boyden. I am the IT cowboy, also known as the systems administrator here at Knowbility, and I also help with a number of our
programs. We're so glad that you can join us today.
we're gonna go through a couple of pieces of quick housekeeping before we get going.
Be a Digital Ally is what you've shown up for today.
This is our program where we cover the basic skills and principles behind accessible digital design.
And with a focus on making digital content accessible to people with disabilities.
Our general audience is content creators of any skill level, and especially those newer to accessibility.
We appreciate being a part of your accessibility journey, and as part of that, we always strive to create an inclusive and accessible space.
In our, online meetings and in person.
And we encourage everyone to be kind, polite, and respectful to each other, and we have a focus on ensuring accessibility.
Knowbility was founded in 1999, making us about 26 years old.
And we're a 501c3 based in Austin, Texas, but operating globally.
Our mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities.
Our community programs, in terms of what we serve, is the Accessibility Internet Rally. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that after the program.
But we bring together web developers and nonprofits, and teach web developers how to
make websites accessible.
We've been doing that longer than this organization's been in, been incorporated.
AccessU is our annual conference in May. We're gearing up for that now already.
AccessWorks is a program where we invite people with disabilities to work as user testers.
And they get paid a fair wage.
We have K-12 digital accessibility, which is a resource for people in the K-12 world.
to help them build accessible classrooms and instructional technologies.
And then this program, be a digital ally.
Our services, we do accessibility testing and auditing. A lot of websites and also smart apps.
We are, we also provide leadership and strategic consulting
Whether it's down in the trenches to the web developers or app developers, up through the boardroom.
Who, in terms of trying to help build internal teams for accessibility. We provide training of all types,
we can tailor it to your needs, or pull some of the off-the-shelf that we have.
AccessWorks, as I said, we basically bring in user testers who have disabilities, and they can help you
Test your site with real-world testing.
And then we also offer an accessibility help desk program where you can buy hours and call us up and ask for assistance.
During the… this, session today, Julie will have a couple of Q&A times, but you can put them in the Q&A. There's an icon in the panel at the bottom of your screen, and you can bring that up and open it at any time.
You can also ask anonymously if you'd like to. You can also ask by raising your hand, and we will
ask you to unmute, and you can ask in person. Or you can type it into the chat.
At this point, I would like to introduce you to our Director of Accessibility Services, Julie Romanowski.
Take it away, Julie.
Julie Romanowski – Thank you, Mark. My name is Julie Romanowski. I am the Director of Accessibility Services at Knowbility.
I lead the folks who, do the audits of… for clients' websites, clients' properties.
I…
also lead the teams who help with training and consulting and, just, you know, working with our clients to help them make sure that their digital content
is as accessible as possible to the largest group.
available.
I've been with Knowbility since…
2022. I actually was… started…
in the accessibility field when I was at State Farm. I worked at State Farm for, 22 years. Started out as a web… as a developer,
doing Java development and other types of development,
became involved in accessibility because my team was responsible for,
reusable, enterprise reusable controls that were used for our agents and our claims departments, things like that, and we had
Customers who are complaining that
things weren't accessible, so I met with our, at the time, was called the Assistive Technology Services and Support Team, and
worked with them to help bring the, reusable components up to WCAG.
1.0, anybody remember that? That's been a long time ago, but help them bring that up to…
WCAG 1.0 level
two-way conformance, and I was then pulled into that team later on and worked with them for quite a while, and then we worked to create the accessibility program at State Farm.
And reached a point where, we'd built the program, it was…
have matured, and I was ready to leave, and decided that I was going to take early retirement and come work with Knowbility in my… literally my dream job, where I work with the nonprofit to help people with disabilities.
I'm going to go ahead and start sharing here.
Or…
There we go, my icon disappeared. I'm going to share the screen.
All right.
So, goals for today are, you know, to help you gain a better understanding of,
VPATs, and not just that, but understand the difference between VPATs and
ACRs…
validity of a completed ACR. I should ask, first of all, folks who are attending,
Is there anyone attending who has never
never seen a VPAT, never had to review one for their, their organization, anything like that.
who know nothing about VPATS? Do we have anyone
Anna, are you raising your hand because you… okay, we have a few people who haven't.
our… how many… are there people within… that are attending who,
deal with VPATs on a, if not regular, kind of a semi-regular basis, where you're reviewing them, going through to get information for, say, for procurement, you're trying to buy some products, things like that.
Alright, so would my assumption be correct, then, that most people know very little about VPATs? That would be my assumption. If not, please speak up.
I'd love to hear…
I would really love to hear maybe war stories, things like that, from folks who've dealt with VPATs, too, in the past. I'll share some myself, as well.
So, we're gonna go through… I want to go through a completed accessibility conformance reports, talk about completed ones, and
validity of ACRs.
are they accurate? Does the information provided make sense? And so on.
Just because a vendor has provided an accessibility conformance report to you does not mean it's valid. It does not mean the product meets the
requirements. Finally, I'm going to step you through writing your own.
ACR. So what's not covered?
I'm not going to provide training on accessibility standards.
And I'm not going to talk about accessibility testing.
All right…
So, we're gonna do an overview now of VPATS.
While most people use the terms VPAT, V-P-A-T, and
ACR interchangeably. They're not the same thing.
VPAT, which is short for Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, is a document template used to create accessibility conformance reports, or ACRs, as you can see on the screen.
the VPad is pre-populated with accessibility standards criteria, such as WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.
And the European Accessibility Act.
VPATs are developed and maintained by the Information Technology Industry Council, or ITI for short.
ITI is a global nonprofit trade association that represents companies
Excuse me, from the information and communication technology industry, or ICT industry.
As an advocacy organization, ITI works to influence policy,
Issues aimed at encouraging innovation, and also promoting global competitiveness across the world.
so ACRs.
ACR, which is short for Accessibility Conformance Report, is the result of the completed VPAT.
And it provides information on how the product in question
conforms to the accessibility standards included within the report.
The ACR is simply a report that lists any accessibility conformance issues identified while testing.
your product against relevant accessibility standards, like WCAG.
An ACR is not a certification… an ACR shows how well your product conforms to criteria listed within the document, but having an ACR does not automatically make your product accessible.
I've…
met with vendors in the past, asking about bead pads, and
or ACRs is which the final product is, and they would send them on and claim, our product is 100% accessible because we have this ACR for you.
That does not equal accessibility.
So,
talk about VPAT usage. VPAT was initially developed by, as I mentioned before, Information Technology Industry Council.
As a procurement or purchasing tool to help U.S. government buyers determine accessibility of ICT products and services.
While ones specific to U.S. government agencies, VPAT is now widely used in both public and private sectors worldwide.
it's still used mostly as a procurement tool.
But more and more organizations, and also organizations that Knowbility works with, are starting to use VPATs as a self-assessment tool, helping them to
Evaluate the accessibility of their own products and services.
The PAT framework provides a consistent reporting mechanism.
making… comparing the accessibility of similar products easier for buyers. So, great product comparison tool.
Say you're looking for a content management system, for your,
your university, and you reach out to vendors, and they all provide you with the completed accessibility conformance reports for their products.
And so, since this is a standardized, consistent
report, you're able to look at them side by side to see which, products contain
the…
meet the needs of what… of your customers, maybe? Which ones work better for your customers. You can look to see which
reports make more sense to you.
For VPAT additions,
There are four
different VPAT editions.
They're available free for download.
at www.
dot ITIC.org. Mark, I didn't know if you could share that link within chat.
www.itic.org slash policy slash accessibility slash VPAT.
And the templates were last updated April of this year.
First one we have is VPAT 2.5.
508. And the version is 2.5, and this focuses on the revised Section 508 compliance.
Which includes WCAG 2.0 Level AA. And it's used by the U.S. federal agencies.
We have VPAT 2.5EU.
Which focuses on European accessibility standards, and is used in European Union public sector procurement.
The VPAC covers EN301549, which is the European Accessibility Standard.
And WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
Next, we have VPAT 2.5 WCAG, which focuses on WCAG 2 conformance,
And it's used by private
sector businesses and U.S. state and local government organizations.
This VPAC covers all WCAG 2 versions, 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2.
Then we have VPAT 2.5INT.
Which focuses on international standards, and it's best for global organizations that are needing multi-jurisdictional coverage.
VPAC covers all applicable standards covered in the 508 EU and WCAG VPATs. It covers everything.
So, revised Section 508, WCAG 2.2,
Level AA, and…
or I'm sorry, level…
3A, and then the…
EN301549.
So, have these four different editions. So, how do you choose an edition?
Well, it depends on a few things.
First of all, customer requirements. Think about, what do your customers need?
Are they a U.S. federal agency? Are they a local…
school? Are they… maybe they're a European organization, or they're… they're not just a European organization, maybe they're an international organization.
And… and where do they plan to distribute this? Is this something that is specific to the U.S.?
maybe it's something specific to North America, or it could be…
Europe or internationally.
you also want to consider the accessibility standards used to evaluate your product. If you use WCAG
Say you're using WCAG 2.1 level AA,
then you would not use the, VPAT 2.5 INT.
Because it would not be… you would not then be using the, EN301-549 or revised
well, I guess you would be using revised Section 508, because it does include older versions of WCAG, so…
But, yeah, you would probably want to use
the EU one or the WCAG one for that.
Now we're going to go through a, VPAT.
that has not been edited at all. We go through a breakdown of that.
First, there's the product information page.VPAT requires the vendor to list details.
about the product, including name of the product…
the date of the report creation and evaluation methods used.
a quick assessment of the information here can give you a sense of quality of the vendor's approach to accessibility. So, just going to the product information page could give you a relatively good idea of whether
It… the vendor really understands accessibility, and they're being accurate in their reporting.
There's a report title, it's just their… whatever their company name, organization name,
then accessibility conformance Report.
VPAT heading information includes the
current version of the VPAT. It includes the version of the VPAT template.
The current version is 2.5,
REV. All one word, this replaced version 2.5, the original version, in April of this year.
looking at that, if you're seeing a VPAT
And the version is older 2.4, maybe not as much, but if it's 2.3 or older, then you're really… it's an old report, and you really want to question the results. It's most likely not valid.
you also have within that information page, name of the product,
version. I have a slash as an OR, but you really want to see both the product and the version.
that version's necessary, because you want to make sure that not only are you looking at the correct product VPAT,
So you're looking through this thing, and yes, this is the product I'm interested in, but you also know that you're looking at the correct version, and not an older version of the product that, you know, there have been changes since then, and the report is no longer valid for the latest version.
The report date is important. That… that's the date that the report was published.
If the, report date is more than a year old, then it's likely out of date.
contact information, that's contact for follow-up questions, so ideally,
This is the person that performed the assessment.
Like a third-party expert, or maybe an in-house accessibility subject matter expert.
evaluation methods used.
Now here, a detailed description of evaluation methods used to complete the VPAT for the product is very important. Specificity and,
Robustness are good signs here.
and then you also have applicable standards.
guidelines…
VPATs that are still listing just WCAG 2.0.
or Section 508 only, are likely very out of date. So, you really want to look at this stuff. And,
For those of you who are familiar with VPATS, who have, reviewed them in the past and looked at them,
Have any of you looked at VPATs where you went into this project information page, and there was almost no information provided at all?
Maybe there's no… a lot of times, I've seen VPATs where the evaluation method used, it's blank, there's nothing there.
so I have no idea how they test it, what they did.
looking at that, there could be the assumption that all they did was run an automated test…
not saying automated tests are bad, but there's no way you're going to know if a product is meeting the… it's conforming to, say, WCAG 2.0
one, or any of the other, standards,
If that's all they're doing, because that's only going to catch a small percentage of issues, if they're just listing something like automated, manual, and, functional or automated and manual,
then…
you really don't know, okay, what does that mean?
is that…
Oh, yeah, I'm just looking at some of the comments. I just noticed. Yeah, big red flag, Brian, you're right, huge flag…
it just… you really… that… more details is important. So, yes, you're doing manual, and you can
something along the line of too specific. It's like…
keyboard-only testing, using assistive technologies such as JAWS, NVDA, and voiceover screen reader, or, you know, what other
assistive technologies you're using. Maybe you list something like… expert testers with disabilities using the specific assistive technology. That provides a lot more information and helps the
person viewing the document understand that, yes, this is… it's being tested for
using assistive technologies that my customer uses, and I know that it's more likely that it will work for customers or, you know, visitors, things like that.
All right, the next section in the VPAT is the Success Criteria table.
example I have here on this slide is from the WCAG VPAT, all of the, VPATs have the same column headers and things, but
They have different information within them, depending on the
the addition you're using.
So, we're going to look through the WCAG VPAT.
In column 1, you have success criteria.
so within this one, you're seeing the rows, each row separately lists a WCAG success criteria.
there are 3 different tables
for success criteria within the WCAG VPAT.
The first table includes Level A success criteria.
That's followed by Level 2A in Table 2.
And then Level 3A in Table 3.
Column 2 has conformance levels.
And within this, the vendor indicates the performance level, with one of the following. You have supports,
Which means the functionality of the product has at least one method that meets the criterion. Without known defects,
or meets with, equivalent facilitation. Yeah, partially supports.
some functionality of the product does not meet the criteria.
Does not support is another one, which is the majority of the product
not just… it doesn't say all.
does not, it's the majority of the product. So, parts of it may
support it, but majority of it does not meet the criterion.
Not applicable as one, which is not the criterion is not relevant to the product. Say, for example, we're looking at, on this screen,
121, audio-only and video only, 122, captions, and 123 audio description or media alternative. You may be… this is a product that has,
no audio only, no video only, no multimedia, no media at all.
There's no media at all, so you would put not applicable
for each of those within the conformance level.
And you got column 3, which is remarks and Explanations, this column allows
the vendor to include notes specific to that criterion.
And conformance. So, if you included not applicable for 121, 122, and 123, because there is no media at all,
for the product, then within the remarks and explanations, you would put, like, for the 1-21, this product does not… the product does not contain audio-only and video-only pre-recorded content.
And for 122,
the…
product does not contain…
video, multimedia video. So, no captions are needed. Yeah, things… something like that. You would want to explain why
the success criterion is not applicable.
Now, the last page of the VPAT contains the legal disclaimer, which
Most of the time…
Yeah, thanks, Mark. Most of the time,
when ICV pets, the legal disclaimer is blank.
working at State Farm for years, and working very closely with the legal department,
I learned a long time ago that this can be a very, very dangerous thing.
omitting this section could put your organization or the vendor's organization
that whoever drafted this final ACR… accessibility conformance Report could put
them in jeopardy. Down the line, in the event that, the product's accessibility conformance changes,
due to maybe code updates, redesign, something along that line.
Including verbiage here in this section, stating that the findings are specific to the time of assessment.
That helps protect you against legal complaints.
Don't forget to fill in this section, and if you're able to, run the verbiage by your legal department, or your legal representative to help make sure that you are stating the information there in such a way that it does not put you at risk legally.
All right, so…
what questions or…
what questions or comments do you have for me right now? Anything you would like to share?
Mark Boyden - We've got a couple for you, but just a reminder, you can put them in the Q&A.
You can raise your hand, or you can type them in the chat. So, the ones we had a little earlier on, Stephanie asked…
You mentioned that ACR is not a certificate. If an agency gives me something that proves a PDF is accessible,
What would that be called?
Julie Romanowski - Most likely, they're providing you with an accessibility report from Acrobat Professional
Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can run an accessibility check, and it'll provide a report for you.
that…
I would be careful with two.
Because just because, the…
accessibility report comes back with no issues, and the report's showing it's accessible, that doesn't mean it
truly is. Because that is a… another automated test, and it misses
items that you can only find testing manually.
but it does give you a little more, insurance that, yes, they are looking into and addressing issues within there.
Sam?
test documentation. Somebody said, I Kate, or however that is pronounced, person…
Yeah, that sounds good. Yes, it would be test documentation that…
Verifies accessibility features, which are presented in the PDF.
So we have, P.H. Gomez asking about, does Knowbility offer a scorecard for VPATs? I'm not sure what you mean by a scorecard. If we're just talking the template,
That's just provided so that you could fill it in.
we could review VPATs that you have and let you know if we are concerned, if there are any red flags, things like that, but I am not quite sure what you're meaning by a scorecard there.
But… and Sam C asked if vendors typically compete their own VPAT, or have a third-party audit.
I've seen as, I Cade had mentioned, that vendors… most vendors complete their own.
But more and more now are having a third party, do an accessibility audit, and then
a VPAT for them, as well.
One thing I've… have,
clients reaching out and asking us to provide
they want a VPAT for their product,
However, they're not willing to have an accessibility audit completed on that product.
Knowbility refuses to complete an accessibility conformance report for a product we have not tested.
that we cannot verify accessibility, we will not complete an accessibility conformance report for them.
If…
Organizations are doing that, having accessibility conformance reports created,
Without doing the audits, there is absolutely no guarantee that that product is
does not have issues.
Comportance about who completes the report…
The organization that requested the report, I mean, requested the audit can complete it, but I really recommend having
a…
a subject matter expert, accessibility subject matter expert,
do the audit, make sure they've identified issues, maybe they've done a retest after,
items were addressed, and then the person who's done that, I recommend you have them
draft the accessibility conformance Report as well.
for someone who does not
understand,
the nuances. There could be, and we're going to go through in a little bit, a,
audit findings. There are nuances within there. There are things that are identified as issues.
But looking at those, if you don't have that background and understanding, you may not realize that, okay, this is something that is an issue. However,
their ways, they're simple workarounds, or there are, other things at play that could,
change the severity of it. There are, items within there that, how you report that would depend on
the type of issue, the, you know, where it's located, things like that.
Okay…
And Mary had mentioned about, yes, me instead of the salesperson responding to a solicitation, I have seen
many…
accessibility performance reports that I could tell looking at it, it was completed by someone who had no idea, like, what they were doing. And it could very well have been a salesperson who was trying to make a sale.
That happens.
Often.
All right.
Mark Boyden - That looks like all I see. Oh, we just got another one in…
Q&A. What about PAC 2024 checker reports for PDFs?
Julie Romanowski - PDFs are an interesting thing, I…
I am just not a fan of the different… a PAC checker reports,
catch…
a lot of issues. However, I find… it seems like every time an update is made,
I… you find out that it's missing.
problem… missing things within there. I… I work with somebody at Knowbility who is a…
document accessibility expert, the two of us have had similar training. We work together on these things, and I will be doing manual testing of the PDF, and she'll run certain,
Automated tests,
And they're…
times where we find out that the automated tests miss very
serious problems. So, the… that could be very… that can be helpful, but…
You just need to remember that there's more
More to it than just running the automated tests. You need to do the manual as well.
In addition to the automated.
Mark Boyden - All right, that's all the questions I see at the moment.
Julie Romanowski - Alright, so now we're going to get into drafting and accessibility conformance report.
All right, I'm going to step you through drafting an ACR using the 2.5 Rev edition of the WCAG VPAT, and using audit findings from a fictional organization.
and Mark, if you can include the links, hopefully
The…
ITI organization site was down earlier, but last I checked, it was working, so that
link that goes directly to the website should be working. It's a Word document.
on the…
ITI Council site.
If it doesn't work, let us know, because I also have another one that I provided in GitHub for folks.
And now the next one is a… an Excel spreadsheet that contains audit findings. We're… we'll use that one to then
review the,
accessibility audit and, use that to populate the
rows within the,
success criteria tables.
Oh, nope, that doesn't work, Mark.
You have to go into the notes for that one.
Sorry about that.
I'll put it in there.
Oh, thanks. You got ahead of me.
I don't think they can get to the Google Doc one, Mark. It's… this one goes to the…
ally code examples, Knowbility.org, that's open to everybody.
Are folks able to get to that?
All right. I am going to stop sharing, and I'm going to switch over to the…
files that we're going to look at, okay?
see if it switches.
All right, see if you guys are actually seeing it…
Okay.
Alright, so you're seeing a spreadsheet, and we have two different…
Word documents,
They are.
Okay.
Mark Boyden - It might be helpful to try and make them a little larger.
Julie Romanowski - Yeah, I was just…
Pulling them up here so I can… I'm trying to move some things.
Okay, so the first one is the… I have the voluntary product accessibility template here.
version 2.5 Rev, WCAG Edition.
and we have a… are folks able to see the…
Excel workbook.
that has… huh?
It has several tags, it's got a, or a…
worksheets, it has a summary worksheet, and then it has worksheets, and then the summary page links to each of the worksheets, and it shows different findings within
each worksheet.
So, you can see on this one, it's showing, that this product
is, ABC…
XYZ Incorporated.
organization, and this is their marketing intranet website.
And you can see all the issues there.
And then we look at the Word document, the voluntary product accessibility template.
And it is a really long document. It's like 15 pages.
And when you look at it, first of all, the first
portion of this document is basically just instructions. It gives you information about what the document is, and it has instructions on what you need to add.
So, about this, it tells you what I had already explained a little bit about. It has
links to…
the different WCAG guidelines, different standards there.
more information within that, and I apologize for scrolling, hopefully I don't make you…
dizzy on that.
gives you all kinds of information about what you need, and we've gone over some of this here.
And you go down.
One thing you want to remember is…
when you finish completing the information within the VPAT,
that you want to delete.
everything past, from page 1 to page 9, all the instructions, directions, things like that. You just want to delete all that, so all you have is the
The actual…
VPAT with the sections like the product information and the
criteria tables, and then the legal disclaimer. That's all you want within here.
It's…
won't be terrible if you don't delete all that, but you could cause confusion for customers if you share this document with them after completing it.
And they're seeing all this information that, you know, way too much information. They don't need all that. They just want the information to show how, if their product conforms.
And… and what I do with this is I will save a copy of this, and I go ahead and
do a save as and name it, whatever your naming standards are…
It would be, like, the…
customer name, product name, and then the date.
that I created this, and I already did that, so I'm going to go ahead and…
close this out and go to the Word document that I already named.
as, and I'm gonna have to make this a little bigger for you folks.
So I named it as…
ACR underscore ABC dash XYZ dash INC underscore 2025-09-18
So then I know it's…
September 18th, 2025, Accessibility Conformance Report for the organization.
And as I mentioned before, we are going to go through then and just delete…
everything to…
The…
Page 10.
And I've already filled in these things, but you can see where it was customer,
with a open brake,
company, organization, closed base, I think it said company. I have ABC, XYZ-INC.
Name of product version, ABCXYZ-INC marketing website, the report date I have for today's date,
for, product description, intranet website for ABC XYZ Marketing Department, contact information, my name, my
title and my organization.
I don't have anything in notes. You could put things in there depending on what
information you have. For evaluation methods used, it's really simple here.
Usually I have more detail, but for this, I just put something really simple, automated,
manual, including keyboard only, and functional tests.
assistive technology used in testing includes JAWS, NVDA, and voiceover screen readers, and Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software.
may include something in here, as I mentioned before, about
accessibility experts with,
disabilities who used assistive technologies, screen readers, things like that.
were involved in this testing. You know, things like that to…
to let the organization know that this is… this is the detail of testing we've done.
You go down to the applicable standards guidelines,
You can see this table here.
And this one, it has web… WCAG 2.0 included in report. You see a Level A, yes, slash no. Level AA, yes, slash no.
So you go into these,
And you just delete the yes or the no,
For those, so that, it'll show that, yes, we tested for WCAG 2.0 Level 8.
And this was for the testing was for WCAG 2.1 level 2A.
So, for 2.0 and 2.1,
The AN2A would be yes.
And the 3A would be no.
And you would do that.
And since we didn't do tests for 2.2 for this, product,
this audit.
Each of these would be…
No, when we went to,
WCAG 2.2 section.
So then, the user coming in to view this
We go look and see, yeah, they tested for…
2.0 and 2.1 on both Level A and level 2A, but they didn't do any testing for Level 3A or for WCAG 2.2.
And then below that, we have terms, which I had mentioned before.
The supports, partially supports, does not support, not applicable, and then there's the not evaluated.
Which means you didn't test the product at all for this criterion. You can only do that for WCAG Level 3A criteria, and that's listed
right here within the document.
So it's very self-explanatory.
now we're going to go into this…
and look at first thing we're going to look at is 1.1 non-text content.
And the worksheet I provided
If we go to each of these, worksheets,
You can look at that, check it out. You scroll to the right,
And success criteria are listed here.
So you… if you have some…
reporting like this, making your…
Audit reports, as simple as possible to find the information you need.
something like this, where you just list the success criteria separately,
In this format, it's a lot easier, I find, for projects I work with, organizations I work with, they're
development teams,
like this, because they can just go in, and they can then do a filter, and all they find are, we just want 1-1.
non-text content here.
And you can do that very easily.
and then that's all you see within this list.
And I already went ahead and did that with
each of these, other sheets, so that's… that's done.
So, the 1.1, it does not conform
there are different problems. And if we look at the global sheet,
There's only one issue here that it does not conform to 1.1.1.
missing accessible name, side menu, open button.
And this is high priority. It's pretty serious, it's a… it's really hard to work around.
And it could cause a lot of problems…
And you can go look to see through this. You get a little information and idea how you can report, how you can document some of these reports.
And you can see that it has to do with…
There's missing accessible names…
some of these others, there could be missing.
Alt text, this one says invalid alternative text.
so what you would do then, you could go into your…
success criteria thing, and for non-text comment,
would be…
partially supports.
And then the remarks could be something along the line of… and it doesn't… you don't have to list each thing separately. It could be…
some…
images throughout…
a website are…
missing…
alt attributes.
And…
then you want… you want to put in as detailed as you want, so…
it could be…
other images…
are…
other deck… some decorative images are…
some decorative images contain invalid alt text, you know, things like that. You want to make sure that you list the information there.
So that,
If there's something really serious, you want to make sure you include that within here.
For example, maybe there is something with, and I don't believe it was this one, but…
their keyboard. There's keyboard issues that an item
A control is not accessible to keyboard.
And that control could be a vendor component.
Third-party components. So, it could list a… maybe the…
on the job aid page, the…
filter drop-down is not…
keyboard accessible, and you could list
this is a, event… a third-party component that cannot be
modified by…
the, product owner,
however…
There are other ways to get
to filter that information. They may be… you may have to go to another
link, or something along that line. You want to put enough information in there to state, here's the problem,
information that could help when someone's going through there and saying, oh yeah, that is a problem, it… because this is a third-party control, however, there are other ways to get past this. So that would give someone looking at this product for, say, procurement purposes or something to look at that and say, oh yeah,
We see that's an issue, here's another way we can do that. And comparing this product to another one, we still like this product more, because it offers some
other items that we need that this other product doesn't… doesn't offer.
And we are getting close to…
time…
When you're going through these,
You don't need to leave. If you're only testing for Level 1A or Level 2A,
You do not need to leave the Level 3A tables within there.
You can delete those tables.
If you don't delete them, then you want to make sure that the,
not evaluated.
item is included for every one of these conformance… for the conformance level in the Level 3A table.
it's a lot easier, easier for,
the person who is receiving the ACR to
jump through the document if you just delete that Level A table.
they don't have to look at it and see all that. It just makes it cleaner, a little easier to go through there. And I'd mentioned about the…
Legal disclosure.
at the end, legal disclaimer.
And include your company, legal disclaimer here if needed. As I mentioned before, it's really, really important to include something there.
stating that, this…
Evaluation is accurate as of the date that the assessment is done. Something along that line, stating that, yeah, when we went through this, when we did the audit, we tested it, when we completed this, this was accurate.
so that you don't end up
having issues, potential issues in the future, if someone comes back and says,
It's inaccessible, and you told us it worked.
So, we are running about out of time.
I'm gonna stop sharing here, and
see if we have…
Any questions, comments…
anything anyone want to share any of their, frustrations with VPATs, anything like that?
Knowbility does…
offer, training, additional training on VPATs, we can work with organizations to help them
draft their own accessibility conformance reports. Of course, we offer,
audit services, we offer,
tech, support for, organizations who are wanting to do their own audits, or who are wanting assistance in fixing issues that are identified.
So…
Any comments or anything, folks?
And feel free, if you want to, turn your video on, if you want to unmute, and then…
Say stuff, say something to us, we're… we'd be happy to hear you.
Happy to see.
And I believe, Mark, are you going to be,
the slide deck I had has speaker notes and things that might be helpful, too, if we can share that.
And they already had the files for the…
Yes. We will be… we will…
audit findings and things, yeah.
Mark Boyden - We will provide a recording with a transcript and all the materials that you have provided here, including your slide deck and example…
documents that you had.
All right!
So… and I'd also, thank you so much, Julie, you're getting lots of thanks in the chat, and it's been a great presentation, for sure.
I just wanted to tell you, if anybody knows any non-profits, artists, or musicians,
We are still accepting applications for…
and registrations for them to join us for our AIR program. At the beginning, I mentioned this, AIR is Accessibility Internet Rally, where we invite in
web developers who'd like to increase their skills in accessible websites.
to join us on the journey in a fun, friendly competition that runs for 8 weeks. We pair them up with a non-profit that needs a website, either refreshed or anew.
Our registration deadline is coming up tomorrow, but if you know anybody, even if it's within a few more days, just have them give us a content.
or a contact, because we have more developers this year than we,
have had in the past, and we are lacking nonprofits, artists, and musicians who need a new website.
And then the winners get some prizes, including tickets to our AccessU.
conference in May, which is roughly about $900 a seat.
More information is at Knowbility.air. We'd also encourage you to sign up for our newsletter.
Follow us on social media.
And if you want, you can email us at events at Knowbility.org,
But one of the biggest things you can do beyond
Sending any nonprofits our way is to please give us some feedback about this
how well it serves you, how well it met your expectations, and anything else that you'd like to share with us about this and this program, including possible topics and such.
Glad you joined us, and thanks again. We're gonna do another one next month. That one's still in the works, but we've already got November lined up, too, so…
stay in touch with us, and we'll have more great pieces like this. Thanks again.
Julie Romanowski - Thanks, everybody. Hope you have a great afternoon.
Mark Boyden - Oh, and, well, there's a QR code on here, the URL is Knowbility.org slash BADAsurvey.
BADA being short for Be a Digital Ally.
And I dropped it in the chat, too.
And you can support our programs through donating.