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Q&A: Next Gen Impact: Web A11y for Education Initiatives

taught by: Rachel Lang
co-presented by: Deven Cao, Jeremy Englert

Session Summary

For education and mission-driven organizations, the desire to achieve web accessibility is more than a moral imperative. Failure to have an accessible website directly impacts the success of their strategic goals. In this session, you’ll learn techniques to empower organizations just getting started on their accessibility journey to help them make informed decisions for the short-term and long-term success of their website.

Description

Watch this presentation in the Knowbility Learning Center

According to the WebAIM Million accessibility analysis completed in 2021, education websites had an average of 50.8 distinct conformance failures on their homepages. For organizations in education, such failures could be detrimental to their mission, with the risk of excluding the audiences they intend to reach directly impacting the success of their programs.

This session will present a case study for building an accessible WordPress site for an international environmental education program that reaches 2 million youth annually.
Participants will learn how as outside consultants, knowledgeable about web accessibility, we can empower organizations to make informed decisions at all phases of the design and development process including techniques to:

  • Build organizational awareness of key aspects to web accessibility and why its important to their mission
  • Engage stakeholders at all levels of an organization to feel invested throughout the design process
  • Design and present accessible design systems when they differ from brand styles
  • Guide organizations in understanding effort and impoact when developing accessible websites without overwhelming them with the technical details
  • Balance brand, business, and technical constraints to help organizations to develop a short-term and long-term plan for web accessibility
  • Ensure documentation for content development, implementation and long-term maintenance to support internal teams post-launch

The second half of this session will present key accessibility considerations when designing and building in WordPress including:

  • Mobile responsiveness
  • Filter and search pages
  • Module tabe page templates
  • Mega menus

Practical Skills

  • Participants will be able to identify techniques to help organizations understand why web accessibility is important
  • Participants will be able to identify techniques to empower organizations to make informed decisions to achieve accessibility for their website
  • Participants will be able to explain specific accessibility considerations for developing in WordPress