Accessibility Testing for Everyone - No Tools Required
taught by: Becky Gibson
Session Summary
You understand the importance of accessibility, but how do you express it to others? You may not have the time, knowledge, or budget to perform a full accessibility audit. This session will teach you how to do basic web accessibility testing with no special tools or technologies. Demonstrate the issues with your web assets to others. Give people an Aha moment - help them to understand the need for and commit to accessibility.
Description
Experiencing barriers firsthand can educate others to the importance of accessibility. With just a bit of knowledge, a keyboard, and reasonable vision you can perform a base level of accessibility testing. Use this skill to show others the basic barriers and why they must be fixed. Demonstrate how lack of keyboard support or visual focus can prevent some users from navigating a site or completing a task. Turn off the sound and experience why captions are essential for Deaf and hard of hearing but also help people learning a new language, and those with cognitive disabilities. Change the font size and experience horizontal scrolling or truncation of text.
This session will teach you how to perform basic accessibility checks without the need to learn HTML, navigate with a screen reader, or install a browser extension. We will test live websites together to understand the issues and how they affect people. These are tests you can quickly perform to demonstrate issues to “non-believers”.
Welcome everyone into the accessibility space and show them why access for all matters.
While we don’t want to rely on legal requirements to encourage others to adopt an accessibility mindset, it can help. Each of the tests provided will be referenced back to the appropriate success criterion within Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.2. This can provide the extra push that some people need to commit to accessibility improvements. Everyone can perform basic accessibility testing – come learn how.
Practical Skills
- Learn the basics of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
- Learn basic accessibility testing that can be performed by anyone without special tools.
- Understand how basic accessibility issues relate back to Web Content Accessibilty Guidelines Requirements.