Access all Areas

I attended Cordellia Yokum's Usability for everyone: Are you excluding some users from accessing your website? workshop at CAST 2022.

As I can't do justice to a packed and interactive five-hour session in a short post like this, I'm going to simply drop bullet lists and links from the notes I took here.

Accessibility

Not just about disability
Auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, visual
US: one in four have some disability
Small screens, elderly users, slow internet, poor lighting conditions, etc
SEO benefits from being able to access content
Accessibility is not a project. Like Quality, improve it incrementally and continually

Assistive technologies

Screen magnifiers (e.g. web browser zoom)
Text readers (e.g. blind and partially-sighted, ADHD, dyslexia sufferers)
Speech recognition software
Head pointers, motion tracking (often for paraplegic users)
Single switch entry (e.g. sip and puff mouth operation; keyboards with "quick buttons")

POUR

Perceivable
Operable
Understandable
Robust
Quick (and interactive) reference
Filter aggressively for your immediate need
Covers test ideas, success criteria, fail criteria
Baseline AA, cherry pick from AAA (for most contexts)
Some judgement calls may still need to be made

Perceivable

Text alternatives for non-text content (e.g. text button, alt, captions)
Content that can be presented in different ways without losing meaning
Make it easy for users to see and hear content (e.g. use landmarks for navigation)

Operable

Navigation of components; make all functionality available from the keyboard
Time to read and use content - "you have three minutes to finish your purchase"
Don't make people sick or ill when using your page (e.g.seizure inducing images)
Don't let people get trapped in the content (e.g. can tab across all fields)
HTML5 with Semantic Elements gives much of this already
Subverting the intent of HTML (e.g. Div as button) causes problems.

Understandable

Text is readable
Content appears consistent and predictable
Often about form inputs and labels
Behaviour that is flagged
Errors that make sense

Robust

HTML code is valid
Don't abuse JS and DOM updates because you can
Use HTML5's semantic elements and get benefits out of the box
Linters can help, but dynamic content won't usually be checked by them

Oracles

WAI-ARIA
WCAG
W3C HTML validator
Contrast Finder
aXe extension
Lighthouse extension
WAVE extension
Accessibility Insights extension
Chrome Dev Tools, Accessibility section in element mouseover
Chrome Dev Tools, Accessibility Tree in Elements pane

Colour

Contrast has strict pass/fail rules
... but they are still contextual (e.g. gradient, font size, interactivity, opacity etc)
Use pure hex numbers don't lighten with CSS
Sometimes perception is not the same as the standards
Remember colourblindness
Remember different states of page elements (Dev tools can force states)
Get the designers to use tools e.g. Figma plugin
CSS prefers-color-scheme (respects Dark mode)
Avoid large blocks of pure red (because seizures)

Motion

Migraine sufferers, users with ADHD can be affected
Need to give people the ability to reduce motion
CSS prefers-reduced-motion respects preference settable in OS (e.g. Mac "Reduce Motion")
Limit any flashes to max 3 (because seizures)

Alternative Text

Provides value for screen reader, SEO, and slow connection
Different rules for different elements (decision tree)
Empty alt attribute stops screen readers verbalising the URL (!)
Link to deeper description when you have a complex image (e.g. chart)
Audio and video: consider transcripts

Zoom and Reflow

Keeping the website responsive in zooming or magnification
Simple heuristic step up to +400% zoom, inspecting at each increment
Avoid horizontal scrolling: hard to navigate; context is lost
Images should be resized for the page
Page elements moving to be in the viewport is fine

Keyboard navigation

Web Accessibility in Mind guidelines
For vision (including focus) and mobility-impaired users
Also power users
Safari - has some weird preferences on keyboard navigation
Interesting conversation around defaulting keyboard focus
... into search box in modal dialog vs new page vs results)

Forms

Using for=id allows label text to link to the page element with name
Group by role to aid navigation
Remember the difference between submit button and a link
Disabling a button until fields are filled blocks readers
Attribute aria-disabled (ref) allows focus but still notes it as disabled on the page
Clickable div element might look like a button (!) but screen readers don't see it

Error Handling

Colour should not be the only indicator of a failure or required
Use aria-live to announce issues
Announce issues at the top and on the specific elements
... with jump links from the top to the issue
Be explicit about how to fix them

Autocomplete

very helpful to those who have to type with mouth etc
reduces mistakes generally

Comments

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