Hi!
Live list of links lives in the Accessibility workshop channel of the Software Testing New Zealand Discord group.
Table of contents for this page:
About the workshop
Schedule
- 9.30am–10.45am: Session 1
- 10.45am–11.15am: Morning tea
- 11.15am–12.30pm: Session 2
- 12.30pm–1.30pm: Lunch
- 1.30pm–2.45pm: Session 3
- 2.45pm–3.15pm: Afternoon tea
- 3.15pm–4.30pm: Session 4
Key takeaways
- How to think more accessibly by thinking more broadly and being able to spot potential barriers to access.
- How to test more accessibly by using the keyboard, browser extensions, automated testing, and using assistive technology.
- How to help our colleagues make more accessible things by using the social model of accessibility, annotating and checking designs, and writing semantic HTML.
- How to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 Level AA and go beyond them by thinking and testing more accessibly.
For a really wide view of accessibility, check out More Accessible Products.
The big picture
- Barriers to access is one of way of thinking about accessibility. A disability, a mismatch, occurs when someone’s ability comes into contact with a barrier in the product or service. It’s our job to find and remove the barriers, and to avoid putting more up in the future.
- ARIA stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications and is the add-on, extra, stuff (states and properties using HTML attributes) we can put in our HTML to make it more accessible.
- The first rule of ARIA is: “use HTML instead, if you can.”
- There’s also the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) for guidance on how to build accessibility semantics into web patterns and widgets.
- axe is a widely used and respected engine of rules for checking accessibility. It can be run as a linter, as a browser extension, or as part of your automated testing (Projects that use axe-core).
- Audits are a common way to formally review a product for accessibility. This is commonly done against a standard, often the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Version 2.1, Level AA. Version 2.2 was finalised in October 2023.
Agenda
Session 1
- Short welcome presentation.
- 10 minutes of testing with axe DevTools browser extension.
- Get testing!
- Read through the the activities list.
- In particular, the accessibility tree and the start here section.
Session 2
- Short WCAG presentation.
- Carry on testing using the the activities list.
- Lunch activity.
Session 3
- Follow up on lunch activity.
- Something a bit fun for 10 minutes.
- (Accessible) Video, audio, or both (think more broadly about alternate formats).
- Play Hocus focus (have a bit of fun with keyboard interactions).
- Carry on testing using the the activities list.
Session 4
- Reorient after the break.
- Bringing it all together with a 5W1H (What, When, Where, Who, Why, How) questions exercise.
- (Re)connect to Session 1 and barriers and spectrum and humans.
- Carry on testing using the the activities list.
- Feedback form. Three open questions, all optional:
- What worked well? 👍
- What could we change? Δ
- Anything else? ☺️