Accessibility July 13, 2011

Overview

Web accessibility for disabled users has been mandatory in the UK for several years now. Yet despite legislation introduced under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) many companies are still unsure where to start when it comes to compliance regulations.

This workshop offers a hands-on approach to accessibility compliance and inclusive design.

Who should attend?

All marketers who want to understand the business and brand benefits of an accessibility focus, as well as project managers who want to ensure their web projects comply with standards and legislation. Also valuable to web designers, whether agency or in-house.

How will I benefit?

You will gain a detailed working knowledge of the assistive devices used by disabled people to overcome web accessibility barriers, and an understanding of the accessibility compliance documents and laws. You'll be able to articulate to colleagues and managers how accessibility standards can be met, and how this will benefit your business. You'll also be able to evaluate your own website for accessibility and define how to meet accessibility standards.

What will I learn?

Through the day you'll learn how to champion the cause, identify compliance issues and build sites that are easy for anyone to use. What web accessibility means to those with disabilities, who it affects and how, as a business, you can meet compliance regulations. Understanding the problems will help you to identify solutions and give you the necessary know-how to build sites everybody can access and use.

A practical introduction of web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) will outline the issues, simplify the jargon and examine, in detail, the practicalities of creating accessible sites, dispelling commonly held myths along the way. The course will also provide you with a range of simple tools and techniques such as The Paciello Group tool 'Web Accessibility Toolbar', a tool bar for testing for accessibility compliance within your business, and introduce future trends such as accessible PDFs, Flash and cross platform (TV and mobile) compliance.

Topics:

Accessibility standards explained
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
Text alternatives for non-text content
Audio and video and treatment for captions, transcripts and audio controls
Navigating content and the use of code structure and relationships
Sensory characteristics
Use of colour
Use of the keyboard
Form labelling and error messaging
Page language and titles
Main disability types
Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) Guidelines
Legal standing

Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)


Introduction to accessibility

What does it mean?
Who's affected?
Assistive technology demonstration (Jaws, Lynx and ZoomText)
Video presentations


Creating accessible sites

Dispelling common myths
Easy work-arounds
Writing for the web
Basic best practice compliance


Practical examples

Walkthrough of WCAG 2.0 Level 1 (A) and Level 2 (AA) checkpoints


Practical introduction to WCAG

Overview of simplified standards
Participatory site inspection


Testing for accessibility compliance

Simple tools and techniques available to everyone
Demonstration of The Paciello Group tool 'Web Accessibility Toolbar'
Automated testing vs Manual testing
User testing


Future trends

Cross platform compliance (TV and mobile)
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)
Accessible PDFs
HTML 5.0
Video presentation