Evaluating accessibility when time is scarce

Accessibility evaluation is something that, with practice, becomes second nature. It is incredibly detailed work requiring technical knowledge, patience and knowledge of specific tools. However, for many, it is also not something we do daily. It is just one of many things we must do to help advance accessibility within our organizations. Time needs to be divided between evaluation and an array of other tasks. At the same time, anyone doing evaluation work is looking for cheat codes to help cover more ground in less time. Or, at the least, we’re all looking to find ways to keep from being a bottleneck in our shop and keep things moving.

In March 2022, Rob joined WebAIM and became part of its evaluation team in addition to his other responsibilities. Prior to that, though, he spent over eight years doing ad hoc evaluations for a diverse set of organizations. In this session, you will reap the benefits of looking back on his previous role after learning a lot at WebAIM.

The session will focus on both manual and automated approaches to testing. It will also focus on ways to approach evaluation work in a more strategic way. Several key decisions about the evaluation’s purpose greatly impact the effort required to meet the organization’s goals. Paying close attention to the “why” helps to expose ways to keep things moving. There are efficiencies to gain at almost every step of the process. We’ll start at the beginning and work through scoping, planning, performing and reporting on accessibility in web properties.

Demo activities will also cover some of the common barriers in modern websites to highlight accessibility antipatterns that designers and developers often overlook.

Presenter

Rob Carr — WebAIM

Shortcode

UAD4

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