I went to a talk at lunchtime last Friday entitled ‘WCAG 2.0 for usability specialists’ by Mike Cooper from W3C.
Actually it was just outlining how lots of usability improvements automatically make sites more accessible and that this cross over is expanding. Especially so with the advent of mobile browsing, for example, how looking at sites on a smaller screen puts us in a similar position as some people who have accessibility issues.
It was a super interesting talk and pitched perfectly for non -accessibility buffs, using straightforward examples from the WCAG like:
- Colour – resolution, making content easier to read
- Keyboard – making sites usable without a mouse
- Focus -not having distracting pop ups or at least beingable to disable them
- Text – making text descriptive and ensuring logical titles/headings so you know where you are on a site etc. Also ensuring text is not specialised and too advanced
- Navigation – keeping it consistent, and ensuring its obvious where you are.
There were loads more pointers, here is the link to his presentation for more detail: http://www.w3.org/2010/Talks/04-08-BUG-MC/
The main things I learnt were that:
- I think our sites and consideration of accessibility is pretty good.
- If anyone insists on a site being triple A compliant they don’t understand the Guidelines very well.
- There are loads of open source and browser based tools which simulate vision impairment/ screen readers which are available.
A lot of this stuff is common sense but I think that makes it harder to engage with exactly WHY accessibility is important and not just a standard to comply with – it is actual users at the end of the day not box ticking.
Talk was free = win.
*Update: My colleague emailed Mike with more specific questions, to which he received an instant and lengthy reply full of incredibly useful advice and help. I won’t reproduce his email here but I encourage people to seek out advice from the W3C folks on accessibility – they genuinely want to and will help.
