Designing good digital experiences for all users requires changing the culture of web development to understand and incorporate accessibility at all steps in the process.
Aditus enim omnes aditus (access for one, access for all)
Being able to access information is a core tenet of the internet, and access is particularly vital for educational resources and content. As it has matured, the internet has become increasingly sophisticated and complex, enabling new ways to present and interact with content online. However, those changes often present barriers for certain users. As web pages and websites have evolved from simple text to complex layouts, equal access to information has suffered.
Web development is a fast-moving field. Best practices evolve, and content changes almost daily. Access for users with disabilities is often treated as an add-on for a website or application being developed—something that is addressed after the wireframe is thought out, the content decided, and the code written.
Accessibility is good web development. Accessibility is not a project, not a one-and-done task, and shouldn't be an afterthought in the development process. It is a way of building robust platforms that are useful for everyone, not just a minority population. It is a way to create faster websites and applications, especially on mobile devices. Just as quality assurance and security must be monitored regularly to ensure that sites perform as expected, accessibility needs to be checked consistently—from concept to product development and beyond.
Embracing Accessibility Everywhere
Given how fast content and technology change, efforts to make content accessible can seem like something that will never be completed. The job of maintaining those efforts and responding to new tools and changes in user expectations requires a different mindset. It requires shifting the perspective from "checking a box" to improving the user experience for everyone.
Change is in the air. Growing numbers of colleges and universities are taking digital accessibility seriously and beginning to move toward ensuring access for all users. Some institutions are motivated because accessibility is the right thing to do; others are spurred by lawsuits or concerns over the possibility of legal action.1 Regardless, expertise about accessibility and staffing levels are growing.
Most institutions align their accessibility efforts with a set of standards known as the Web Consortium Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), at the middle level of conformance (AA). Although the specifics of accessibility guidelines matter, it's important to remember that users care about pleasant interactions, not "guideline 3.1.1. Language of Page." Digital goods that are accessible are more usable for everyone,2 and once this is understood, questions about user interaction start coming up in conversations about web development.
Getting Started
Colleges and universities can create a culture that views accessibility not as a chore but as an opportunity to improve the digital experience for all users. Accessibility professionals will point out that it is easier to build in accessibility from the start. But how is that practically done in an established workflow? How can you move from the stick to the carrot, from a reactive mindset to a proactive one? Plenty of resources are available—checklists, webinars, and articles3—but where does institutional change begin?
At Western Washington University, we have been on the path toward increasing access to digital properties for several years. Western's Web Communication Technologies department (WebTech) had laid the groundwork for accessibility, and then in early 2017, web accessibility became a higher priority when the university voluntarily entered a resolution agreement with the US Office of Civil Rights to make all web content accessible.
WebTech hired two accessibility professionals: one full-time accessibility engineer who suggests and makes code adjustments for increasing accessibility, and one part-time accessibility specialist who uses screen-reader technology to perform accessibility testing. Both provide accessibility training to campus content editors and web developers. And both had their work cut out for them.
In order to help WebTech's workflow and more effectively track Western's web assets (including URLs WebTech didn't even know existed!), Western purchased a web governance tool to get a baseline of Western's web accessibility and to see how to get closer to WCAG 2.0 AA compliance. Working on accessibility without a baseline would be extremely difficult, especially if your institution is as large or larger than ours. If you have a smaller set of pages, you could create a baseline manually or with a partner.
Based on the results, it was clear that there was a lot of low-hanging fruit that could be addressed by content editors. Common accessibility guidelines provide some straightforward recommendations: add an accessibility link to all footers; ensure that the form for reporting accessibility barriers is itself accessible; add alt text to all images. Web developers were able to address the systemic low-hanging fruit, such as ensuring that links have underlines, color contrast is sufficient, and skip links are included.
Even though these examples addressed immediate problems and improved accessibility, they still came from a reactive mindset. These fixes had to be patched into code, which meant noticeable design changes overnight. Content had to be rearranged for proper heading structure that should have been done in the first place, and captions had to be ordered from videos that could have had captions to begin with.
Transforming the Compliance Mindset
The move toward creating positive change and generating sustainable momentum to increase accessibility requires process changes, system evolution, and cultural transformation. This is difficult work and can be quite exhausting, but the impact it has on the digital experience is worthwhile. Moving beyond compliance not only makes websites, apps, and other tools better but also moves your institution to a more inclusive place and makes work more fun.
Several strategies can help build the foundation for a different mindset about accessibility:
- Training and Communication: Provide ongoing education about best practices through regular updates to training materials, internal workspaces, lunch-n-learns, one-on-one training, partnerships with various campus units, and other mechanisms. Be constant and consistent in your advocacy and awareness building, such as through email campaigns, reporting, and nudges.
- Development Framework: Purchase and/or build tools to support the work, and develop and maintain a strong design system that incorporates effective quality-control processes.
- Appropriate Staffing: Include people with disabilities in the work of building and testing systems and providing their perspective.
Make Sure All Key Players Have Training
Providing accessibility training to anyone who works with web content in any way is vital. When all users are on the same page and thinking about accessibility from a common base of knowledge, their daily work is no longer retroactive. They have ownership of making their content, code, and other resources better for everyone.
Considering user experience and accessibility provides a new lens through which to assess quality. Writers, editors, and content creators should understand the importance of following a certain heading hierarchy, what meaningful link text means, and why audiovisual media should be transcribed, captioned, and/or described.
More-technical trainings should be provided for developers, who will need a deeper understanding of accessibility practices in their environment. Staff involved with procurement and purchasing should also have training on what to look for in any accessibility documentation given in the procurement process, especially if a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) is provided.4
Consider these questions before setting up accessibility training:
- How will training be delivered? You might find that an in-person training model, an online model, or a combination of the two best fits your institution's needs.
- Who will create the training materials? You might create your own or choose to invest in a reputable accessibility training platform.
- Will users need to retake training? Keeping training current is a good practice, since the training content will likely need to be updated frequently due to changes in accessibility best practices. If you require users to retake training, you might consider how frequently site owners will need to take the training.
Use Development Frameworks That Support Accessibility
Retrofitting a site for accessibility while maintaining the cohesion of its look or functionality is difficult work. Building accessibility into a continuous integration / continuous development (CI/CD) workflow can prevent basic accessibility errors from slipping through into the live code. An accessibility engine such as Axe, in combination with CI/CD tools such as Nightwatch or Selenium, should be able to capture errors in code.
One step further could be running automated tests for a development build process in a task runner such as Gulp, Grunt, or Compass. This process informs the developer of errors before those problems are moved further along in the development cycle. If a task runner logs an error, the developer can address the issue immediately or seek feedback from colleagues.
The WebTech team at Western Washington University has been working toward this ideal. Currently the design and development team develops components for websites in a framework called Atomic Design, and we leverage a tool called PatternLab to review code for accessibility issues. Our code deployment process includes accessibility code review to prevent releasing inaccessible digital experiences. A preview is created automatically, allowing those who are not developers to review for usability. If it is accessible but has problems with user experience, we don't deploy it—instead, we refactor it to achieve both outcomes. Involving a wide range of users is important in building awareness throughout your team, department, division, and college/university system.
Hire Those Impacted by Your Accessibility Work
You can't fix something you are not aware is a problem. Hiring people with varying abilities shines a light on your digital properties and provides firsthand exposure to shortcomings. Experience working on web content, templates, new designs, and other products gets everyone thinking in more dynamic perspectives.
Including people with differing abilities on your team will allow for unique solutions and reinforce an accessibility-first approach in every project. The goal is to have diverse perspectives from users with a range of abilities and experiences providing real-time feedback about accessibility and usability. If hiring is not possible, consider visiting a user group and asking for feedback directly or looking at a partner agency such as Fable or Deque.
Skilled staffing is important because accessible web development is proper web development. If this development is not done intentionally, exclusion becomes intentional. This work is hard, and building a team that represents various experiences makes the work much more tangible.
Maintaining the Momentum
Sustaining progress in digital accessibility is certainly not easy. But when all stakeholders commit to improving accessibility, what may at first seem like an undue burden suddenly feels a little less burdensome. All of your users will thank you as you transform the accessibility work into user experience work.
Notes
- Martin LaGrow, "Accessibility at a Crossroads: Balancing Legal Requirements, Frivolous Lawsuits, and Legitimate Needs," EDUCAUSE Review, November 25, 2019. ↩
- Erin DeSilva, Adam Nemeroff, and Patricia J. Lopez, "Igniting a Universal Design Mindset on Campus," EDUCAUSE Review, December 4, 2017. ↩
- Thomas J. Tobin, "Taking IT Way beyond Accessibility: 5 + 4 = 1 Approach," EDUCAUSE Review, August 12, 2019. ↩
- 7 Things You Should Know About Technology Procurement for Accessibility (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2018). ↩
Carly Gerard is Web Accessibility Engineer at Western Washington University.
Max Bronsema is Director of Web Communication Technologies at Western Washington University.
© 2020 Carly Gerard and Max Bronsema. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 International License.