Web Accessibility

Udacity has a free Accessibility course made by Google that provides a pretty good overview.

https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

Free course on Web Accessibility from Google!

A free Web Accessibility course by Google on udacity

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A little difficult to go over everything that is needed to get this library into a state where the accessibility isn't complete garbage.

A few things to think about: Make sure that when the drawer is open tabbing works properly and that focus is directed to the correct location. Use of ARIA attributes to make sure that a screen reader would have a better understanding of what's going on. The drawer also needs a keyboard trap to make sure that a user can't tab out of the drawer when it's open.

There is a pretty good course on Udacity from a team at Google that goes over most of the things to look for when considering web accessibility. I would highly recommend it if you're looking to learn more and think the specs are boring.

https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

I'm not blind or rely on screen reader technologies, but I do do consulting for Fortune 100 and government agencies.

It really depends -- the most important thing is to make things consistent. Following WCAG ( Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ) is a great place to end up -- but generally if you follow some general rules like using button and anchor tags for clickable areas instead of styling divs with JS click handlers, and ensuring that you can access your entire website without a mouse ( using your keyboard ) you're 90% of the way there.

Udacity / Google has a great overview program -- kind of lengthy but it's a good intro https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

There's a pretty solid free Udacity course on web accessibility here: https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

I took it a while back and liked it for the most part - it is a little hand-holdy, but overall decent.

From experience, I can tell you that bringing in accessibility as soon as possible will make things go much faster. If you bring in accessibility at the end, you'll find yourselves having to go back and redo things that you thought were already done, possibly even starting from scratch. I would suggest at the bare minimum you and your developer do the accessibility 101 course at Udacity, it's free and will give you a great head start, preventing you making the most common mistakes. Then test, all the way through the process. Test with tools and manually test with screen readers.

Free course by Udacity sponsored by Google: https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

Google have a free course on Udacity which covers a lot of ground very well.

https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

These are great videos! This is apart of Google's free online web accessibilty Udacity course: https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

Highly recommend checking it out.

Entry-Level Job hunting

Hi, I just graduated June this year and started studying web development since then. I followed a course about becoming a full stack developer on Udacity and I'm close to finishing it. I now know basics about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python and PostgreSQL.

Is it enough to land an Entry-Level Developer job? Is there a minimum requirements for qualifying as a dev? I asked this cause i rarely got replies on my email application(could be my resume tho). and also is it worth changing language as most jobs here in my country wants PHP instead of Python. Here are the lessons on the course on Udacity. I would also appreciate it if you could suggest another course to follow or take to help me become better.

Part 1: Developer Tools

1. Shell WorkShop
2. Git & Github - Part 1, Part 2
3. HTTP & Webservers
4. Networking For Developers

Part 2: Databases with SQL & Python

1. Intro to Relational Databases

Part 3: Servers, Authorization, and CRUD

1. Full Stack Foundations
2. Authentication & Authorization
3. RESTful APIs

Part 4: Deploying to Linux Servers

1. Configuring Linux Web Servers

Extracurricular Material

1. Web Accessibility
2. Javascript Design Patterns
3. Intro to AJAX

Interviewing

1. Full-Stack Interview Prep

Im now at "Authentication & Authorization"

Google has its web accessibility course for free on udacity, and the very first video is one of my very favorite videos on helping someone understand the value of web accessibility: https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

hey you might be interested to know that edx web accessibility course is free and goes over much of this. There is also googles course which is also free.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 are split into 3 levels: A, AA and AAA. AA is where most businesses aim for, as AAA is either too costly or too challenging to incorporate. Instead some businesses may aim to extend into AAA in specific areas to support particular audiences or because they have a limited amount of content that would require work to meet AAA, many businesses don't though.

WCAG is only one side of the story though, it is also important to understand issues that could arise when using assistive technologies too. So at a minimum there should be a period within your development cycle where testing is undertaken with these tools, and stakeholders in the business get an opportunity to understand how users use these tools. Tools like NVDA, VoiceOver (iOS and macOS) and Windows Magnifer are free to use, so easy to become familiar with. Deque have a good list of shortcuts and controls for these tools (they also do some very good courses)

One thing I would say is essential to consider is that a working standard or accessibility policy can't be introduced overnight. There will be changes that impact development/design time initially and some of your team members may be either resistant or inexperienced, so it will take some time for them to find their footing. Start small, focus on a few areas to improve on at a time rather than leaping and saying 'from tomorrow all of our sites will be AA'.

Another wildcard with this is that your clients may have different ideas to the business and the content to any application or website, they may have a specific design in mind or branding that makes colour contrast difficult. So your initial goal may be to ensure the code base, components, templates, etc you are using are meeting the standards you want or allow content to be added in a way that promotes accessibility. Once that's in place then client challenges become easier to tackle, though some will always want something that falls outside of being accessible.

Which probably brings me on to my last point in this braindump, for an accessibility policy to work it has to be a point of discussion at every point in the product process, from your sales team explaining why it's important to clients, to designers ensuring they are using colours and fonts that improve accessibility, to developers and content creators understanding how their work shapes much of the accessibility of the product. Also testers, make sure someone tests these things along the way. You don't want to get to the end of development to find out your core colour palette is not accessible.

For intro courses, I've always been a fan of this one: https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

I would also recommend watching this which shares why accessibility is so important https://accessmovie.org/

Am sure others will have some fantastic insights too but happy to answer any other q's you might have, as I realise what I've written above probably is a bit high level.

Don't underestimate the amount of accessibility you get out of the box by using properly-structured HTML and using the right element for the right job. For example, if you use a button element with a click handler on it, the browser will automatically make that element focusable and will execute the click handler if enter is hit while it's focused, and the element will be flagged up as a button to screenreader users. If you use a div or some other element with a click handler, you have to do all that shit yourself.

The other thing that's really helpful is learning the basics of using a screenreader for yourself. VoiceOver is built-in in MacOS and you can get NVDA for Windows for free or a small donation. There's a bit of a learning curve to it but it's invaluable for making sure your site is comprehensible to visually impaired users. If you can afford it there's also no substitute for usability testing with disabled users, who use assistive technologies every day and can tell you about problems that you might not notice otherwise.

I'd highly recommend checking out this Udacity course from Google on web accessibility: https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891. It's free and pretty short but has a lot of great material and exercises.

Hi there,

There is a lot of confusion around web accessibility, WCAG well organized and give you great guidelines.

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Sadly... there is no free lunch you need somebody to review the documentation and your website with some technical knowledge and WCAG concepts.

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My suggestions in general are:

1) Use an automatic tool to test Accessibility bugs ( there are good open source ones online)

2) Have somebody review the website, (i.e. Developer who knows WCAG and for the best results also somebody who have the disability )

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Last suggestion:

A good introduction is for a dev follow this courses https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891 and a web designer check https://www.microsoft.com/design/inclusive/

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Last last suggestion:

Try to do accessible web from start, remediate a website is painful and in my experience is never the best results

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I hope it helps, Good luck!

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It would help if you specify your country. I don't know if Web Accessibility standards is the same in other countries as it is in the USA. I think it could be but I'm not sure.

Even if it's just learning how to do web accessablity, you need conform to the practice based on where you live. These are a start if you live in the US and perhaps other places:

1. https://scrimba.com/g/gdesign
2. https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/
3. https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/
4. https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

For Number 1: UI/UX is essential to web accessablity.

For Number 2: I think it's the worldwide standard since it is on the World Wide Web Consortium website.

For Number 3: Go to bottom of page where Page Structure, Menus, etc. are located.

For Number 4: It's new, I think I'll look at it myself later when I need to worry about it.

Your plan is perfect. All webpages come down to html, css, and Js so learn those well. Php is in demand so worth learning if you want a job. Node is in demand. Python is great for learning to code.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/

https://github.com/P1xt/p1xt-guides/blob/master/job-ready.md

https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap

For learning to code (not web dev specifically), this course is a bit challenging: (It is free don't pay for the certificate.)

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-using-python

https://www.edx.org/course/programming-web-javascript-pennx-sd4x

https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-web-programming-with-python-and-javascript

Udacity has some good free classes:

https://www.udacity.com/course/es6-javascript-improved--ud356

https://www.udacity.com/course/javascript-design-patterns--ud989

https://www.udacity.com/course/javascript-testing--ud549

https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891

https://www.udacity.com/course/version-control-with-git--ud123

Thanks for the good insights.

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We do not have a tiered support system, but each of support team members has a fairly technical and comprehensive knowledge of our products, and they are trained to give thorough and custom-tailored replies. With the right support documentation they could serve as a rapid front-line for small a11y difficulties. More complex issues/bugs should definitely redirect to dev team.

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We're still developing support documentation (as described by Section 508, Chapter 6, '602 Documentation'), but we'd also like to provide support staff with some sensitivity training and general awareness of accessibility tech and types of disabled users. We plan to cobble some resources together along with our own training (having staff try the product using screen-reader, etc.). But additional recommendations of good materials tailored for this purpose would be super helpful.

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The 2011 draft rule for Section 508 had some nice tips on training:

> Advisory 603.2 Information on Accessibility and Compatibility Features.
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>A best practice is for ICT support services to provide training programs about the following topics:  accessibility requirements for individuals with disabilities; methods of communication used by individuals with disabilities; assistive technology commonly used with ICT products; designing for accessibility; solutions for accessibility and compatibility of ICT with assistive technology; the use of people-first language; and sensitivity training concerning disability issues.

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Here are examples of some resources I'm evaluating:

• https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891 (more for dev/design)
• https://www.section508.gov/training
• https://www.section508.gov/508-training/courses/new/
• https://www.freedomscientific.com/services/disabilityetiquettetraining/
• https://accessforward.ca/
• https://www.w3.org/WAI/perspective-videos/

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Any further tips or recommendations would be great. Especially relating to web/phone support, support for web content, and US laws.