Accessibility for Project Managers

welcome everybody so today we're going

to talk about accessibility for project

managers and they just want to set that

an expectation I am NOT gonna be talking

about how to do it so there might be

some developers in here that might be a

little disappointed but we'll touch on

some notes about that later in the

presentation

it's a little bit about me I've been

doing this gig for a while 20-plus years

we won't go into how many exactly but

not

I have been with bounteous for 14 of

those years

today the objectives of this

presentation and what I'm hoping that

everybody here gets from it is why why

is less ability like why do we care what

project managers need to know and then

what we need to do

so making the case for accessibility as

project managers I think most of us are

considered change agents for either our

projects or our stakeholders and so it's

really important I believe that we need

to be the ones to make sure that we're

having these types of conversations so

this is just a quote from Tim

berners-lee you know it's the inventor

of the world wide web but the power of

the web that's in its university

allottee access by everyone regardless

of disability is an essential aspect

um so what is accessibility you know I'm

not going to dive too much into it

because hopefully since you're all here

you do know what it is have some

interest in it but it really is

referring to a person's ability to use

or benefit from a product or a service

and I think or I suspect that most of us

typically think of accessibility in

terms of a physical on mobile or some

type of physical disability so it's a

little amazing if you think about some

of these statistics that this is the

most recent one that I could find for

the World Health Organization but by

there's approximately you know 7 plus

million people in the world and 15% of

them have some sort of permanent

disability and if you think about this

in the context of a personal attributes

you're thinking about it as any type of

restriction or lack of ability to

perform a task or function and one might

expect somebody to you however not all

disabilities are a health more physical

health

so some disabilities are temporary and

some are situational so from that

context if you think about it we've all

had some sort of a disability almost

daily in our lives if you think of a

disability as a change in your

environment so think of something like

you're at restaurants or hear a loud

crowd and they're trying to use your

phone and you can't care very well or

you're in your car or you have a plane

sign next to you new parents how many of

you have been trying to go about your

day with the kids strapped on your head

and one arm you know you're trying to do

stuff one-handed most of the day and

then if you think of it as situational

in the short term so now my context and

you can think about this as you know

looking into a bright light as as you're

trying to drive if you're looking up

into the Sun something that is

short-term and will change in the

short-term we're in a caste ordering

dinner and a foreign restaurant

this is a quote from Microsoft exclusion

happens when we solve problems using our

own biases so as developers and as

citizens of the world you know we're

really trying to optimize our

experiences for our clients if you you

know aren't a consultant or your

stakeholder if it's it within your own

company but we often use ourselves as a

baseline so we always think of a

situation in comparison to what we know

and what we think and we consider all of

those experiences as we compare them

with ourselves every decision that we

make throughout our delivery process is

going to affect some sort of access to

our web sites

the entropy is a really important part

of our job

you know we're advocates for our clients

and our stakeholders and for their

products so empathy really is just the

capacity to really understand what

others are feeling as if you were that

person in their frame of reference

one nice thing is with a lot of the

different SEO guidelines a lot of what

Google takes into account as they

consider SEO a lot of accessibility

overlaps with that so if you are going

through the process of making your sites

accessible you're going to get SEO tweak

from Google on that it also just

overlaps with other best practices and

device independence the UN Convention of

course considers the rights of persons

with disabilities and recognizes that

and then of course accessibility is

required in many many situations by Bob

and that is enough to convince you we

have here

you know litigation so nobody wants to

be taken to court actually in 2000 this

is a little bit of an old statistic in

I had just thought statistic actually

yesterday and she doesn't 18 that number

has almost tripled to well over 2000

federal lawsuits that were filed just

this last year alone

I had a couple use cases up here

Domino's Pizza was taken to courts in

impaired and was not able to order a

pizza

using their websites that actually is

still in trial that's going back and

forth a little bit and then in 2000

later that in 2017 when Dixie actually

lost their first round where the

district court actually did rule that

public accommodation is under the ADEA

Act did need to be applied and then most

recently and sure you probably have all

heard about the axes when tonight which

was in the news somewhat recently before

the holidays where somebody who was

vision impaired was trying to buy

tickets to a concert and wasn't able to

use her her web site appropriately does

she

she and her production company

as soon as well so nobody obviously

wants to be in court over this

um a little bit could be a little bit of

a controversial statement adopting

accessibility is never about designing

and developing with accessibility in

mind it's not even about adopting an

epithet sympathetic culture obviously

these things are extremely important but

if you just take a step back and really

think about your stakeholders and your

clients really what you're trying to do

is achieve better outcomes for their

users or your users and you think about

that from a grander sense of you know

being in a world citizen and making good

choices I you know accessibility will

come along with that

so what do you need to know as project

managers I really have a strong opinion

that all practice managers really need

to have a good working knowledge of

accessibility in order to do our jobs so

these next several sites there's a lot

of text I'm just going to warn you and I

do have a lot of links so that you guys

you know can go back and reference some

of this information in a lot more detail

than what's going to fit on a PowerPoint

slide but here's just some of laws and

guidelines that really affect

accessibility and um you know we have

section 508 from the Rehabilitation Act

of 1973 however it was wk was

incorporated into it is recently as 2017

which is I think why we've seen this

topic come up quite a bit in

conversations and the lot of students

kind of taken off section 504 covers

that there's also the ADEA title 3

the EU they called the standard en 301

consideration and then I have a link

here this links back out to the W keg

sites that has the full list of laws and

regulations and guidelines by country

so w pack 2.1 for those of you who

aren't familiar with it this was the 2.0

was the first attempt written several

years ago to put some guidelines in

place as we as developers are developing

websites 2.1 was the first major

revision of this and it was done very

recently and again I have some links out

there so you can go out and take a look

at that in more detail but wk is

organized as 12 bag lines with four

principles and three levels which we'll

go into in a second and then just so

that everybody is aware 2.2 is actually

already in progress it's actually

expected to be a major revision and I

last time I checked there was not a

timeline of sign

the poor framework so everything those

mentioned all rap up to these four

concepts so is your sight perceivable

operable understandable and robust and

under each of those four categories are

a number of items to help guide us as

we're building our websites and I've

gone into a lot of detail here but

generally speaking from a perceivable

standpoint you want to just make sure

that you're asking yourself when you're

asking your teammates and your fellow

developers is there anything on our

website that a blind deaf and low vision

colorblind person would not be able to

pursue you so if you think about this

was look at Beyonce into trouble is

providing text alternatives to non-text

content and in captions or some other

type of alternative for videos or

CAPTCHA making their content adaptable

so that it can be used by assistive

technologies I am going to challenge all

of you when you get back to your desktop

to actually go into your browser and

turn on your audio to have it read back

the site to you you would be amazed just

amazed the other thing that you want to

try to do as is just to see how it works

try tabbing through your site and see

where the tabs take you and if it even

makes sense from a design perspective it

should contrast and another one is often

forgotten is relying on color to convey

meaning so you don't always want to rely

on color to convey meaning because you

know some people are colorblind and up

here

a color to suggest a link someone might

not be able to see that that action

easily

operable can all the functions of your

website be performance with the keyboard

so this is a little bit what I was

getting to with tabbing through your

site and seeing if your site actually

works logically as you would intend any

any person to use with the attacks

there do you remember from the 90s when

there used to be all kinds of blinking

things on websites or rotators that

rotate very quickly you know that can

cause seizures your weight finding you

just want to make sure that how you have

your content set up it's easy for

anybody to be able to find what they're

looking for in a website and then

obviously giving your users enough time

to read and use the content so this

comes back to if you do use carousels

oftentimes they're used as billboards on

your front page you know making sure

that it's slow enough and that your

users any user has enough time to be

able to read all of that content

understandable so ask yourself is all of

the text on your website clearly written

our all of the interactions easy to

understand

happy should be written in an eighth

grade level you want to break up your

long forints I think there was a session

right before this about accessible

forums which I did not get to plea but

you want to break that up so that the

information is in chunks and it's easy

for a user to be able to follow what

you're doing you want to make your

content up here and operate in

predictable ways so you know if if you

have form and you know somebody's

tabbing through it someone would expect

to go from input to input to input and

not from this and put down to this input

and then back up again so make it

perform as you would continue and help

users avoid incorrect mistakes so this

is an important one and if I think there

was also another session on this too if

you're usually the son of alerts to help

people use your website you're doing

something wrong you know help users

avoid making any type of mistake and if

they do again you're gonna want to make

those ears very clear for the user to

see into under

what we need to do to correct it and

robust so this probably has the least

amount of detail but those are what's I

only support the newest browsers or

operating systems I think everybody in

here could probably do a collective

groan if you bring up I you seven but

you know know your audience and just

make sure that you're using well

formatted HTML so that your browsers can

read everything properly

so the level of conformance are usually

referred to as a level a level double-a

and a little triple-a and I get a lot of

questions about well what is the right

level so again you're going to want to

work with your legal departments whether

it's yours or your clients legal

department to really know what to

understand what they're comfortable with

but what I would say is everybody should

be coding and designing to a level any

that's just essential if you can do

Double A that's really really important

and of course if you can spend the time

and you have the budget to be able to do

Triple A you know that's just more more

special sauce

this next section is meant to be a

reference for everybody in take-home

slides but essentially what I've done is

I've linked just a ton of information

out here and there's a ton more but I

got links here to a lot of different

resources that you can use of course

there's the w3c which has all of the W

CAD guidelines there's a really nice

website out there the accessibility

project that has a lot of information is

very helpful web a I am Berkeley has a

whole section on their websites about

Web Access Microsoft has a nice

inclusive design presentation and then I

also put a link in here to Aria which is

the W tag language for your marker

the other thing just to mention in

Drupal 8 a lot of accessibility

requirements have been written into core

and so I have these all listed here and

then contributed modules that you could

also use that could help with a lot of

them are with admin editing so that you

can help your clients or whomever your

marketers to help themselves so that

there is some guidelines as they're

tightening content to understand and to

help them correct their own mistakes

tools and test apps so there are a

couple checklists here that you can use

as well that summarize the wk very

nicely and then the other thing I wanted

to point out that there are several

different acts and/or checkers that you

can use to run on pages of your website

and they'll help you go through and see

them flag errors that it needs

there's also some that will help test

your color contrast and the only thing

that I would just caution about some of

these is that it's a very manual process

so you as you go through when you start

you think needs to assess you know

really where you're cited that today

you're going to start to notice that

there's there's a lot of flags in these

error reports and someone is going to

have to go through and review each of

them to decide if it's something that

you want to address or to decide the

priority of it so just make sure that as

you're going through this you're

appropriating the amount of time that's

needed to really give it a true justice

so what do you need to do so if your

clients or your stakeholders aren't

already asking you about accessibility

and about how you know accessable your

site is then you need to be really

bringing this up with your clients or

your stakeholders

some might set so this is an

individual's collection of thoughts and

beliefs that shape their thoughts and

their habits it's a way of thinking and

we think about accessibility as an

add-on almost so how you change your

team's mindset to really incorporate

this throughout their process so a

couple couple things that I like to

think about here is really you know I

don't be reframing our approach to

accessibility

one item would be to integrate

accessibility compliance throughout the

deliverable don't think of it as an

add-on the feature don't think of that

as something we're going to do at an end

you know this is something that you're

going to want to make sure is included

really in every card or every ticket

that you're you're doing ensure that all

of your user stories if their acceptance

criteria has accessibility written into

them make it simple make it simple for

your users make it simple for your

stakeholders organize all of your

materials and your references so that

it's really easy for clients or even for

team members to find information

regarding it content authors you know

hold the training have a collection of

materials we're making reference so that

they can really understand how of what

they need to do in order to comply

and it changed priorities so the choices

that people make are reflections of

things that they see is most important

so make this most important for them you

know really get in there and make your

stakeholders understand what the

consequences are of not doing this and

not including it in your projects and in

your budgets and then I drew this in

here the last time and I think we've all

heard of this if you hear it seven times

it kind of sticks so you know just keep

reading it up and bringing it up and

bring it up and eventually people are

going to be like oh yeah we probably

need to do that don't we

I like to say you know I think at this

point now that we have gotten through

the 90s of web development we really

think as SEO or responsiveness as just

something that it's a given I mean

that's just something you do it's as

part of your project so why aren't we

thinking about accessibility in that

same way if you are a consulting firm or

service firm and you're writing up

proposals and you're writing up

statements of work make sure that it's

all in those proposals make sure when

you're talking to clients or you're

selling to clients or your your business

development folks are talking and

speaking to you know your company's

expertise and sometimes that might mean

sitting down and teaching your BD folks

what accessibility is and why it should

be important to them

um just remember you know your estimate

should include it I think now whatever

we do esta made a project that we're

taking out to bid we always include SEO

and responsiveness again so again you

don't just make sure that you're taking

that into account when they're thinking

through your budgets and your timelines

now remember it's not just your design

folks and your experience folks that you

need your front end your back ends to

some extent and then your quality

assurance which I had mentioned a little

bit earlier that that's a little bit of

a manual process and then again your

timelines just need to be taken into

account as you're thinking through these

things

um I love this club if you say something

if you see something say something which

is actually from the Department of

Homeland Security and my favorite thing

and this is actually a quote from a book

that we had arena the company but do we

really need that slogan you know do we

really need to tell people if you see

something you should really speak up and

say something and speed out being a

citizen in the world so you know our our

companies hire us and our clients hire

us to be experts at what we do so make

sure you're just advising them on best

practices this is a great way to add

value to your partnerships with other

clients or even you know to add value to

your company

work with your team to understand what

really makes sense for each project in

each situation you know depending on

your audience

you might have different needs then

another website might have you also

might have different timelines then you

know another website has so just make

sure that you're all working together to

understand what is importance for this

particular website or situation most

importantly makes you curve including

legal departments so whatever decisions

your team is coming up with make sure

legal is agreeable to them and that they

are signing off ethics and that they're

formulating a point of view for their

business and then one of my favorite

speakers always says this don't forget

to leave your code in a better place

than how you found it

and then you know one of the big things

just to remember is this is the race if

you are starting out it's very easy to

include accessibility ad from the very

beginning of your project but if you're

already mature and a well-established

website

think of it as a crawl walk run you know

rome wasn't built in a day you know one

of my suggestions is just start with

some evaluation tool it's just kind of

get a level set as to where your website

at determine you know with your client

what are their goals you know what's the

most important part of the website to

take a step back and make accessible

maybe it's the navigation maybe it's

some particular content you know maybe

it's the e-commerce part of your website

whatever that might be you know make

sure you're prioritizing that another

idea is alternatively identify some easy

and quick wins so there might be some

really easy things you can do to make a

lot of effective or your sites that

could be something as easy as going in

and just tweaking some of your colors

you know sometimes it doesn't take a lot

to make the contrast better and that's a

super easy and super quick win another

thing is you know looking at all your

tags

making sure that you're requiring alt

tags and all of your images another

super easy quickly and of course you

know work for the now but you know make

a longer term road back decide you know

these are all the things that we really

think are important than the things that

we want to do and this is how we're

going to prioritize it and this is how

we're going to deliver it with the rest

of our work

I think I talked really fast that took a

lot longer before Oh does anybody have

any questions

so in terms of all tax I hop

we used to function under the idea that

image is really decorative old texts on

that and obviously you're saying making

a required field kind of goes and it's

not so what do you recommend in terms of

all times to put those situations yeah

absolutely there's a second question

there's um so the question is I there

there is a common practice that if a

image on your website is purely

decorative do you actually really need

to include alt text with it and then of

course I just presented to make alt text

required in your CMS then it's a great

question so you're absolutely right if

there is an image on your site that is

purely decorative and it doesn't add any

value or it doesn't add any value to the

meaning of what somebody might be

reading or understanding you don't need

to include the alt text

I was speaking more from a more general

standpoint as you are building the CMS

and you're handing it off to other

people who you know may not have as much

background you might want to make it

required so that they always remember to

add something

and I don't believe having it hurts you

from an SEO perspective so from my

perspective I'd like to you know I'd

rather have it in my habit you can also

make an alt tag blank so you get an all

equals quote because a screen reader

will read the URL of the image so if you

have all equals blank and or just alt in

the image time it won't read the URL and

so that's that's something we recently

learned is so so it does make sense in

that case because I think Drupal 8 does

this with their image module they will

put an alt tag on everything and then

whether or not is populated attached

there's also a wonderful decision

churkey

link that I can share trying to think of

the best place to share for everybody

that's asking questions like does the

image have words out of course it means

all times and it's a really good

decision tree to help you determine when

to and what not

yeah I can edit the presentation page

it's sort of forcing people to make the

positive choice to do it as blank is

really important which is why having it

required and then you have to put into

blank spaces or quotation Markus's yeah

I don't think there's consistence that

should be in Drupal but the idea of

making it required and forcing people to

do it is you know do something to say no

this is definitely decorative I

personally want that to be a checkbox

and and you know people just like so you

can have like a link but I'd be sitting

I'm creating and so like I am saying

that this is purely decorative and adds

nothing but I haven't open this but I

personally like to do fur to make

require that allow the correct user

experience for the editor of getting out

of there without putting in nonsense the

alt text which is a problem

any other questions

does anyone who ever looked at

conversion rates on sites that have

higher compliance to accessibility

question is has anybody ever looked at

conversion rates on websites that have a

higher accessibility I don't know

that's a really good has anybody here I

haven't but I hope because we're just

going into our major accessibility audit

and going through a lot of that based on

a lot of things that I've read I've

understand

anytime you address an accessibility

project it helps all users and so

anytime you have proper labels for forms

or even alt tags if someone's like

turned off images over on 3G or

something on their mobile device and the

images are slow that can only help

everyone so again I haven't measured it

that I'm tracking it now so when we're

done yeah with all the members hopefully

but yeah it's great

another question so it was brought from

the session before and I heard it in

recession as far as the reading level

being either ninth grade and keeping

term

simple that's not something that I've

ever really focused on with clients or

been able to test I wasn't sure how do

you know if your content is as simple as

it can be I always recommend you can say

it

do that and I don't know as far as the

reading level if I'm tracking and well

it's pretty Sweeting little or very

great like I don't know how to even

gauge that from so many content

if there's tools or suggestions for and

yeah so the question is is how do you

actually gauge what breathing level your

your website is at I honestly I don't

know myself I dunno you know just from

overall SEO perspective you want to keep

your site fairly simple you know I think

there's lots of studies that show what

users read and how much of it that they

read so you want to make sure that

you're keeping you know your most

partner content you know towards the top

into the left for left or even for

meters I so I don't know does anybody

else

through that and that's a readability

Stan

I'm not sure that spell fuzzy yellow

stages okay and

so that's a really popular one a really

efficient great

like that

CCH Sanskrit there are a lot of

different platforms about their

different readability tests that are all

kind of that's the standard and they all

have different user experiences that

they all go

love to hear how

he

you know like if you're a designer

developer you could

do it without anyone telling you right

do you like well just make that choice

but if you're in the role of project

management how do you

how do you Banja lies mm-hmm that's a

great question how do you evangelize

getting your team on board with

accessibility and including it in your

project and I have to be honest with you

I won't have any trouble with my

developers or my designers its managing

up that I have had experience with

trying to try to get other people to be

on board and it absolutely isn't easy

and that's where I would say to the best

that you can to reframe and make it you

know if you can make it their priority

and make it their decision if you can

which is a very difficult thing to do

but I'm sorry make it about money we

also I work with Heather

and we keep it in front of people so we

have I think I said this in the other

session we have lunch and learns and

we're constantly putting enough that we

have a slack channel and we get one

person from each team to kind of be

as you exit from the design team from

the development team and you're just the

lead ones when we read an article like

that he said Marco my same is being

raped is everybody here Oh bleep red

goes that article right now I would be

broke the web outstanding article that's

shared one of us shares it like five and

let's go oh you people to it that's the

kind of culture that we want to create

and people are surrounded by that when

they join they want to participate as

one so that's another tip that I give

you as we started together Heather with

this presentation

yeah grassroots you know get a couple of

your other team members who you know I'm

really passionate about it and you know

to me I think don't ask permission you

know ask for forgiveness later as you

start to do those types of things

aren't there tools that when you've run

to do the the accessibility testing it

and it Flags all things and there's

always lots of false positives are there

any tools that are better at letting you

keep false positives flag those don't

tell me again or at least don't tell me

for six months or like good actually

sacred

let's you do that I can't remember if

you can do with their free browser

plugin but you can definitely do with

their user things have to do it

per surface and it's just a check party

box you know I add this to the

dictionary or ignore this link but man

you all the manual like the browser

plugins you know you don't have that

sighted proposed a

EQ also average

by side tests confirm

really max

so axe tool sight improve and DQ are the

recommended tools that will allow a user

to allow a developer to go ahead and

flag false positives or at least flags

that you don't you know you are going to

deprioritize for some time it's being

tools like I kind of prefer as opposed

to using like the tools actually doing

it myself like actually using a screen

reader tabbing through

is there something similar you can do

for color contrast like is it helpful to

try to keep things in black and white

actors that are way to like you a as if

you were elder blind yeah the question

is is I if you were going to go through

and instead of using a tool to go

through and use the screen reader or tap

through a site by yourself is there it's

something similar or a way to do that

for color blindness there's a great tool

called no coffee filter I used that one

it's it's outstanding

there's also other link I'll work with

Heather to some of those but there's

another colorblind filter that changes

your page it breaks some functionality

but what I do is try and set up what I'm

looking for and then I like you in that

way but the no coffee filter not only

does colorblindness and the different

types of colorblindness because there's

a kind of just one but it also does like

people that have floaters so it'll make

fake floaters on the screen for you and

it also do like tunnel vision

it's pretty outstanding again not

hundred percent accurate but it does

help give me some perspective

that

it's orange developers to implement on

it allows the end user to select what

their issue is and then it alters some

of the code too

I believe it's called the facility it's

a french app facility with a - before

the

but we look at that floor Chicago Park

District it's a paid service that you

could implement into your

the users the ability to kind of select

and

physical changes that will happen to the

faith that's really cool

any other questions

you know if you do have an opportunity

please go ahead and provide feedback you

go up back out to this sessions of

webpage I personally would really

appreciate it and then it believes some

of the top-rated sessions are going to

be captions as well and I do have these

slides linked up there

for reference but we'll add some of the

other links and some of the other things

that came up to it so thank you

everybody