Seminars overview

Accessibility Basics

Length: 90 minutes

The Accessibility Basics seminar covers the following:

  • What is online accessibility?
  • Why is it important?
  • Types of disabilities – including a demonstration of a screen reader, an onscreen keyboard and a thumb switch, as well as an activity to mimic a severe reading disability
  • Accessibility and the law – the Disability Discrimination Act, Web Advisory Notes
  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – Principles, Guidelines, Success Criteria, Techniques, Conformance levels
  • State / federal Government requirements (as applicable) – Conformance date requirements

Accessibility during a website build

Length: 60 minutes

This session focuses accessibility activities to perform at key stages of the web development lifecycle. These activities can ensure that a site is accessible as possible at launch.

Activities discussed include:

  • Request For Quote consultation
  • Staff training
  • Functional specification / Web Style Guide review
  • Wireframes / Design evaluation
  • Template evaluation
  • Website audit

Creating an accessible WordPress site

Length: 60 minutes

When AccessibilityOz released the Rooted in Rights website, a fully accessible WordPress site, it won the Australian Web Award for Accessibility. Gian Wild talks about how to make a site accessible to people with disabilities and compliant with Australian regulations, including WCAG2. Incorporating accessibility into your website build is important and can often mean the difference between an accessible and an inaccessible site at launch. Specific stages require accessibility intervention, including design, and template.

Interactive maps

Length: 45 minutes

Interactive maps are notoriously difficult to make accessible. In fact when it comes to accessibility for people with vision impairments, often it is assumed that maps cannot be made accessible. Gian Wild talks about the requirements for a fully accessible interactive map and how it can be accessible for all people with disabilities.

Mobile accessibility

Length: 60 minutes

Unfortunately, when developing WCAG2, the Working Group did not envision the current world where mobile is almost ubiquitous. For example, on a mobile device there is no continual access to a keyboard (unless someone is using it as an add-on to the device – or using a Blackberry Classic). WCAG2 requires that all content be accessible to the keyboard interface, but it does not require that all content be accessible to a mouse or to a touchscreen user – which is essential on a mobile device. Gian Wild talks about the unique accessibility issues on a mobile site and mobile app, including hover traps, VoiceOver swipe traps and zoom traps.

Accessibility is important to all – not everyone using your mobile app, device or wearable will be fully functioning either because they have a disability, or they are simply engaged elsewhere. Gian Wild talks about the things that are essential to avoid when designing mobile apps, devices and wearables to ensure that everyone can use them.

PDFs and accessibility

Length: 45 minutes

Gian Wild looks into PDF use and the experiences of both the general public and people with disabilities.

Gian will also talk about how to deal with the legacy PDF problem. She will explain how sometimes the best solution is not to make all your PDFs accessible, especially when resources are limited, and more importantly, how to meet accessibility requirements with thousands of untagged PDFs on your site.

Slideshows

Length: 45 minutes

Carousel. Slideshow. Slider. Whatever you call them, they’re ubiquitous on organizational home pages across the web—and almost all of them are inaccessible. Gian goes through the requirements for an accessible slideshow, including the ability to pause with the mouse and keyboard, controls, contrast and how to make sure a carousel is accessible to screen reader users.

Social media and accessibility

Length: 45 minutes

Social media accessibility is an incredibly important tool in modern society. It is not just the young who access social media, with close to 30% of people over the age of 65 interacting on social networking sites, and 50% of people aged 50 – 64. As the percentage of recruiters who use LinkedIn is now 95%, social media is becoming an essential part of negotiating the current working environment.

The main reason why social media is not accessible is that social networking sites and apps are almost continually refreshed. Facebook sometimes changes twice a day. This, coupled with a lack of a formal testing process, means that what may be accessible today may be literally gone tomorrow.

Gian Wild goes through the accessibility issues of each of the four main social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn) and discusses ways that you can make sure your social media content is accessible.

Video and accessibility

Length: 60 minutes

Gian Wild will talk through the accessibility requirements for making video accessible, including:

  • Making sure your video player is accessible
  • Making sure the video doesn’t start automatically
  • Making sure the content in the video is accessible
  • Providing a transcript
  • Providing captions
  • Providing audio descriptions
  • Providing sign language
  • best format for the web, and when given a choice, what people really prefer.

Video player accessibility

Length: 45 minutes

It’s not just videos that need to be made accessible: video players need to be accessible too! Gian Wild covers the common accessibility issues in thirty-seven different video players and presents the results of the third year of testing video player accessibility. By the end of the session you will know which video players are truly accessible and how to test your own video players for accessibility compliance.

Harvard and MIT have been sued by the National Association for the Deaf (supported by the Department of Justice) for lack of accurate closed captioning on their videos. However, the case also involves the inaccessibility of the video players.

AccessibilityOz has been testing the accessibility of video players for three years, including testing on mobile devices, mobile devices with a keyboard, different screen readers and a variety of operating systems and browsers. Gian explains the importance of video – especially to people with disabilities and some of the major accessibility violations seen in popular video players – including keyboard traps, auto-play, inability to pause and reverse keyboard traps.

Web accessibility in higher education

Length: 60 minutes

Higher education institutions have unique web accessibility requirements. These institutions consist of every different type of research, along with teaching, marketing and e-commerce requirements, like promoting courses, collecting fees and providing course materials. They also have very specific accessibility requirements, and often with teeny-tiny budgets!

Gian will talk about the various ways to make your University accessible, even if you have a very small budget – or none at all! Gian Wild spent six years at one of the largest Universities in Australia managing the Usability and Accessibility Services division, and has been running AccessibilityOz for seven years, with a specific focus on higher education. Through work with institutions like Michigan State University, California Community Colleges Tech Center, George Mason University and Temple University, AccessibilityOz has helped make education accessible to all.

These seminars are available as part of Accessibility Day or customised to your organisation. See our trainee testimonials.