Here are my notes for Day Two at the 2016 CSUN Conference. Please excuse any weird spelling, grammar, or formatting errors. Reference to pictures are unavailable within this post as I probably shouldn’t have taken them… but I can’t type as fast as people speak.

Accessible Maps

speaker: @accessibilityoz at gain@accessibility.com.au
Inform the user that there is a long description in the ALT text
“this is the Goal Coast Train line an dits X miles long”
“there’s a slight incline from the house that such and such built, and you turn left..”
Long descriptions are visible to everyone, so it can have additional info to the map itself
ALT should not have additional info
Developers: label pin markers that are useful “South Fitzroy” etc
Alternative: provide a list view of maps if you can’t alter the code
Keyboard/touch accessibility
“Zoom of zoom” can’t move anything but the map
Ensure all actions can be completed using mouse, touch keyboard etc
Google Maps you get are very keyboard accessible now (maps.google.com)
Press tab to see blue outline, keyboard accessible, see labels
When you embed Google Maps there are issues, third parties
Blue green colour blindness is common
Best practice: colours contrast with white or black and use borders, label sections of map (example: wards)
Juicy Studio Luminosity Colour Contrast Analyzer (new to me!)
Ensure users can increase the size of the map and map content (interactive maps online)
pz.tt/CSUN16-map (speaker slides on maps)
Google audience member: problem with embedding, can’t tab through everything, update launching in 2 weeks where you can
Answer to another audience member’s question: native apps are difficult as you can’t access the code. You can’t go to the code and apply a label. In this case, include a long description.
Work around: link off to Google Maps if your map is not accessible

Diversity Within Accessibility: Workforce and Product Design

Speaker: Sassy Atwater, work in fashion and advocacy for PwD; Also works in acoustic physics
Not a lot of companies that cater to where I like to shop; Focus of talk on UX
We cater to one mindset – not diversity (ex: Stevie Wonder and Braille card at Grammies)
We need to be the catalyst; we need to be both the dream team and the orange (Whole foods packaged oranges: accessible packaging but wasteful packaging when it naturally has a peel)
Universal design allows customization; can solve diversity issues for employers
UX is like underwear: we all use it; all interact with it; we all have that experience
Does someone with CP know where openings are and how to get it one; does a blind person know what colour/pattern it is [when shopping online alone]
How do races; minorities; people come into that environment; how does minority experience affect the product you’re development
Infographic: most people 50+ do not how to use built-in tools; we are designing for a group that cannot utilize the tools we’ve designed for;
Universal design interacts with ‘common sense design’

Accessibility for UX Designers

Point of talk: UX Designers need to take on the extra work that accessibility brings; Accessible UX design 101
Note: the slides were really hard to read even after upping the contrast; body font does not work for distant reading – open, round, thin stroke. Heavy weight worked, light not. Familiar font – look up and note.

The Digital Accessibility Maturity Model

Note: SSB Bart room has coffee! Round tables too – good to meet new people (Harbour Ballroom I, 2nd floor) Checked with staff: coffee available ALL DAY here
SWOT analysis: strength, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
DAMM (Digital Accessibility Maturity Model) audit digital accessibility process: walk through of existing program; gather primary data; development of findings; discuss and deliver final report
ICT Accessibility MOOC Course on ICT operations
SSB Bart has resources on DAMM (Digital Accessibility Maturity Model) on their blog: http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/category/digital-accessibility-maturity-model-damm/
NASCIO.org Policy driven adoption for accessibility: http://www.nascio.org/pdaa
Business Disability Forum: http://technologytaskforce.org/accessible-technology-charter/accessibility-maturity-model/
Audience member from Starbucks point: important for others to double check work, even the best writer needs an editor
All SSB Bart presentations will be made available online this Friday

Making Non-English Content More Accessible

Speaker: Elizabeth J Pyatt, Penn State, AccessAbility
Talk changed topic or title? Not about images for non-english
Language Codes: ISO-639
Also, 3 letter codes: ISO-639-3
Region codes: en-US vs. en-GB (work for spell checker, not doesn’t seem to affect accent)
WikipediaTend to use 2 letter code; three letter when available
Not great support for less popular languages (ex: Cherokee)
Language tags in Word/PPT works well: highlight word Tools > Language > select language used for word)
PDF: tags do not carry over from Word/PPT (PDF only accepts one language)
JAWS plugin for languages
Voiceover: download different voices, but sounds weird is switching back and forth between accents in a document
Unicode: A B C D E F in Unicode – screenreader will read the letter (Wingdings)
ASCII
Do screen readers read symbols: (see pic)
Need JAWS symbols file: eloq.sbl in settings (see Freedom Scientific) (see pic for URLS)
Install script to get JAWS to read unicode correctly
VoiceOver: Speech Tab > Pronunciation > modify for what it should say
Developing websitess for non-English text: https://t.co/5NeolcUOXl
Foreign Language Accessibility resourc: https://t.co/pDCNbNRIcd

ARIA

ARIA is for emergency use only
Pretend its an image and give a label
Hide an embedded icon
If a course, recommend beefing up symbol and font repository
Accents present a legibility challenge
Speaker feels that sans serif fonts are more legible when it comes to accents over letters
Andika is designed for different languages (Others: Charis SIL; Georgia)
Non-Western characters: mad need to increase font sizes
Really likes Text/Expander/Beevy: simplifies keyboard sequence; customize; robust; can do whole words

Is it a link or a button: ultimate showdown

Link vs. Button Examples: http://linkvsbutton.a11yideas.com
Slides will be made available later

Wearable Assistive Device Development Tool

University project presentation (Japan)
AeonKit: development kit without the need for coding language
Kit focuses on hardware
See handout for summary of session
Works on Andrino and Raspberry Pi; mac and pc; Code on GitHub

Accessible Publications with Adobe Digital Publishing Solution

Speaker: Matt May, Sr. Program Manager, Accessibility, Adobe
Adobe does not sell product in title anymore; focus on Adobe Experience Manager Mobile (AEM)
Having a town hall meeting tomorrow
AEM possibly best program for accessibility (re-enforces this is not a sales pitch; no commission)
AEM used to be known as CQ; digital management
Adobe is hiring product dev and managers right now
AEM and other products in the Marketing Cloud
AEM publishes content as apps; Individual articles, bind as an edition; manages subscriptions and levels of control; content management

Accessible SVG Charts using ARIA

Highcharts demo, documentation, downloads: www.highcharts.com
Interactive charts for web projects
Free for non-commercial use; open
JavaScript
Works in all mobile and desktop
Can generate tables from SVG content study found that tables were preferred
complex box plot SVG
Too many headings = cognitive overload
Chart types themselves need a description (what is a box plot)
Data Table usability: if marked up well, they offer more flexibility
Best practice: offer both a table and an SVG chart for user preference

Digital Accessibility Training Solutions

Review training engagement
5 phase approach: develop plan; dev. design; storyboard; training materials; deliver training; long term strategy
Training aimed at policy makers; internal team; could work for outside audience, techy or not
Summary of each phase in slides (posted later)
SSB Bart does InDesign and Acrobat training
Felt slides weren’t very effective; found video training more engaging
Videos should last 3-5 minutes; anything longer looses attention
Hands-on exercises (Codepen) work well for in-person training to engage the team
Codepen is not a fully accessible product
SSB Bart uses Moodle for their backend LMS

Between Session Discussion with Microsoft employee:

Microsoft Disability Answer Desk: free to PwD, consumer channel
Answer Desk: aka.ms/accessibilitysupport
Very patience; trained in common assistive technology
There is also an Enterprise level for IT teams etc.

Pre-Confference Notes

Itinerary

Thursday, March 24:

Morning:

11:00am

First: Accessible Foreign Language and Symbols for Multiple Audiences (Solana Beach A, 3rd Floor, Between Harbor and Seaport Towers)
Second: EPUB3 – An Accessible, Open, and Portable Document Format (Harbor Ballroom C-IBM, 2nd Floor, Harbor Tower)
Third: Designing for People (Hillcrest AB, 3^rd FL)

Afternoon:

1:20pm

First: Is it A Link Or A Button? The Ultimate Showdown (Harbor Ballroom A-Deque, 2nd Floor, Harbor Tower)
Second: May the Force be Accessible: Providing Access to Innovative Experiences (Torrey Hills AB, 3rd Floor, Seaport Tower)

2:20pm

First: Wearable Assistive Device Development Tool Kit (Hillcrest AB, 3rd Floor, Seaport Tower )
Second: Translating Visual Information into Tactile Information (Golden Hill AB, 3rd Floor, Seaport Tower)
Third: Removing Barriers in the Classroom and Workplace-Success with Low Vision (Harbor Ballroom B-Freedom Scientific , 2nd Floor, Harbor Tower )

3:20pm

First: Accessible Publications with Adobe Digital Publishing Solution (Torrey Hills AB, 3rd Floor, Seaport Tower)
Second: Accessible SVG Charts Using ARIA (Golden Hill AB, 3rd Floor, Seaport Tower)
Third: Improving Dyslexia with Newer Fonts & Technological Apps (Harbor Ballroom G-AT&T, 2nd Floor, Harbor Tower)

4:20pm

First: Digital Accessibility Training Solutions (Harbor Ballroom I-SSB BART, 2nd Floor, Harbor Tower)
Second: Wearable Assistive Technology emerging tends and design considerations (Harbor Ballroom E, 2^nd FL)
Third: Design thinking at Google, methodologies and mindsets for innovation (Harbor Ballroom, 2^nd FL)

I love WordPress. Its intuitive, easy to use, beautiful, and free. Sadly, it is not known for it’s accessibility…

As I am not a web developer, I haven’t crafted my own blog out of HTML and CSS with love and joy. Instead, I have been writing ALT tags and hierarchy into my code to make it as accessible as possible. Recently, I started looking into plug-ins to increase the accessibility of my many WordPress blogs. To my surprise, plug-ins are only available to WordPress.org sites – which requires you to have a unique URL and web hosting. So, I created another blog, a travel site in reaction to the success of my China blog, through WordPress.org to utilize WordPress’ accessibility options.

Here are some helpful links to guide you through the process:

The WordPress.org Process

To help you along in setting up your own WordPress.org site, here is step-by-step directions and documentation from setting up my own WordPress.org blog, The Black Beret Abroad.

Initial Set-Up

Set-up a location for your WordPress (WP) installation (if it is a new website then you will need to arrange a domain and hosting).
Decide whether your entire site will be WP or just a part of it.
Load WordPress on your server.
Go to your control panel to determine which database to run WP in.
Input necessary information.
Administer your new WordPress site by going to domain.com/wp-admin (if the entire site is WP) or domain.com/wpfolder/wp-admin (if WP is only part of the site).
Log into your unique URL (ie: http://yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin/) and enter password. (Troubleshooting note: If you get an Error 500 message like I did, contact your server provider and they can fix it for you. Once they’ve fixed it, clear your browser history and re-attempt to log-in.)

Installing the WP Accessibility Plugin

Go to the folder on your server where your WordPress folder is.
Click the ‘wp-content’ folder in your WordPress folder
Upload the ‘wp-accessibility’ plugin (link to download the plugin) to your ‘wp-contents’ folder.
Log into your WordPress.org account through a web browser.
In the left hand bar you will see ‘Plugins’ between ‘Appearance’ and ‘Users’. Click it.
You should see WP Accessibility in this list. Select ‘Activate’ – and ta da, it is activated!

As always, suggestions and comments welcome below. Thanks!