A Crash Course in Digital Accessibility

this document is full of links for you to visit later, and learn at your own pace. this is a 5 minute link dump about my special interest. with a surprise demo!

• w3c accessibility standards
• accessibility auditing tools and practices
• language used in the accessibility circles
• how disability impacts us all.


## history * [original content developed for pycascades 2023 lightning talks](https://tonyfast.github.io/tonyfast/xxiii/2023-03-18-pycascades-ally-talk.htmlhttps://tonyfast.github.io/tonyfast/xxiii/2023-03-18-pycascades-ally-talk.html) * [updated for bellingham codes on 7/6](https://www.meetup.com/bellinghamcodes/events/294458693/)

🏃run all 🖹document mode 📽presentation mode ⊟collapse all the code
⊞expand all the code jupyterlab-deck voila 🔍inspector 👯side-by-side

WHO global disability stats

* An estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. This represents 16% of the world’s population, or 1 in 6 of us. * Some persons with disabilities die up to 20 years earlier than those without disabilities. * Persons with disabilities have twice the risk of developing conditions such as depression, asthma, diabetes, stroke, obesity or poor oral health. * Persons with disabilities face many health inequities. * Persons with disabilities find inaccessible and unaffordable transportation 15 times more difficult than for those without disabilities. * Health inequities arise from unfair conditions faced by persons with disabilities, including stigma, discrimination, poverty, exclusion from education and employment, and barriers faced in the health system itself.

forms of disability

from microsoft inclusive design

practical wuh-cag guidelines

summarized guidelines on the [wcag wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines)

* Guideline 1: Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content * Guideline 2: Don't rely on colour alone * Guideline 3: Use markup and style sheets, and do so properly * Guideline 4: Clarify natural language usage * Guideline 5: Create tables that transform gracefully * Guideline 6: Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully * Guideline 7: Ensure user control of time sensitive content changes * Guideline 8: Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces * Guideline 9: Design for device independence * Guideline 10: User interim solutions * Guideline 11: Use W3C technologies and guidelines * Guideline 12: Provide context and orientation information * Guideline 13: Provide clear navigation mechanisms * Guideline 14: Ensure that documents are clear and simple

## alphabet soup of accessibility web standards documentation! web apps! reports! anything in the browser! [video games!](https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/) * WAI [web accessibility initiative](https://www.w3.org/WAI/) * WCAG [web content accessibility guidelines](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/) * ARIA [accessible rich internet applications](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/aria/) > [no aria is better than bad aria.](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/practices/read-me-first/) * APG [aria authoring practices guide](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/) * ACT [accessibility conformance testing](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/act/rules/) * AOM [accessibility object model](https://wicg.github.io/aom/spec/) * ATAG [authoring tool accessibility guidelines](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/atag/) * 🆕 [Cognitive Accessibility at W3C](https://www.w3.org/WAI/cognitive/) ## auditting accessibility where applicable, build the accessibility floor by using these in ci. * 👋 [Deque Labs Axe](https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core) * 👋 [IBM Equal Access](https://github.com/IBMa/equal-access/tree/master) * 👋 [WAVE accessibility evaluator](https://wave.webaim.org/extension/) * [W3C markup validator](https://validator.w3.org/) ## accessible notebook interfaces

recently, Jupyter developers were able to remove accessibility violations caught be axe. read the [blog post].


compliance ≠ assistive

[blog post]: https://blog.jupyter.org/improving-the-accessibility-of-jupyter-6c695db518d3

Notebooks for All

Jupyter Notebooks play a central role in modern data science workflows. Despite their importance, these notebooks are inaccessible to people with disabilities, especially those who rely on assistive technology. Impacted users must find extreme workarounds or [give up using them entirely.](https://www.freelists.org/post/program-l/Accessability-of-Jupyter-notebooks) Students with disabilities have [reported leaving their field](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/issues/9399#issuecomment-740524422) once they learn their chosen career’s foundational tools are inaccessible to them. This is a challenging problem to solve. The Notebooks for All project is taking the first steps, initially focusing on static notebooks: - Running usability feedback sessions with impacted users who rely on a variety of assistive technology - Capturing what makes notebooks inaccessible with assistive technology, and compiling documents that describe the issues and feedback - Editing notebooks based on the feedback - Organizing events to spread awareness in the scientific community about this issue -

| when | example | |---|-------| |before|https://nbviewer.org/github/jupyter-widgets/ipywidgets/blob/main/docs/source/examples/Lorenz%20Differential%20Equations.ipynb| |after|https://iota-school.github.io/notebooks-for-all/exports/html/lorenz-executed-smol.html| > we designed notebooks based on their semantics to improve the quality of the annotation object model, and assistive tech experience.

[notebooks for all]: https://github.com/Iota-School/notebooks-for-all ## manually reviewing accessibility there are a lot of dimensions to digital accessibility. here are some things i thought worth noting. * [reviewing accessible design principles](https://adhoc.team/2023/02/22/the-importance-of-adding-accessibility-design-reviews-to-the-design-process/) * Consider focus order  * Examine copy * Pay attention to colors * Look at page context and components * Annotate the designs * [The A11Y Project](https://www.a11yproject.com/) is an open source community about accessibility with tons of resources  * [no mouse days](https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/no-mouse-days/) * [technica11y](https://www.technica11y.org/) produces first hand accounts of disabled develops * [community events](https://github.com/isabela-pf/a11y-events/tree/main/workshop-resources/alt-text) * [collaborative alt text documentation events](https://github.com/isabela-pf/a11y-events/tree/main/workshop-resources/alt-text)  * [keyboard navigation events](https://github.com/isabela-pf/a11y-events/tree/main/workshop-resources/keyboard-navigation) * [meet your screen reader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screen_readers) ## other useful sources sources * [chartability](https://chartability.fizz.studio/https://chartability.fizz.studio/) * [wai patterns](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/) * [diagram center general guidelines](http://diagramcenter.org/general-guidelines-final-draft.html) * Frameworks? [Modern Health, frameworks, performance, and harm Modern Health, frameworks, performance, and harm ](https://ericwbailey.website/published/modern-health-frameworks-performance-and-harm/) * [Do No Harm Guide: Applying Equity Awareness in Data Visualization](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/do-no-harm-guide-applying-equity-awareness-data-visualization) * [accessible pygments themes for code](https://github.com/Quansight-Labs/accessible-pygmentshttps://github.com/Quansight-Labs/accessible-pygments) ## conclusion * diversity of thought and experience * [inclusive design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_design) practices and accessible principles are beacons for design * include (and pay) disabled people - [nothing about us without us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_about_us_without_us) * [Why Underemployment Plagues People With Disabilities Even In A Strong Economy](https://www.forbes.com/sites/denisebrodey/2019/10/26/why-underemployment-plagues-people-with-disabilities-even-in-a-strong-economy/?sh=44006eeb693d) ## whats the deal with the demo?? * running the browser with jupyterlite [][jupyterlite] * programmined in markdown with [pidgy] [][pidgy] * presented with [jupyterlab-deck] [][jupyterlab-deck] [jupyterlite]: https://jupyterlite.readthedocs.io/ [jupyterlab-deck]: https://github.com/deathbeds/jupyterlab-deck [pidgy]: https://github.com/deathbeds/pidgyhttps://github.com/deathbeds/pidgy