Two-day Accessibility Training Workshop by Dr. Gunderson (Part 2)
UIC Accessibility Liaison Training
May 15, 2024
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Location
UIC Richard J. Daley Library, Room #1-470
Address
801 S Morgan St, Chicago, IL 60607
Cost
Free for Accessibility Liaisons
Calendar
Download iCal FileBuilding an inclusive online learning environment requires understanding the experience of people with disabilities using the web. The four sessions in this workshop provide a foundation for understanding the diverse ways people with disabilities use the web and the technologies and practices to provide equitable access.
Participating in the workshop will provide important context for understanding the requirements of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which is the basis of accessibility standards. Without the experiential context, many of the WCAG requirements are often misunderstood, leading to wasted time by content creators and inaccessible content for users.
The first two sessions are more experiential than technical, so people without technical skills can fully participate. The ARIA sessions are more technical and more appropriate for people with skills in designing, coding, and testing websites.
For more details about the workshop session, please visit the UIC Accessibility Liaison Workshop page.
Day 2 - Session 3: Introduction to ARIA
There is a lot of misunderstanding of the Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) markup being some magical sauce that makes web pages more accessible. Many people apply ARIA markup to web pages with little understanding of how it changes the experience of screen reader users. This often results in content that is actually less accessible since the ARIA feature doesn't exist on the web page, which is confusing to the user. An analogy in the physical environment is opening a door labeled "bathroom", but when you step through the door, you fall into a pool. This session will step-by-step build a simple custom widget to help dispel the magical nature of ARIA. Participants will learn about keyboard focus management, ARIA roles, ARIA properties and states, and supporting high contrast operating system settings in building a checkbox example. They will also compare it to the experience of a standard HTML checkbox using screen readers.
Duration
- 90 minutes
Who will benefit
- Web designers, programmers, and quality assurance testers
Learning Objectives
- Understanding how roles, properties, and states are used by screen readers
- Understanding accessible names and descriptions
- Keyboard focus
Day 2 - Session 4: Understanding ARIA and Keyboard Support
This session takes a deeper dive into how ARIA can be used to make websites more accessible. The terms in the ARIA specification are familiar terms used in web and other user interface design, which can be misleading to people new to ARIA. For example, the "menu" role is often mistakenly applied to lists of navigation links on a web page because the user interface designer or user interface library called it a "menu". In this case, the appropriate ARIA role is "navigation". The "menu" role actually identifies a particular keyboard interaction and relationship with the "menu item" and other related roles. Using the "menu" role in this context is confusing to screen reader users and makes the page less accessible. This session will help participants understand the meaning and use of ARIA roles, properties and states on on web pages to describe the actual behavior of custom widgets. The session will include looking at the use of ARIA web navigation navigational menus. Pages from UIC will be used to demonstrate the proper and improper use of ARIA markup. The session will include a discussion of keyboard focus management techniques and how accessible names and descriptions are calculated.
Duration
- 120 minutes (with 10 minute break)
Who will benefit
- Web designers, programmers and quality assurance testers
Learning Objectives
- Managing keyboard focus
- Choosing roles for describing keyboard interaction
- Using properties and states
- Accessible name and description calculation
- Screen reader support
- Open Source Web Accessibility evaluation tools
Date posted
Mar 27, 2024
Date updated
Apr 18, 2024
Speakers
