accessibility Archives - Page 11 of 15

Web Accessibility Specialist Certification

Rachele DiTullio26 March 201912 July 2021In Real Lifeaccessibility

I’m not new to accessibility (a11y) but because it is not the focus of my job, I’ve had to do a lot of self-study to gain enough experience to consider myself proficient. Through the process of studying for this exam (and applying for a job along the way), I think I have finally found my passion.

I work in the United States for a large Canadian company in Ontario that is under pressure to comply with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). It requires that websites updated since 2014 conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A. Level AA is required by January, 2021.

At last year’s AccessU accessibility conference in Austin, Texas, I learned about the International Association for Accessibility Professionals (IAAP):

IAAP is a not-for-profit membership-based organization for individuals and organizations that are focused on accessibility or are in the process of building their accessibility skills and strategies. The objective of this association is to help accessibility professionals develop and advance their careers and to help organizations integrate accessibility into their products and infrastructure. The IAAP will provide a place for accessibility professionals around the world to gather, share experiences and enrich their knowledge of accessibility.

I heard they had a few certifications and I thought that would be a great way to test myself and perhaps come out with a credential that will help me in the future. The Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) credential is where I started.

What is the WAS credential?

The Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) credential is a technical-level credential for people who have hands-on experience with web technologies and accessibility. The exam assesses one’s web accessibility competence and takers are expected to know and use relevant technologies in a hands-on way, not just know about them. Per the IAAP, it’s ideal for intermediate level professionals (3-5 years’ experience) who have worked with WCAG 2.0 in context.

What is the WAS exam?

The WAS exam consists of 75 multiple choice questions with four options in the following content areas:

Create accessible web content – 40%
Identify accessibility issues – 40%
Remediate accessibility issues – 20%

The exam is pass/fail and administered by a testing service either remotely or in-person. I took it at a local testing center because I was worried about all the things that could go wrong remotely.

The exam is administered during a testing window for scoring purposes.

Preparing for the WAS exam

I reviewed the comprehensive WAS body of knowledge document which is a 20+ page overview of everything that could show up on the exam, from WCAG success criteria to testing with assistive technologies to recommending techniques for fixing issues. It’s a lot of stuff and honestly, I was pretty worried since I don’t work a job where I do accessibility evaluations every day.

I decided to study by going through a WAS exam preparation course offered by Deque University. I gave myself four weeks to prepare. My strategy was to cover about one content area per work day leading up to the exam. I took longer with those areas I had less experience in, such as ARIA widgets. I highly recommend this course and think it covered all the necessary subject matter.

My one piece of advice is to really practice using a screen reader and learn the common commands as two questions on my exam related specifically to hotkeys.

After the exam

They evaluate all candidates’ responses during the testing window and utilize a modified Angoff methodology and cut rate score exercise. Because of this, it takes a few weeks to find out if you pass. IAAP does not issue percentage scores or provide feedback on specific responses.

Three weeks after I took the exam, I got an email from the IAAP.

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have passed IAAP – Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) examination. Your hard work, study, and perseverance helped you achieve a significant goal – recognition of your skills and knowledge as a web accessibility specialist.

Per the email, just over 250 people have been WAS certified since the exam started in 2017.

So what now? I am really happy to have this certification and I know that going through this studying and exam process did a lot to get me used to looking for accessibility issues and communicating to developers how to fix them. I think this is a great exercise for anyone who wants a career in web accessibility.

IAAP WAS certificate for Rachele DiTullio awarded March 19, 2019.

Gold’s Gym Class Schedule

Rachele DiTullio23 April 201817 July 2021Desktopaccessibility

Another accessibility challenge! I like trying to use websites with just a keyboard, which rarely works. The Gold’s Gym class schedule page is no exception. It has so many elements that respond to clicks only that it’s basically useless to a keyboard. I’m going to address the three issues that make this page unusable.

Week selector
Day selector
Class information details

screenshot of the class schedule page with multiple areas highlighted

These examples suffer from the same issues:

Mark up that prevents keyboard focus
JavaScript that does not include key press functionality

The class schedule defaults to the current week and current day to display information. If you want to look at a different week’s schedule, you have to use the tiny forward and backward arrows next to the week dates.

screenshot showing arrows next to the week April 23, 2018 - April 29, 2018

While each arrow is marked up as <a>, it does not get keyboard focus because there is no href attribute.

<a class="display-table-cell text-left" ng-click="vm.changeWeek(-1)"> <i class="material-icons">chevron_left</i> </a>

I solved that issue by adding tabindex="0"

(That’s the recurring theme for this post!)

However, even though the arrows now gain keyboard focus, they do not respond to key presses. Looking at the code I noticed the ng-click attribute, searched to find that’s AngularJS syntax and found there are others such as ng-keypress. I tried using that via the Chrome inspector but it didn’t work. There’s probably more to it to support key presses.

Each day of the week has a similar issue. Let’s look at the code:

<div class="border border-thin" ng-click="vm.setSelectedDay(day)">...</div>

The days are not marked up as buttons or links so again, no keyboard focus and they use the ng-click attribute only. tabindex="0" to the rescue.

screenshot showing three boxes for days of the week Monday April 23, Tuesday April 24, and Wednesday April 25

The last major issue is accessing the details of a class. For a mouse user, clicking a class opens a modal window. (Once on the modal window, keyboard tabbing resumes on the parent page but that’s another issue.)

screenshot of a modal window with close button and class details

For keyboard users, at this point you’re skipped from the “All instructors” select box, passed all the class details, to a form at the bottom of the page.

The whole class details area is marked up as a table. For a mouse user, an entire table row is a hotspot, not just the word Details.

<tr ng-repeat="scheduledClass in vm.filteredSchedules" ng-click="vm.openClassModal(scheduledClass)" class="ng-scope">...</tr>

tabindex="0" to the rescue.

All of these could benefit from using the :focus pseudo class to emulate the hover states for better visibility of what’s in focus.

screenshot of a row from the classes table showing the first row highlighted and in focus

With just a few tweaks, this page would be far more accessible.

Course: Developing with Empathy

Rachele DiTullio2 April 20181 February 2021Desktopaccessibility

Today I finished another free web accessibility course. This one is from Google and hosted by Udacity: Developing with Empathy

I find it hard to explain to other developers about having empathy for all web users, not just those who resemble ourselves. Courses like this are a great place to point those who might not be convinced that accessibility is important, especially those of us who work on projects that have little to no legal accessibility requirements.

This course is designed around four concepts:

Providing and managing focus of elements for keyboard and switch users
Constructing pages with good semantics and understanding the accessibility tree in the DOM
A basic look at ARIA features
Putting these together with style

I enjoyed learning about ChromeVox which emulates using a screen reader. The controls take some learning but it’s a useful way to test some of the hidden features of accessibility like aria-required on a form field.

Another helpful accessibility tool from this course is the Accessibility Developer Tools available through Chrome. It lets you perform an accessibility audit on a page and provides tips for improvements.

Here’s an audit of this blog’s front page.