Archives

Accessibility – A feature you can build

With Monika Piotrowicz in the Accessibility track

Making a website or application accessible can be an overwhelming task for a lot of developers, especially if you’re not already an expert. Looking at all the complex regulations, specs, and articles on the topic, where should we begin? In this talk, I’ll walk through some of the challenges I faced when working through accessibility requirements for the first time. By thinking about accessibility as we would any other feature, it becomes less of a scary unknown requirement, and instead something we can plan for and implement to create a more open web for all.

Learning Outcomes

Attendees of this talk will:

  • know what the term “accessibility” means
  • learn about some of the practical implications of a11y
  • learn about a11y-related dev tools
  • leave with tips on how they can make their next app more accessible

Saturday Lunch with Abokichi

Abokichi is an extraordinary Caterer and the creator of a wide assortment of delicious Japanese- and fusion snacks, meals, condiments and other goodies. Everything is prepared holistically and local food sources as used extensively to provide sustainable, nutritious ingredients for some seriously awesome and unique food. Unless you were at last year’s WordCamp, you will not have experienced anything like it.

Lunch and snacks on both the Saturday and Sunday are being provided entirely by Jess, Fumi and the Abokichi team and will be different on both days. Our lunch session are extra long to ensure that everyone gets a chance to sample and enjoy this delicious treat.

At other times, you can visit Abokichi at the Annex Hodge-Podge at 285 Dupont Street. Other venues that carry Abokichi’s products include the Liberty Village Live Market, the OCAD student cafe, and a wide variety of Farmer’s markets across town during market season.

Use ARIA Now!

With Billy Gregory in the Accessibility track.

In this session we will jump right in and use ARIA and HTML5 to create modern, accessible web applications. Starting with the basics, and working up to some more advanced examples, attendees will learn how to start using ARIA right away.

Speaker sliders in a new tab

Prerequisites

  • Basic HTML/JS knowledge
  • Basic understanding of ARIA, or at least what it is

Learning Outcomes

  • Day one WAI-ARIA implementation tips
  • Intro to ARIA from a developers perspective
  • An introduction to keyboard design patterns

How to Perform an Accessibility Audit

With Janis Yee in the A11y track

In my experience, I worked as a self-made accessibility advocate when AODA came down the pipe early this year. With limited time, and resources, I had to develop a strategy on my own as to how to perform this audit and work with developers to implement the changes. As the field is so new, and there were no local leaders I could turn to as a mentor, I waded through much of this on my own. This is my chance to pass along these lessons as things I wish I knew when I started out.

Topics covered:

Brief Intro:

  • What are the goals of AODA in respect to Web Design and Development?
  • What is WCAG?

The Meat:
Step by Step Process – How to perform an audit?

Intended audience:
General but with some basic front-end dev knowledge such as understanding CSS as some parts will require knowing how to use “Inspect Element”

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

  • Gain a high level understanding of WCAG 2.0 guidelines
  • Be able to apply them to auditing existing sites or be cognizant of them when designing/developing for new websites.
  • Have an understanding of the Process required to perform an audit independently.

Next-gen A11y Testing Tools

With Karl Groves In the A11y track

Slides from the presentation

Since the invention of the Web, we’ve never experienced the kind of explosion in new techniques for developers to ensure efficiency and quality of their work – from JavaScript task runners to unit testing & acceptance testing, to continuous integration and automated build & deploy systems. Modern web developers can and should leverage these toolsets to make their work better. This talk will discuss how Tenon.io uses many of these tools to create our product – an automated web accessibility testing API.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will learn about an array of items in the modern web developer’s toolkit.

WordPress Theme Accessibility

(or Building Websites that EVERYONE Can Use)

With Jordan Quintal in the A11y track

The focus of this presentation will be on making a WordPress theme more accessible for those with disabilities. This presentation will be programming specific, and cover various HTML and CSS requirements to ensure any WordPress theme is accessibility-ready. I will cover accessible images, media, link text, headings, keyboard navigation, colour contrast, skip links, and forms; and how a developer can program these aspects to meet WCAG 2.0 Guidelines.

Speaker slides on Google Docs

Learning outcomes

  • apply WCAG 2.0 guidelines to create fully accessible WordPress themes
  • apply specific strategies to ensure every aspect of web accessibility is covered.

Fixing Inaccessible Content

With Sean Yo in the A11y track

Learn about common web accessibility problems and be introduced to the WCAG 2.0 Sufficient and Advisory Techniques for resolving these problems.

Learn to identify common web accessibility problems and develop an understanding of the authoritative code solutions published by the W3C for these problems and be familiar with the How To Meet WCAG 2.0 resources.

Link to speaker slides on speakerdeck.com

Selfish Accessibility

With Adrian Roselli in the Accessibility track

Slide deck

Talk details

We can all pretend that we’re helping others by making web sites accessible, but we are really making the web better for our future selves. Learn some fundamentals of web accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review simple testing techniques, basic features and enhancements, coming trends, and where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive into ARIA, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start nor how it helps them.

What will attendees learn from this presentation?

  1. Recognize that they are all going to qualify as disabled users.
  2. Recognize that non-disabled users benefit from accessibility affordances.
  3. Perform simple accessibility testing.
  4. Have reference material and resources to continue self-education.
  5. Write code that uses ARIA properly.
  6. Write basic HTML that isn’t a barrier to accessibility.
  7. Apply these skills to any platform.