This is the complete post in a multi-part series written by the Disability.gov team to help others learn about the importance of website accessibility and the best practices that are used on Disability.gov. For more information on the Section 508 standards and tools, please visit http://section508.gov/.
By Marc Seguin, System Analyst, Disability.gov | May 8, 2012
The people who make up the Disability.gov team are intensely focused on the mission of providing people with disabilities, their families and others the most comprehensive information available on disability programs and services in communities nationwide. Therefore, meeting and exceeding the requirements of Section 508 (of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are very important to us. We have worked hard to make Disability.gov a known leader in website accessibility and usability, because we understand how much it improves the overall user experience.
Managing and maintaining more than 14,000 resources from federal, state and local government agencies, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations keeps the handful of people that comprise our team extremely busy. We want to make sure the information the site offers is up-to-date, useful and accurate. Our small team usually doesn’t have the bandwidth to engage as often as we’d like in wide ranging discussions about website accessibility and Section 508 compliance – largely because of the effort we dedicate to maintaining the site itself, including implementing site redesigns and new features like the widget that was launched last year.
We also focus on our social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Disability.Blog, as well as writing the bi-monthly Disability Connection newsletter. These efforts help us connect people with disabilities to the information they need to fully participate in the workforce and their communities. Above all, that is our mission.
Disability.gov (previously known as DisabilityInfo.gov) has been around for nearly 10 years, so many of the accessibility issues that may affect other websites have fortunately been resolved long ago. We incorporate accessibility testing as part of our development process and ongoing website maintenance. We utilize different assistive technologies, including screen readers (JAWS, Window Eyes, NVDA, Voice Over), screen magnifiers (ZoomText), speech recognition software (Dragon Naturally Speaking) and the most commonly used browser types and versions.
The primary ways we test for Section 508 compliance and accessibility are:
■Manual testing by educated and experienced users, including those with disabilities and others who have worked with people who have a wide range of disabilities and have utilized different types of assistive technologies. (I believe that most in the accessibility testing world would agree that somewhere around 20-30 percent of best practices can be checked using automated methods alone.) Employing manual verification through user testing allows us to catch what can be missed by the rigid code standards that automated tools rely on, find false positive results and test dynamic features.
■Seeking to meet Section 508 standards and exceed them by following the WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines and other checkpoints as defined by the W3C. Because accessibility has been our focus for a long time, testing is typically done during a major iteration where a significant structure of the site may have been changed or a new feature has been added.
■Attempting to upgrade or update the site every one to two months, meaning that accessibility testing happens at least that often. Regular, intensive accessibility testing is done on the site every six months or annually, as resources and scheduling permit.
■Measuring user feedback. Like many other sites, we use a survey powered by ForeSee to measure our visitors’ experience with Disability.gov and evaluate comments received through email, Twitter, Facebook and other methods. We strive to respond as quickly as possible, oftentimes implementing solutions that not only meet accessibility requirements, but also improve the site’s usability.
----
Are you a Section 508 coordinator, federal Web content manager or a member of the disability community who has questions about Web accessibility?
Many people within the accessibility community would like specific information on how to ensure their website is compliant. You may be thinking that there are limited examples to learn from, not enough information is shared or there are few documented detailed processes about how to do it.
The message that we would like to spread is that those responsible for making websites accessible are not helpless to fix the sites they oversee and the accessibility problems within them. If you lack the knowledge about how to test for accessibility and correct it, seek out help by contacting your fellow Section 508 Coordinators.
If you are not getting the help that you need, then ask those resources for more information or seek out the information in other ways. For example, you can sign up for newsletters, attend accessibility conferences, join LinkedIn or Facebook groups and follow users on Twitter who are sharing information about accessibility every day.
Sadly, there is no magic bullet or automated tool that can make a website accessible. Like most things that are worth it, making a website accessible takes hard work. When it comes to documenting the best practices for making and keeping a website accessible, there really isn’t any need to reinvent the wheel.
Is there really a lack of informational resources available on how to make a website Section 508 compliant? If you perform a Google search using the search term, “how to be section 508 compliant,” you will receive more than 4.5 million results. Not every search result is going to be useful, but there are many helpful resources from Section508.gov, the U.S. Access Board, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs that you can learn from.
We are not here to lecture others about accessibility. Instead, we have worked to set ourselves as an example and role model of what a federal website with a focus on Web accessibility can be. We have helped multiple agencies with reviews and provided technical solutions for accessibility issues. We have done our best to educate agency representatives about the parts of Section 508 that they are unfamiliar with and provide techniques, resources and solutions that they can use. One of the lead developers on the Disability.gov team has provided Section 508 and accessibility training to Web developers within the different agencies at the Department of Labor. However, educating others about how to meet Section 508 is not our primary mission.
With that said, typically, the reasons we find that websites are not accessible are:
■A lack of understanding as to why designing for accessibility is important.
■A lack of funds to fix existing accessibility problems.
■A lack of human resources dedicated to accessibility.
■And a lack of people with the knowledge base about accessibility problems and solutions.
The biggest problem isn’t a lack of information. Unfortunately, there are just not enough educated people with the money and resources behind them to fix the existing accessibility problems. If you don’t know what is required in Section 508 §1194.22, visit other websites who have done great jobs on describing the requirements and how to meet them.
First, familiarize yourself with Section 508 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. If you still have questions, visit WebAIM. If you’d like to see a good example of the steps used to ensure accessibility on a federal website, check out the Recovery.gov case study.
But why stop or limit yourself to just these resources? Go out and find your own.
-----
The Disability.gov Team takes our responsibility to ensure the accessibility of our website very seriously. So you might be able to imagine how we felt seeing a tweet from a well respected accessibility specialist, Dennis Lembrée, indicating that we still had some work to do, and he planned to write blog post about some of the accessibility issues he discovered on the site. Dennis is an experienced Web developer who is heavily involved in the accessibility community. He is the founder and author of the Web Axe blog; the creator of Easy Chirp, an accessible platform for using Twitter; and promotes accessibility through social networks and presentations among other endeavors.
While we work hard to do our best, we know there is always room for improvement, and prefer to hear about any issues or concerns as soon as possible, so we can address them. Our goal is always to make the site as accessible and usable as possible for all people, with or without disabilities.
In one of the prior posts in this series, I mentioned that an overwhelming majority of accessibility testing can’t be done using automated tools alone. Manual testing by educated people is required if you want to be successful. However, even then, people who understand the importance of accessibility are not infallible. They make mistakes, overlook things and have off days. Guidelines can be open to interpretation and everyone is capable of having their talents limited by available time and energy. Two people using the exact same Section 508 standards and/or WCAG criterion may end up with different determinations of whether something is considered compliant or not.
Thus accessibility and usability testing is a never ending process. It is not something that you can complete just once on a living, breathing website, check a box that it is done and forget about it.
The Disability.gov team learned long ago that many in the accessibility “Tribe” will often go out of their way to help others improve the quality of their work for the benefit of everyone. If you are seeking to do accessibility right, looking to learn and willing to work, I can almost guarantee you that you can find others to help you on your quest.
Dennis wrote up an excellent post titled “Suggestions for the new Disability.gov,” highlighting some areas where Disability.gov could use improvement in terms of accessibility, as well as noting some techniques being used on the site that were well. It was fair and welcomed feedback that we are utilizing to increase the accessibility of the site. I would recommend that you give it a read and check out some of the other educational posts and podcasts found on Web Axe.
One of my favorite ways to learn and keep up-to-date with what’s new in the accessibility world is through Twitter. Dennis visited Disability.gov because of something that he saw on Twitter and even before he emailed us about his findings, we knew about it because he posted about them on Twitter. One of the faults sometimes attributed to government is that it can be slow to react. In the current era of social media, where information can be crowd sourced and exchanged from all corners of the globe, both the federal and private sector can take advantage of the ability to share accessibility knowledge and best practices.
In my last post, I mentioned that I follow people on social media channels who are sharing accessibility information freely and often. Secretary of State Clinton wrote in her book that “it takes a village” to best provide for our children. My experience is that it will take the accessibility “Tribe” to fight for and improve the Web’s accessibility.
We will continue to work to improve both the accessibility and usability of Disability.gov. A release went out earlier this week that corrected many of the issues Dennis identified, and additional changes are in the works for the coming weeks. We are thankful for Dennis’ insight and feedback, and will continue to respond to his and any other comments or suggestions for ways to make Disability.gov the best site it can be.
# http://usodep.blogs.govdelivery.com/2012/05/08/a-look-behind-the-scenes-part-iii-website-accessibility-isnt-an-exact-science/
For Disability.gov visit: https://www.disability.gov/
By Marc Seguin, System Analyst, Disability.gov | May 8, 2012
The people who make up the Disability.gov team are intensely focused on the mission of providing people with disabilities, their families and others the most comprehensive information available on disability programs and services in communities nationwide. Therefore, meeting and exceeding the requirements of Section 508 (of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are very important to us. We have worked hard to make Disability.gov a known leader in website accessibility and usability, because we understand how much it improves the overall user experience.
Managing and maintaining more than 14,000 resources from federal, state and local government agencies, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations keeps the handful of people that comprise our team extremely busy. We want to make sure the information the site offers is up-to-date, useful and accurate. Our small team usually doesn’t have the bandwidth to engage as often as we’d like in wide ranging discussions about website accessibility and Section 508 compliance – largely because of the effort we dedicate to maintaining the site itself, including implementing site redesigns and new features like the widget that was launched last year.
We also focus on our social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Disability.Blog, as well as writing the bi-monthly Disability Connection newsletter. These efforts help us connect people with disabilities to the information they need to fully participate in the workforce and their communities. Above all, that is our mission.
Disability.gov (previously known as DisabilityInfo.gov) has been around for nearly 10 years, so many of the accessibility issues that may affect other websites have fortunately been resolved long ago. We incorporate accessibility testing as part of our development process and ongoing website maintenance. We utilize different assistive technologies, including screen readers (JAWS, Window Eyes, NVDA, Voice Over), screen magnifiers (ZoomText), speech recognition software (Dragon Naturally Speaking) and the most commonly used browser types and versions.
The primary ways we test for Section 508 compliance and accessibility are:
■Manual testing by educated and experienced users, including those with disabilities and others who have worked with people who have a wide range of disabilities and have utilized different types of assistive technologies. (I believe that most in the accessibility testing world would agree that somewhere around 20-30 percent of best practices can be checked using automated methods alone.) Employing manual verification through user testing allows us to catch what can be missed by the rigid code standards that automated tools rely on, find false positive results and test dynamic features.
■Seeking to meet Section 508 standards and exceed them by following the WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines and other checkpoints as defined by the W3C. Because accessibility has been our focus for a long time, testing is typically done during a major iteration where a significant structure of the site may have been changed or a new feature has been added.
■Attempting to upgrade or update the site every one to two months, meaning that accessibility testing happens at least that often. Regular, intensive accessibility testing is done on the site every six months or annually, as resources and scheduling permit.
■Measuring user feedback. Like many other sites, we use a survey powered by ForeSee to measure our visitors’ experience with Disability.gov and evaluate comments received through email, Twitter, Facebook and other methods. We strive to respond as quickly as possible, oftentimes implementing solutions that not only meet accessibility requirements, but also improve the site’s usability.
----
Are you a Section 508 coordinator, federal Web content manager or a member of the disability community who has questions about Web accessibility?
Many people within the accessibility community would like specific information on how to ensure their website is compliant. You may be thinking that there are limited examples to learn from, not enough information is shared or there are few documented detailed processes about how to do it.
The message that we would like to spread is that those responsible for making websites accessible are not helpless to fix the sites they oversee and the accessibility problems within them. If you lack the knowledge about how to test for accessibility and correct it, seek out help by contacting your fellow Section 508 Coordinators.
If you are not getting the help that you need, then ask those resources for more information or seek out the information in other ways. For example, you can sign up for newsletters, attend accessibility conferences, join LinkedIn or Facebook groups and follow users on Twitter who are sharing information about accessibility every day.
Sadly, there is no magic bullet or automated tool that can make a website accessible. Like most things that are worth it, making a website accessible takes hard work. When it comes to documenting the best practices for making and keeping a website accessible, there really isn’t any need to reinvent the wheel.
Is there really a lack of informational resources available on how to make a website Section 508 compliant? If you perform a Google search using the search term, “how to be section 508 compliant,” you will receive more than 4.5 million results. Not every search result is going to be useful, but there are many helpful resources from Section508.gov, the U.S. Access Board, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs that you can learn from.
We are not here to lecture others about accessibility. Instead, we have worked to set ourselves as an example and role model of what a federal website with a focus on Web accessibility can be. We have helped multiple agencies with reviews and provided technical solutions for accessibility issues. We have done our best to educate agency representatives about the parts of Section 508 that they are unfamiliar with and provide techniques, resources and solutions that they can use. One of the lead developers on the Disability.gov team has provided Section 508 and accessibility training to Web developers within the different agencies at the Department of Labor. However, educating others about how to meet Section 508 is not our primary mission.
With that said, typically, the reasons we find that websites are not accessible are:
■A lack of understanding as to why designing for accessibility is important.
■A lack of funds to fix existing accessibility problems.
■A lack of human resources dedicated to accessibility.
■And a lack of people with the knowledge base about accessibility problems and solutions.
The biggest problem isn’t a lack of information. Unfortunately, there are just not enough educated people with the money and resources behind them to fix the existing accessibility problems. If you don’t know what is required in Section 508 §1194.22, visit other websites who have done great jobs on describing the requirements and how to meet them.
First, familiarize yourself with Section 508 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. If you still have questions, visit WebAIM. If you’d like to see a good example of the steps used to ensure accessibility on a federal website, check out the Recovery.gov case study.
But why stop or limit yourself to just these resources? Go out and find your own.
-----
The Disability.gov Team takes our responsibility to ensure the accessibility of our website very seriously. So you might be able to imagine how we felt seeing a tweet from a well respected accessibility specialist, Dennis Lembrée, indicating that we still had some work to do, and he planned to write blog post about some of the accessibility issues he discovered on the site. Dennis is an experienced Web developer who is heavily involved in the accessibility community. He is the founder and author of the Web Axe blog; the creator of Easy Chirp, an accessible platform for using Twitter; and promotes accessibility through social networks and presentations among other endeavors.
While we work hard to do our best, we know there is always room for improvement, and prefer to hear about any issues or concerns as soon as possible, so we can address them. Our goal is always to make the site as accessible and usable as possible for all people, with or without disabilities.
In one of the prior posts in this series, I mentioned that an overwhelming majority of accessibility testing can’t be done using automated tools alone. Manual testing by educated people is required if you want to be successful. However, even then, people who understand the importance of accessibility are not infallible. They make mistakes, overlook things and have off days. Guidelines can be open to interpretation and everyone is capable of having their talents limited by available time and energy. Two people using the exact same Section 508 standards and/or WCAG criterion may end up with different determinations of whether something is considered compliant or not.
Thus accessibility and usability testing is a never ending process. It is not something that you can complete just once on a living, breathing website, check a box that it is done and forget about it.
The Disability.gov team learned long ago that many in the accessibility “Tribe” will often go out of their way to help others improve the quality of their work for the benefit of everyone. If you are seeking to do accessibility right, looking to learn and willing to work, I can almost guarantee you that you can find others to help you on your quest.
Dennis wrote up an excellent post titled “Suggestions for the new Disability.gov,” highlighting some areas where Disability.gov could use improvement in terms of accessibility, as well as noting some techniques being used on the site that were well. It was fair and welcomed feedback that we are utilizing to increase the accessibility of the site. I would recommend that you give it a read and check out some of the other educational posts and podcasts found on Web Axe.
One of my favorite ways to learn and keep up-to-date with what’s new in the accessibility world is through Twitter. Dennis visited Disability.gov because of something that he saw on Twitter and even before he emailed us about his findings, we knew about it because he posted about them on Twitter. One of the faults sometimes attributed to government is that it can be slow to react. In the current era of social media, where information can be crowd sourced and exchanged from all corners of the globe, both the federal and private sector can take advantage of the ability to share accessibility knowledge and best practices.
In my last post, I mentioned that I follow people on social media channels who are sharing accessibility information freely and often. Secretary of State Clinton wrote in her book that “it takes a village” to best provide for our children. My experience is that it will take the accessibility “Tribe” to fight for and improve the Web’s accessibility.
We will continue to work to improve both the accessibility and usability of Disability.gov. A release went out earlier this week that corrected many of the issues Dennis identified, and additional changes are in the works for the coming weeks. We are thankful for Dennis’ insight and feedback, and will continue to respond to his and any other comments or suggestions for ways to make Disability.gov the best site it can be.
# http://usodep.blogs.govdelivery.com/2012/05/08/a-look-behind-the-scenes-part-iii-website-accessibility-isnt-an-exact-science/
For Disability.gov visit: https://www.disability.gov/
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