Web accessibility/Links/WACC101/Announcement2

Week 2: The Perceivable Principle

Week 2 Announcements

Week 1 Recap

One of my favourite aspects of this course, and the others in the series, is going through the responses from people on the screen reader activity. For those who have not used a screen reader before, it can be an "eye-opening" experience — no pun intended. The experience can often change how people think about accessibility, making it a permanent part of how they look at the Web, and how they look at the creation of web or other digital content. You can try this activity yourself on others, if you want to help another person to understand what accessibility means in practical terms.

The goal of the screen reader activity is to create awareness and empathy for what people with vision impairments can go through when they navigate the Web. Granted, many of you are novice screen reader users, and lack of experience using a tool like ChromeVox will contribute part of the frustration associated with the experience. Even expert screen reader users will experience frustration when they encounter websites like Lulu's Lollipops. Likewise, they can be pleasantly surprised when they encounter a website like the Showcase site. If you took your time navigating the Showcase site, you would have noticed a variety of accessibility enhancements that add to the overall usability of the site.

You'll have more opportunities to practice with ChromeVox as the course goes on.

The WCAG Scavenger Hunt is intended to give you an overview of the various pieces of WCAG, so when you need to find answers to accessibility questions, you know where to look for them. If web accessibility is part of a career move for you, it would be a good idea to spend some time going through guidelines, success criteria, and techniques. Not necessarily to memorize them or to recall specific guidelines or techniques and so on, but rather to be able to recognize, based on a particular accessibility challenge, where to look for solutions.

• • Key Point**: Be sure to subscribe to forums so you are not missing replies to your posts, particularly when the instructors are providing feedback that may affect your mark on the activities. If you are not subscribed, be sure to scan through the forums regularly. Choose the "Watching" option to subscribe to the forums, located at the bottom of the message thread.

Week 2

This week we get into the details of WCAG, starting with the guidelines and success criteria for __Principle 1: Web content must be perceivable__. Sight and sound are the primary ways we perceive web content. There are many, however, that won't be able to use sight, sound, or both, when they navigate web content. Alternatives need to be provided whenever sight or sound are needed for comprehension. In most cases, this means providing text alternatives, such as alt text for images or captions for audio and video content. As you will learn, text is special when it comes to web accessibility.

This week's tasks:

• 1. Read through the pages that describe Guidelines 1.1 to 1.4. While doing so pay particular attention to the nature of guidelines or, rather, success criteria at the different levels. Note whether failing to address issues at each level creates absolute barriers, usability problems, or more of a nuisance. This will help you remember, and prioritize issues.
  2. __Attempt the "Try This" mini activities__ scattered throughout the unit (in purple boxes) and continue to build your practical understanding of web accessibility.
  3. Complete Unit 3 Activity - Creating Closed Captions. This activity will introduce you to the process of creating captions and transcripts for video. If this is your first time, you'll likely find it cumbersome in the beginning, but with just a little practice, you can generate captions for a couple minutes of video, in 10 to 15 minutes, or less.