Web accessibility/Links/WACC301/Announcement3

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Week 2 Recap
Last week focused first on using static WAI-ARIA, particularly using **landmarks and alerts**. As many of you discovered, the technology can be “finicky.” Some of you had some trouble getting ChromeVox to behave as expected, while others didn’t. This is a common problem, not just with ChromeVox, but with other screen readers as well.

You may have also discovered that depending on the screen reader being used, some strategies work well in one, but not in another. This is in part due to the **state of the art** in implementing WAI-ARIA in user agents (i.e. browsers and assistive technology). The general rule is follow the WAI-ARIA specification and the WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices as they suggest WAI-ARIA should be used,  and then **create workarounds** where possible to improve functionality across user agents where WAI-ARIA support is lacking or limited (i.e. graceful degradation). For this course though, your work only needs to function effectively with ChromeVox.

We are using ChromeVox in this course, mainly because it is easier to setup and use for novice screen reader users, but also because it has relatively good WAI-ARIA support. That said though, if you are blind, it’s likely you use some other screen reader. While ChromeVox is good for day to day development and testing, you will still want to do some testing with JAWS and NVDA screen readers before your work goes into production.

Week 3
This week and next, is all coding activities, so there’s not much to say in terms of an introduction to what you’ll be learning this week. This week you will be working on an accessible Slider, an Accordion, a Tab Panel, and a Carousel, each of the latter three which you have some experience with, including issues you may encounter with these widgets, from Activity 2.

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