Hi blog, it’s been a bit.
Yesterday, I spent part of my usual shift time at an Austin Design Week event with Maddy and Valerie, about web accessibility at an office called Microassist near Shoal Creek. This office specializes in providing trainings to public and private organizations as well as running accessibility checks. It’s the official tech training firm for the State of Texas as well as certain federal offices.
We listened to their Lead Accessibility Analyst give a presentation on what web accessibility is & why it matters. He kept it brief and to the point, but some points that stuck with me:
- Maintaining accessibility is the right thing to do. But for public (and private!) organizations, compliance is a big issue as well.
- The web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) are exactly just that… guidelines. In a manner of speaking, they are the bare minimum.
- It’s imperative that accessibility be a continual point of reference throughout the development process (this means including designers, web and software developers, quality assurance specialists, and everyone else involved in the conversation). It’s much, much easier to resolve issues as you go rather than retroactively “correct” things.
- Never make visual cues the sole means of conveying information.
Anyway, all in all very interesting and inspiring event. More blog posts to come soon!
