Why does accessibility matter? Fifteen percent of the 7+ billion people in the world live with some form of disability. That includes 26% of adults in the United States. These numbers are not negligible.
SND Foundation Board member Patrick Garvin has been a dedicated advocate for accessibility for many years. Patrick is certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) as a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies credential.
As a consultant and teacher, Patrick has been training visual storytellers, newsrooms, and organizations on how to incorporate accessibility into their programs. Over the years, he has consolidated various resources and best practices for those interested in learning about and improving accessibility within their organizations. This list of resources will continually be updated.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the international standards that inform most web accessibility laws across the world.
WCAG has four principles, and they spell out POUR:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
There are a total of 13 guidelines, each one flowing from one of these POUR principles. Each guideline has success criteria. There are currently 78 criteria in WCAG 2.1, but with the arrival of WCAG 2.2, there will be nine new criteria.
Each criteria is assigned as being either Level A, AA, or AAA.
There are three levels of conformance:
- Level A is the minimum level.
- Level AA includes all Level A and AA requirements. Many organizations strive to meet Level AA.
- Level AAA includes all Level A, AA, and AAA requirements.
Digging deeper into WCAG
- The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1
- Kasey Bonifacio’s WCAG primer
- What’s new in WCAG 2.2 draft
Accessibility resources
General resources
- Vox’s Accessibility Guidelines
- The A11y Style Guide
- Quick Tip: Everyday Accessibility (The A11y Project)
- Giving A Damn About Accessibility (Sheri Byrne-Haber)
Social media
- Accessible Social
- 10 Ways to Improve Accessibility on Websites and Social Media (Lireo Designs)
- Why and How to Create Accessible Social Media and Website Content (Meryl Evans)
Facebook & Instagram
YouTube
Color contrast
- WebAIM Color Contrast Checker
- WebAIM’s Contrast and Color Accessibility resources
- What to Consider When Choosing Colors for Data Visualization
- InVision: A guide to color accessibility in product design
- Adobe XD: Accessibility Design 101: Color Contrast Considerations for UX Designers
Colorblind considerations
- WebAIM’s Colorblindness resources
- CSS-Tricks: Accessibility Basics: Testing Your Page For Color Blindness
- David Nichols: Coloring For Colorblindness
Data visualization
- Dataviz Accessibility Resources list on Github
- Chartability, an auditing framework for data visualizations
- What we can learn from Apple’s dataviz accessibility
- How (not) to make accessible data visualizations, illustrated by the US presidential election.
- An intro to designing accessible data visualizations
- An introduction to accessible data visualizations with D3.js
W3C resources
- Planning Audio and Video Media
- Considerations for Audio Content and Video Content
- Description of Visual Information
- Captions/Subtitles
- Transcripts
- Media Players
- On using sign language interpreters for videos
- Using the HTML <track> element for audio descriptions
Video/audio/multimedia
- Deque’s Audio/Video Checklist
- University of Washington: Creating Accessible Videos
- MDN Web Docs: Accessible Multimedia
- Forbes: Recommendations For Making Audio And Video Media More Accessible
Transcripts
- How to Generate a Transcript For a Youtube Video
- Best Way to Transcribe Video To Text
- How to Transcribe Zoom Meetings with Otter.ai
- How to Convert mp3 to text
- How to Convert mp4 to text
- Otter.ai Chrome Extension for Google Meet and Google Calendar
Audio descriptions
- The Ultimate Guide to Audio Description
- Audio Description Formats Explained
- How To Add Audio Description
- Does Your Video Need Extended or Standard Description?
- 3Play’s Audio Description PlugIn
- How to Add Audio Description to YouTube Videos