May 18, 2017 presentation at AccessU: There’s often a debate about why applications aren’t accessible. Some people argue that teams don’t care enough about accessibility or prioritize it. Others argue that developers just don’t get it. What if it’s not that simple? What if, in a world of open source and Agile/fast-paced projects, frameworks and deadlines get in the way? When frameworks like Drupal, jQuery, and WordPress fall short, you can still come out ahead in accessibility by knowing what questions to ask and what resources to engage. This session isn’t a session on out-of-the-box accessibility for Drupal, jQuery, WordPress, and similar frameworks – it will teach you some common glitches in frameworks and techniques to work around those to improve accessibility.

1. Lessons Learned
Coding Accessible Apps with Frameworks
Kate Walser
kwalser@cxinsights.com
Slides @ http://www.slideshare.net/kwalser

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» Usability & accessibility
specialist
» Member of TEITAC, or Section
508 / Section 255 refresh
committee
» Principal consultant at CX
Insights, the user experience
division of Tritus Technologies,
Inc.
» Originally from upstate NY, now
call Fairfax, VA (near DC) home
Kate Walser
kate@cxinsights.com
571.281.2626
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3. » In the early days of software and web
apps, software licensing was a given if you
were not building your own from-scratch
applications.
VINTAGE
Commercial software
Image credit: “Commercial Software Licensing Costs,” by maisonbisson
Flickr Creative Commons
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4. » As the market crashed in the late 1990s
and early 2000s and the recession hit,
agencies and businesses were finding
ways to cut costs.
CHALLENGE
Financial Times & Costly Software
Image credit: “Piggy Banks with savings chart,” by managementwritingsolutions
Flickr Creative Commons Creative Commons – Some Rights
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5. TRENDING
Frameworks & Open Source
Logos and trademarks courtesy of Oracle, Microsoft, Drupal, and
WordPress.
All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks
of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or
endorsement by them. Creative Commons – Some Rights
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6. TRENDING
Agile
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7. THE PROMISE
Powerful, Quicker to build apps
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8. THE SIDE EFFECT
Black box accessibility
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9. » Apps & Frameworks in Action
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10. » WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, SharePoint and other
content management tools let organizations build
websites quickly and manage content easily. The
built-in options out of box for most of them include
the ability to tag content with headings, used by
assistive technologies.
» Content owners can also insert media, and in
some better designed tools like WordPress, add
alternative text.
Content Management
Publish, Edit, Approve
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11. With drop-down and complex menus, it can
be hard to find option you need. Menu
doesn’t stay open to let users use ctrl+f to
find nav.
Navigation
Drop-downs, Megamenus, Mobile menus
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12. » You can also quickly stand up forms to
collect information such as Contact Us,
newsletter subscription, registration, or
application information using Drupal’s
Ctools and various frameworks and plug-
ins, like Contact Form 7.
» Many offer support to let you include
required indicators, date picker widgets,
and informative text near the fields to help
users know what format is needed.
Forms
Cues, Formats, Feedback
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13. Dynamic Areas
Autocompletes, Data-dependent forms, Pop-ups, Surveys, Chat
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14. Maps & Geo-locations
Near you, Mapped search results
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15. Search & Queries
Tables, Filter, Show X rows, Pagerlinks
Example: https://datatables.net/
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16. GROUP EXERCISE #1
» Look at your site (or a site)
» Content, articles
» Any interactive sliders, carousels, media
» Search and search results
» Contact, registration, application forms
» How would you describe the items to a user who
couldn’t see the screen?
» If you had to tell Siri what to do, what would you say?
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17. » Lessons Learned
Photo credit: “Caution Falling Hardware,” fdecomite
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18. FOR FRAMEWORKS
Accessible content’s easy(er)…
» Content headings
» Alt attributes
» Labels for basic fields
» Table headings
» Skip to main content
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19. WHEN USING FRAMEWORKS
Accessible interactions fell short
» Keyboard and speech
recognition had less
support
» Accessible rich Internet
application (ARIA) support
varied
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20. » Websites with pop-ups for tooltips,
navigation menus, and modals and dialogs
weren’t always reachable by keyboard.
DEMO
Pop-ups weren’t reachable
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21. LESSONS LEARNED
Pop-ups weren’t reachable
» Add keyboard alternative for
click and hover events
– Level 1 menu links sometimes
removed href that provides
keyboard support
– Hover sometimes used as trigger
» Improve focus outline
» Set focus when open dialogs
https://www.playosmo.com/en/
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22. DEMO
Field label, help, access issues
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Example: https://kwalser.wufoo.com/forms/applicant/

23. LESSONS LEARNED
Field label, help issues
» Adjust out of box required field
settings
– Change * to Required
– Add required attribute to field
» Assign field descriptions to fields
» Adjust code for custom items
– Forms in dialogs
– Character counts
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24. DEMO
Validation messages need focus
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25. LESSONS LEARNED
Validation messages needed focus
» Improve status messages
– Move focus to success / error
messages after validation
– Include links to fields with
problems
» Associate error message
with field via ARIA
Example: http://assets.cms.gov/resources/framework/3.4.1/Pages/#formvalidatorCreative Commons – Some Rights
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26. DEMO
Search results needed tweaks
Example: http://www.211texas.org/search/
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27. LESSONS LEARNED
Search results needs tweaks
» Change filter option labels to “Filter” to avoid Search
hot command collision in speech recognition
» Set focus back to logical spot when pager links used
– Previous, page #, and next caused page refresh, focus set to top
rather than search results (or pager links)
» Associate text and map results for location-aware
searches (e.g., Near you) to improve map a11y
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28. LESSONS LEARNED
Extend typeahead functionality
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» Add offscreen element (e.g.,
<span>) with role=“status” and
aria-live=“polite” to provide
feedback on # of results,
navigation tips
» Add keydown listener on down
arrow to show and set focus on the
first result

29. A better strategy
» Planning A11y into Frameworks
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30. 1. List all major features
» Navigation
– Drop-downs, Jump links, Into / out of
dialogs and auto-complete
» Search, faceted drill-down
– Results, Filtering, Pagination / pager links,
Table headings
» Sliders, carousels, galleries, tabs
» Content sharing options, plugins
» Maps and data charts
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31. 2. Describe interactions, test criteria,
examples
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» If click triggers action,
keyboard will also…
» If hover triggers action,
keyboard alternative…
» If error returned…
» If many links / elements
in the widget...

32. 3. Pick tools with large communities
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» Look at downloads, usage,
active maintenance
» Find resources on
StackOverflow, Quora,
JSFiddle.net, CodePen.io
» Google site:frameworkname +
accessibility +…
– “How do I”
– Keyboard access

33. WordPress Accessibility Site
» WordPress’s accessibility site includes
resources for creating accessible plugins
and themes.
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34. Drupal Groups Site
» Drupal Group’s site lists modules and
themes that have pledge to be accessible
and those that the community wishes
would take the pledge.
Drupal has made a pledge to accessibility, to make both its core framework
accessible and challenge module and theme developers to take an accessibility
pledge. This means they will “try” to make their products accessible.
Accessibility pledge modules/themes
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#D7AX, #D8AX

35. Check usage stats if available
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36. 4. Use forums, API, examples
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37. 5. Apply (or create) a11y helpers
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Assets.CMS.gov
Standards.USA.gov

38. GROUP EXERCISE #2
» Go back to your site (or a site)
» Content, articles
» Any interactive sliders, carousels, media
» Search and search results
» Contact, registration, application forms
» How would you describe those items and test them?
» What would you want to add, look for to improve
accessibility?
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» Knowbility Developer Resources
– Includes links to browser add-ons and favelets –
http://www.knowbility.org/v/air-dev-resources/AIR-Austin/34/
» Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services
– Assets.cms.gov – Accessibility framework
– Medicare.gov – Accessible website
» Browser add-ons
– Check Chrome, Firefox, IE plugins, extensions
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Useful a11y resources
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» Knowbility.org
» WCAG
» Assets.CMS.gov
» WebAIM.org
» Playbook.CIO.gov
» Standards.USA.gov
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Exemplar Sites

41. Summary
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» Biggest challenges with framework accessibility are the rich,
interactive elements
» Describing how those should work in advance and finding
examples helps.

42. Contact
Kate Walser
kwalser@cxinsights.com • @kwalser
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