Developing Accessible Practices

While working at CapTech I became an accessibility advocate and Emerging Subject Matter Expert. Through this role I have led accessibility audits for the clients listed below, defined accessibility practices, created resources and trainings to help my team design and develop accessible solutions, and have served as an ad hoc accessibility resource to my team.

Feedback

“Maggie’s been incredibly proactive about digging into the accessibility space, learning how to perform accessibility reviews, how to use multiple screen readers and how to design and build experiences that exceed minimum accessibility requirements. Maggie’s knowledge and expertise in the space has dramatically increased in a short amount of time and she’s been able to lend critical support to the Bank of America, VSU, Husky and PGW accessibility engagements in the last 6 months.”

-Caitlyn Mayers, Accessibility Lead

Process

Minnesota Workers Comp Accessibility Review

The ask

Review the Minnesota Workers Compensation website to ensure conformance with accessibility guidelines as specified by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Process

Because this was our teams first accessibility review our first task was to familiarize ourselves with using the NVDA screen reader, Axe Developer tool, and the process of navigating a website using a keyboard alone.

Types of reviews conducted:

Documentation

To record progress within the review team and to communicate findings to developers, I created a system to define each page and feature that must be reviewed. I included spaces to track if all necessary review types had been completed and pages to document the location, frequency, and severity of found issues.

Results

• Began to establish deeper credibility within the accessibility space

• Formalized initial process of reviews to solidify accessibility reviews as a CX offering

• Created materials to aid in spreading accessibility review knowledge across practice area - these materials included an accessibility review guide, a standard accessibility review issue log template, and an example issue log

• Received positive feedback from client on methodology and organization of deliverables

• Secured follow-up conversation with client to discuss how IT programs can incorporate Accessibility Testing into their approach.

• Used materials created from this project to train team members involved with Philly Gas Works engagement

• Used experience to serve as accessibility Subject Matter Expert in call with Chicago Federal Reserve

Philly Gas Works Review

Through the success of our first accessibility engagement our team won new accessibility review work for Philly Gas Works (PGW), Virginia State University (VSU), and Bank of America.

Using my prior experience and documentation created during the first accessibility engagement, I was able to train multiple team members in how to use the necessary tools, and share my review best practices.

Virginia State University

By the time the accessibility review for the Virginia State University website begun multiple team mates were now trained. We were able to review and report on the accessibility of 24 pages in half the time we had spent on our previous engagement.

Bank of America Asset Class Performance Chart

Redesigning the Bank of America Asset Class Performance Chart was our greatest accessibility challenge to date. This tool is a complex interactive data visualization. The original design allowed users to select a category using their mouse to visually understand how that particular asset fluctuated in the market through the years,

Because this tool is visual by nature, creating an equivalent experience for those with visual impairment required creative solutions. Our team worked around these challenges by including options to select asset classes from a list rather than from the grid itself, and carefully crafted alternative text that would inform the user of the selected asset class, the associated year, and associated rate of return. We also included descriptive alt text that would provide screen reader users with context of the tools purpose and mechanics before reading out the information itself.

Asset Class Performance Chart: Before

• Not keyboard navigable

• Not screen reader friendly

• State of drawer was not relayed

• Table structure was not clear

• State of tabs was not relayed

• Color contrast off for some classes

• Font size not responsive to browser

• Zoom reflow was un-usable

• Filtering required table click

Asset Class Performance Chart: After

• Multiple ways to filter table

• Keyboard navigable

• Screen reader improvements

• Page structure

• Table is in html table structure

• Drawer status

• Content is hidden when collapsed

• Cell clicks are explained and updated

• Content behind modal is hidden

• Proper alternate text applied

• Zoom and font increase supported

Husky Accessibility Scoping

After Being involved in several accessibility review processes I began creating a process to quickly review the most relevant pages to assess the state of accessibility so a team can properly plan when allocating resources for review.

To provide team members with a basic understanding of a website’s accessibility needs this report included:

• Top accessibility issues found, ranked by severity

• Review estimates, predicted by number of unique user flows and unique page formats

• Visualizations to communicate accessibility priorities (as seen below)

Creating company-wide standards

Since being involved in accessibility-related client work I have used my gained knowledge to share accessible design practices company-wide to begin defining accessibility expectations and standards of the work we do.

These efforts include:

• Creating a company-wide training to ensure all consultants are aware of accessibility expectations, are given basic accessibility information, and know which resources/team members to reach out to for more information

• Defining an escalation process to ensure any inaccessible design requests made by client are properly addressed

• Creating a company-wide accessibility challenge that will allow consultants from multiple practice areas to get hands-on experience designing and developing accessible websites