Global Accessibility Awareness Day
How organisations can improve their accessibility features, technology tools and learning resources.
Tools
Several free tools can help designers and developers to test the accessibility of their pages:
WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool:
This tool helps designers and developers test the accessibility of their pages. It’s from the guys at WebAIM.
Colour Contract Analyzer (CCA):
The CCA is a tool provided by the Paciello Group that helps you determine the legibility of text and the contrast of visual elements, such as visual indicators.
Deque’s axe Browser Extension integrates into Chrome & Firefox’s built-in Developer Tools to allow convenient access to a page’s accessibility barriers in a familiar way to most Web Developers.
Source: Global Accessibility Day
Social Media Accessibility
ALT Text and Image descriptions
You need both Alt Text and image descriptions to make your content accessible. A text description provides an alternative way of perceiving an image for those who cannot see it or interpret it.
Alt text is embedded in your image (advanced settings) and will be read by most screen readers.
Image descriptions are posted in captions or comments and are available to everyone.
Top tip: if your caption is too long for an image description. Write it in the comments.
How can you be more Deaf aware?
Over 5% of the world’s population needs rehabilitation to address their ‘disabling’ hearing loss (432 million adults and 34 million children).
Here are some tips to help you be more aware of deaf colleagues, volunteers, and members of the public:
Ensure you have the person’s attention before speaking.
Make eye contact when speaking.
Don’t shout. Keep calm and speak clearly.
Speak at your average pace. Not too fast or too slow.
Turn on closed captions for all of your meetings.
Resources
Sociability is an accessibility app helping disabled people find accessible places. Designed by disabled for disabled people.
Support sociability by using accessible management software that provides a user-friendly, scalable and end to end solution for organisations building more inclusive and accessible workplaces.
