A11y - Eric Bailey, Helena McCabe, Scott O'Hara, Scott Vinkle (A11yTalks - Nov 2017)

Join us for something a little bit different this month...a panel discussion on all things accessibility with four accessibility experts! There will be a few questions queued up including:

1. When did you first start working in website accessibility and why?

2. What do you find to be the most common accessibility mistakes?

3. What are good examples of types of disabilities that have unique accessibility problems and how are they best addressed? Are any of these just not really covered by WCAG 2.0?

4. How accessible do hamburger navigation tend to be? Have any libraries or examples you like?

A11Y Patterns (accessible mobile menu link) - a11yproject.com/patterns
A11Y Style Guide - a11y-style-guide.com/style-guide/section-navigatio…
Scott O’Hara GitHub repo - github.com/scottaohara
Scott Vinkle GitHub repo - github.com/svinkle
Eric Bailey GitHub repo - github.com/ericwbailey

5. What are your top three accessibility tools? What automatic tools do you use in accessibility testing?

WAVE tool - wave.webaim.org/
AXE tool - www.deque.com/products/axe
ARIA best practices website - www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices
Color contrast checkers - contrastchecker.com/
webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker
Giphy capture - giphy.com/apps/giphycapture
Zoom - good for accessibility for meetings - zoom.us/
Color oracle - colororacle.org/
Contrast A (Das Plankton) - www.dasplankton.de/portfolio-item/contrast-a
Pa11y - especially good for sprint regressions - pa11y.org/
React accessibility linter - github.com/reactjs/react-a11y
General accessibility linter - www.npmjs.com/package/grunt-tenon-client
Twitter has a setting to turn descriptions on images
Twitter account that reminds you to add descriptive text to images - twitter.com/PleaseCaption
Manual testing, including keyboard, education, and empathy!

6. Have you started to incorporate WCAG 2.1 guidelines/techniques? In your review of it, is there anything you’re already doing, and if so, can you highlight one?

7. What do you think accessibility will look like in 5 years?

8. What is the one thing you would say to new people starting off in accessibility?

Scott O: Just care and do your best.

Scott V: Talk to people, go to local meet-ups/conferences, read things, but also do things, such as contributing to A11Yproject.com

Helena: Web accessibility is not an obligation or a thing to check off a list. Think of website accessibility as the exciting challenge that it is that will positively impact your users and have a positive attitude about it.

Eric: Don’t be afraid to get your feet wet. There is always more work to be done, but you need to start somewhere.

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Recorded: November 29, 2017 (12pm ET)
Panelist: Eric Bailey (Twitter - @ericwbailey)
Panelist: Helena McCabe (Twitter - @misshelenasue)
Panelist: Scott O'Hara (Twitter - @scottohara)
Panelist: Scott Vinkle (Twitter - @svinkle)
Moderator: Carie Fisher (Twitter - @cariefisher)