Digital Accessibility

Casey Smith
Casey Smith
software dev + #a11y specialist, @GTComputing alumnus, perspiring writer, media addict, haver of personal opinions.

Refind helps you get a little bit smarter every day. The most relevant links for you, every morning in your inbox. Start with this hand-curated series of 11 time-tested articles from around the web from around the web, and we’ll take it from there.

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Digital Accessibility
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Intro
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Accessibility is a fundamental aspect of great product design and by including people throughout the diverse spectrums of human abilities, it ensures everyone has delightful, equitable experiences. Whether you're new to accessibility or a veteran, whether you're working in project management, design, or development, this Deep Dive is meant for anyone working in any part of the software development lifecycle.

  • Designing for accessibility is not that hard and 10 other articles
  • Average reading time: 5 minutes
  • Topics covered: a11y, design, tips, ux, whatis
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  • From sites like UX Collective, Mozilla, Data Science News, and more
  • You want to learn something new and are looking for a good, compact introduction.
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Glad to see you made it all the way through this Deep Dive. We hope you found it useful and can put some of the insights to good use in your own daily life.

How does it work?

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Deep Dives are carefully hand-curated series of time-tested articles and videos from around the web.

We’ll guide you through, one link per day, every morning in your inbox.

Deep Dives come in bites that are short enough to fit in your day...

...but add up to a satisfying learning experience.

Did you know that the same organization which wrote the standard for HTML itself also defined what it means to make a website accessible? The W3C is the source of truth for digital accessibility and has a broad range of resources. Their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the international standard to which every digital product should adhere.

Casey Smith

Microsoft is a true pioneer for accessibility and inclusion, so it’s no surprise their resource hub is one of the best introductions to the wide and diverse spectrums of disabilities and assistive technologies.

Casey Smith

TPG’s timeline is especially helpful for understanding the legal requirements (in the U.S.) for accessibility. Even for folks outside the U.S., understanding the history of the international standard, WCAG, is a must.

Casey Smith

Every organization is at a different spot on their accessibility journey. The ultimate key to success is to foster an inclusive mindset in everyone because it takes everyone. As you read Shopify’s accessibility story, ask yourself what you can do to affect lasting change in your team and organization.

Casey Smith

Now let’s get tactical. WebAIM has plenty of great resources and this is one which can take any organization from ‘What’s accessibility?’ to ‘We’re all accessibility experts!’

Casey Smith

Many of the easiest and most effective accessibility best practices can be applied before a single line of code is written. You’re probably already familiar with some of these because, as you’ll soon discover, great accessibility leads to great experiences for all users.

Casey Smith

Accessibility is very context dependent, meaning ‘it depends’ is a common response to many questions. This is a great resource for those nuanced scenarios when you need an answer to your specific problem.

Casey Smith

And now, to round out your growing toolkit, an actual toolkit! IBM released their internal accessibility documentation to the world and the world is better for it. This is the most comprehensive guide to every accessibility requirement and best practice you’ll ever find.

Casey Smith

There are endless accessibility resources out there for web developers, but if there’s a place every web dev should start, it’s with the accessibility tree. It’s the glue that holds everything together and understanding how assistive technologies utilize it is critical to building accessible websites, no matter the stack.

Casey Smith

Last but certainly not least, iOS accessibility. This is a great guide for every developer since it covers everything from using the native screen reader, VoiceOver, to implementing accessible checkboxes.

Casey Smith

Thank you for taking the time to complete this Deep Dive. As I like to say to the folks I train, this is really the first day of the rest of your (accessibility) life. Everyone deserves access to the same delightful experiences, but that can’t happen without informed and intentional work at every stage of the software development life cycle. I hope that, no matter where you are on your journey, accessibility will be at the forefront and that these resources will guide you.

Casey Smith

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