Tuesday, April 18 2023
- 9:00am Central
- Mike Paciello
Pivoting to an Inclusive Organizational Culture
In today's digital economy, organizations often narrow their lens on technical compliance and software which, when done in isolation, is rarely enough. There must be fundamental adoption of inclusive policies and a top-down commitment to progress. Without the appropriate vision, strategy, governance and training in place, the overhead to deliver accessible products can be very high, and repetitive. Rather, real success comes from investing in your people, integrating people with disabilities into your organization's ecosystem, building an internal knowledge base, understanding your client's needs and applying accessible user experience principles as a wholistic process. Given integrating accessibility relies on a diverse set of skills ranging from project management through to design and development, this presentation is structured to be inclusive and engaging to all skill levels regardless of experience. Join Mike Paciello for an in depth exploration of how to integrate end-to-end accessibility into an organization's culture and product workflow.
- 10:00am Central
- Karen Pellegrin
Getting Started with Procuring Accessible IT
Procuring technology that is accessible is a critical way to address accessibility issues from the start. It requires everyone working as a team to implement clear and consistent processes, standardized documentation, organizational training, and change management. Learn how to build and launch processes for vetting and contracting accessible solutions for your organization.
- 11:00am Central
- Christina Adams
Testing for non-testers: simple techniques to add to your process
It is easy to be overwhelmed when asked to ensure accessibility in your design and development work especially if you are not an expert with assistive technology. In this session we will talk about techniques to practice in your work that will help avoid major pitfalls in your design and development work. These techniques and checkpoints can set you up for success when your product is tested with users with disabilities and those that use assistive technology. The techniques presented here are not a replacement for testing with users with disabilities and assistive technologies but can give you a head start on successful outcomes.
We will start with basic concepts that can help you understand how browsers and assistive technologies interact, demo simple tests like keyboard access and logical order using non-mouse interaction, and look under the hood using Accessibility Tree information and dev tools to see what is being communicated to assistive technologies. Information from this session will help set a foundation for you to understand what you can do today in your process that will set you up for success when creating accessible websites.
- 12:15pm Central
- Oklahoma ABLE Tech Team
Roundtables
More details coming later!
Wednesday, April 19 2023
- 9:00am Central
- Corbb O'Connor
Most Accessibility Learning is Broken: Let's Fix It Together
Whether built internally or purchased externally, most accessibility training isn't resulting in behavioral change. Adult learning theory tells us that adults learn best when we're engaged, surprised, guided, and measured. Nonetheless, most digital accessibility training is built as if we're teaching school kids.
Our attention spans have precipitously dropped, now to as low as eight seconds. Statistically, only 28 percent of you will read this entire description and, for those who do, you'll forget nearly half of these words in 20 minutes.
The solution is to tackle training with an approach that incorporates the way adults learn best with modern learning methods that have proven to beat the "Forgetting Curve" and overcome the hurdle of prior knowledge, ultimately driving real behavior change in a way that isn't disruptive to your team members' day-to-day work.
Despite a record rise in lawsuits, many of which require companies to send their teams through training, WebAIM measured that the accessibility of the top million home pages increased by only one percentage point in three years. Building more courses on the same topics isn't the answer if the people who need the education aren't taking them; the best courses have marketing campaigns that drive interest and engagement. Furthermore, most course development activities focus on the design of content and implementation of what's happening in the course, while we should focus on the knowledge transfer to learners' day-to-day work.
Gamification and competition work to help my son get ready for bed quickly, and the strategies can work just as well with adults. In addition, we need choice in how we learn. When content is presented in many formats — audio, video, tactile, and even movement — we'll naturally choose the ones that work best for us on that day. The one-size-fits-all method may work for neckties (well, does it really?) but it doesn't work for training; the days of bringing an entire team together to sit taking copious notes have been replaced by doing the same over Zoom; sure, it's cheaper…but we are learning even less. On the other hand, if we offer self-paced pre-learning, reinforce it with in-person activities, and follow it all up with micro-learning that's within reach for everyone, we can beat the forgetting curve.
As with so many discussions of accessibility, leaders want to know the return-on-investment of training. Most tools offer an assessment that learners take at the end of each course, but—as anyone who's heard Malcolm Gladwell's research about the law school entrance exam—multiple choice tests don't demonstrate someone's ability to implement what they've learned.
Join us for a lively discussion about the application of the latest research on adult learning to our work in accessibility that will result in more accessible experiences.
- 10:00am Central
- Kate DeForest
Small Shifts to Improve Digital Accessibility
Our brains are wired to repeat habits. The things we do every day become habits that we continue. Sometimes we form habits without even realizing it! But did you know that shifting our actions by just 1% can lead to big changes? In the book "Atomic Habits," James Clear discusses ways to minimally shift our environment, our actions, and our mindset to create systems that help encourage and support good habits. The four laws of Atomic Habits—Make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying—can be implemented in any area of our lives. While reading this book, Kate DeForest, Digital Content Coordinator for the State University of New York at Oswego, realized that very similar principles were already being used on her campus to help improve digital accessibility. She believes these small shifts can help push the digital accessibility culture forward. Inspired by the techniques Mr. Clear describes, Kate will discuss how to help shift the digital accessibility culture using small, actionable steps people can incorporate into their everyday habits and workflows.
- 11:00am Central
- Jessica Plitt & Judith Risch
How the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights Resolves Web Accessibility Investigations
OCR National Digital Access Team members with will discuss the types of allegations they handle under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, how they identify barriers to access for people with disabilities, resolution strategies, and how they work with vendors. Learn how they view and resolve hundreds of post-secondary technology accessibility allegations each year. Get tips on how to stay in compliance and learn promising practices.
- 12:15pm Central
- Judith Risch and Jessica Plitt
U.S. DOE Office of Civil Rights: Ask Us Anything!
More details coming later!
Thursday, April 20 2023
- 9:00am Central
- Geoff Freed
Getting Image Descriptions Right
Image descriptions are an essential part of digital accessibility. Getting image descriptions right takes expertise. We’ll start with a brief summary of relevant guidelines, rules and requirements for online image descriptions. Then we’ll share best practices for writing descriptions for various types of images, with a focus on more complex images like graphs, tables and more. If you have a basic understanding of alt text, but really want to take your skills to the next level and apply them across a range of images, this is the session for you.
- 10:00am Central
- Karey Jo Wise
Accessible Assessments Lead to Qualifications
The workforce of the future needs assessments that are accessible to people who use various types of assistive technology. Assessments are necessary for gaining new qualifications, and if the assessments are inaccessible, the talent pool becomes limited in ways that may exclude some of the best candidates. In this session, you'll learn how Pearson is working to make assessments accessible to assistive technology users.
- 11:00am Central
TBD
Session information will be added later!