Accessibility training and workshops can cover many aspects of digital accessibility, and the details we focus will depend on your needs and current practices.
After an accessibility audit you’ll have a much more realistic understanding of how accessible your site is, when tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG) single- and double- and triple-A standard. The time following an access audit or a website launch is a good opportunity to spread what you’ve learnt about accessibility, and to ensure that accessibility is maintained after launch:
Types of training
1. Accessible content creation
This training will make sure that your content creators are aware of how to make sure that all future content added to the site is accessible, and that the level of accessibility reached when an access statement is published is maintained and improved. Training includes the following:
- Accessibility definition, requirements and legal etc
- How Disabled users use the web and barriers – the most common barriers
- WCAG principles with user examples
- How to create accessible content:
- Text – most common issues from user testing
- Images – most common issues
- Video – most common issues
- ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ examples / case studies
- How to test content for accessibility: with users; validators, tools
- Any questions
2. Building accessibility into new digital projects
the principle of inclusive design and considering needs of Disabled users from the start. Including:
- Accessibility definition, requirements and legal / WCAG etc
- Project stages overview: scoping, wireframes, flat designs, interactives (this can be adapted to your current processes) – including accessibility
- How to build accessibility into:
- Design and layout – most common issues from user testing
- Navigation – most common issues
- ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ examples
- How to test for accessibility, user, validator tools
- ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ examples / case studies
- How to test design and navigation for accessibility: with users; validators
- Any questions
3. Access user testing
A good follow-up to content creation and building accessible sites workshops, I can run training on how I run access user testing with assistive technology users. There are 2 main outcomes to this training: (i) it demonstrates how Disabled users use different assistive technologies to access digital content, and really brings the WCAG to life with real examples and (ii) it can lead to you running your own in-house testing yourselves. The session includes:
- Plan your own test: test objectives – what do you want to find out
- Target audiences – pin down demographics and access needs
- Recruitment, access requirements and setting up
- User journeys and test scripts
- Running an online test session – includes a ‘real’ online user test with assistive technology users – with staff observing and / or facilitating to find out how it works.
- Analysing and rounding up the findings
- Report and recommendations
4. Creating accessible digital gallery interactives
For museums and other venues – how to develop digital gallery interactives. The same principles of creating accessible content, design and navigation apply to all digital interactives, and I can put together a session based on what you currently have in-house and what your plans are. This might include:
- Principles of accessibility (a reminder if the audience has already been to the accessible content training above)
- Putting digital interactives into the whole access journey
- Different digital interactives and making them accessible:
- Touch screen interactives – good and bad examples
- Audio experiences – good and bad
- Video content / projections – good and bad
- Museum sector – other case studies
- How to re-purpose accessible content and make it available online for users who can’t visit the museum