Upskilling Accessibility

Web accessibility is non-negotiable. It’s a core part of designing and building effective websites, and it’s critical to making the internet work for everyone. As technology is constantly evolving, staying sharp on best practices takes ongoing effort. In one of our recent upskilling sessions, Clique’s project management team focused on accessibility testing and how they can better collaborate with engineers throughout the process. 

We, Seriah Ohlwine (project manager) and Angie Hanshaw (front-end engineer), teamed up to run the session. The biggest question? How to make it fun! Everyone at Clique understands the importance of accessibility, but just demonstrating tools can be a little dry. 

And thus… the accessibility worst practices site was born. Angie created a site full of common accessibility issues (plus a few terrible puns), and the PMs were given five minutes to see how many problems they could find. 

Here’s what was lurking on the site:

Visual issues: 

• Missing hover/focus-visible states for links and buttons
• Poor text color contrast
• Missing play/pause buttons for video
• Link text not sufficiently descriptive
• Form fields missing labels

Keyboarding issues:

• No skiplinks
• No focus trapping on hamburger menu
• Tabbing out of order on some elements

Zoom issues:

• Containers not expanding with content on zoom so that content was hidden or overflowing and hard to read

Miscellaneous issues:

• Incorrect header tags used
• Missing/incorrect image alt text

After the five minutes were up, we showed how accessibility tools could be used to catch issues like these. Our engineering team’s go-to tools include:

• Accessibility Insights (Chrome extension)
• WAVE (Chrome extension)
• Colour Contrast Analyser (Desktop app)
• Apple’s VoiceOver tool (Mac)

Then, Angie showed the corrected version of the site. 

We wrapped up with a Q&A and then brainstormed five key questions to ask at the start of any new project to keep accessibility front and center. Think about it for your own site! 

• What are your accessibility requirements?
• Do you have any required audits for reviews?
• Have you identified any special use cases through your analytics?
• Are you interested in adding an accessibility audit to your scope?
• Any unique things to know about your audience and how they use the site?

If you’re looking to strengthen your site’s accessibility or want help integrating best practices into your workflow, hit us up! cliquestudios.com

Written by Seriah Ohlwine and Angela Hanshaw at Clique Studios.