 What do people think of the keynote? The Dries note, yeah It's good to see some of the neat features that are part of of Drupal 8 and where that's going and you know Is it do they know it like we're waiting for people to come in so I'm just making Chitter chatter at this point, but The inline form errors does anyone does everyone know what that is? so it's an experimental module and I do recommend that people enable it despite Dries's concerns about all Experimental modules being you know not to be used in production but but the It's an important part of accessibility if you have any interaction with your websites because it's something that's often overlooked Because if a user is blind or has other disabilities and they they're filling in a form sometimes They don't know where that what the error message what errors are present on the page and And it's it's a you know a lot of the the testing that's done for accessibility overlooks the air their screens because certainly the automated tests generally don't cover that and People often overlook what happens if you provide bad data and produce an error message and how that's that's intended to be presented so just again Just get a sense the room. How many people here would consider themselves beginners with accessibility just raise your hand Okay, and what about people who are like seasoned experts? We have any seasoned experts that carry So carry your talk is when again Tomorrow is it more That's right, that's right, so we'll talk about that at the end and yeah, that's right And how many people here work for for for a government agency? Yes, you know what about an educational institution like you know, yeah It's it's understandable There are other people here who work for for I guess the Drupal shops or agencies Is there anyone else who doesn't fit in those three categories? excellent It's a certainly section 508 really hits You know that particular market the government and educational institutions are definitely the the biggest Biggest sort of you know demand for that There's lots of room up at the front or we're on this side, so feel free to come in Is anyone here using Drupal 8 already? nice On production or just in a tech you know development, right? Yeah So it's definitely come a long ways with accessibility There's there's a lot that's being learned and a lot of neat stuff that's happened happen on that front, so Yeah, nice to see that come along Anyone here from from the Baltimore area? Yes, it's good to have a couple people who are local. That's a yeah How about people from DC? Yeah, make more sense of this Does anyone spotter with the power there's there's one power outlet here people need a power outlet that's available So there's more along the side here people need to charge up their devices. I imagine there aren't any on that side, but you know But there's certainly room on this side as well if you want to sit down and where there are people here at the the summits yesterday and And how many people participated in an accessibility discussion at a summit? That's a it certainly came up a number of times in in both the the nonprofit summit as well as the the government summits There wasn't a higher ed summit this year. Was there there was was it brought up in there as well? Right We're mostly here at this point Imagine there'll be a few people dropping coming in as they as the coffee lines get smaller, but That's all fine Moment to show up. Is anyone here not from the United States? like yeah, sorry It's an interesting topic for you because section 508 is such an American law and and it's it's a it's something that that Back in 2000 may have made a lot more sense to sort of see is a you know as an early template for for You know other other organizations and countries, but but yes, it's definitely a totally American thing that Is fortunately changing Okay, I think we can now officially officially begin because it's 1045 So my name is Mike Gifford, and I'm the president of open concept consulting and we're based in Ottawa, Canada I proposed this the subject because of being in looking down and looking at various different types of accessibility legislation that are going down around the world, but but also In states and think that there's a lot of eyes are watching what's happening in the US for many reasons and certainly the So many businesses and industries are based in the US and it's being such a leader internationally with the internet But I thought there was a good opportunity to go up and to talk about about the subject and to put so put a bit of it In context to provide provide a bit more clarity for the For the the Drupal community So my company is open concept consulting and we work with for a Drupal shop We do accessibility work, but not exclusively No, it's exclusively accessibility and not exclusively Drupal we work with governments and nonprofits and educational institutions and Work to try and build a more collaborative open society We're heavily involved in in supporting the Drupal community, particularly the accessibility initiatives I'm a Drupal 8 core accessibility maintainer, but but there's also Maintainers who are But I'm also involved in in trying to go up and promote The adoption of open source and government and and even changes in the procurement policy so that there's So it's easier for organizations to be able to to get involved in the open source community and start doing things better and by collaborating with open source tools So everyone knows that section 508 is right So this is the legislation to try and verify that that people can can access the internet it was and it's it's put up by the the US government and there's a lot of organizations that that need to follow the the Section 508 guidelines, but there's a whole bunch of other players that are in the scene that are looking at this this specific issue So the worldwide web consortium is one and they're leading experts in this and trying to to try and build standards and build a framework for for accessibility and for the web really to sort of cement that that framework for for For how the internet and how the web is is working There's also the the web accessibility initiative. So this is a small team of people that that work on trying to to work specifically on accessibility issues and there's subgroups within that there's WK which we'll talk about briefly. There's a tag. There's UTAG there's there's a bunch of groups that are looking at various elements of improving the The the process for for managing Managing standards and and how many people here have tried to go up and build a collaborative standard with anyone Just you know, it's a long and painful process So anyone who's involved in is creating and engaging with that legislation needs a great deal of respect because it's it's a Takes a lot of patience to manage that In the US, there's a number of other organizations that that are specifically looking at At the accessibility legislation There's the architectural and transport barriers compliance board or the access board There's the Department of Labor the Equality and Employment Opportunity Commission the Department of Transportation the FCC and the Department of Justice There's also accessibility legislation that's that's applied at at many state county and municipal levels of government. So it's something that that That affects a lot of a lot of people And a lot of different organizations trying to deal with how to structure this I thought it was useful to go off and talk a bit about the the history of You know of accessibility particularly with web accessibility because this is something that that people often forget that that these These pieces of legislation are are they come they don't come out of nowhere. They're part of a An effort to try and provide more equity and justice and to really provide opportunities for for more more people to be engaged in society so the you know the first effort to try and look at at Form the accessibility board was done in 1973 The initial section 508 was was set up in in 1986 And then in 1990 there's the Americans with the Disability Act And that was that was so you at that time United States is really quite forward-looking. This is whoops That's not useful In 1997 we had the the formation of the World Wide Web Consortium's web accessibility initiative It wasn't until 1999 that the World Wide Web Consortium launched WK 1.0 and We had in 1998 sex the section 508 amendment This was the amendment that that dealt with web accessibility because back in 1986 they hadn't really thought about how to deal with that and how to manage that technology 2001 You know it was next section five way it was was implemented in 1998. It wasn't actually enforced until till 2001 and Then you know in 2008 we had the WK WK 2.0 came out And then there's there's a tag came out just in 2015 a tag is the authoring tool accessibility guideline There's also January of this year. We had the this section 508 refresh process that that that was signed in by Obama We'll see what actually happens with that because it's it's something that Yeah, I think that there still are some possibilities that Trump might find a way to to pull that back But don't worry there will be still information here that that will be relevant in this talk Even if Trump is able to go off and to do some Legal jiu-jitsu to go off and to pull out this great piece of legislation That's taken over a decade to go off and to get you know revised and brought into to to power This year, there was also the WK 2.1 draft release. So that's again a standard that's evolving and changing and You know next year in January 18th is the expected compliance date for WK 2.0 double a for for American organizations, so the the guidelines from 1997 that the earnestly 1998 that that the us the Department of the show the access board went off and implemented will be Will be finally updated in January of 2018 if all goes as planned and it took a long time to get to that point, but but it's it's something that that Hope it will hopefully bring the US up to speed with with the rest of the modern world So I also want to put in context what else is happening with with the web and how the web has changed so How many people here were developing websites in 1995? Like that was a long time ago. It's changed so much since then And we have you know, it was security. We had SSL implementation implemented in SSL 3.0 was implemented in 1996 We had 1998 which is the same year that the section 508 was implemented We were just dealing with the the release of CSS 2.0 Again 1999 we had the implementation of HTML 4.1 4.01 SVG RDF TSL security layers RDFA like a lot of these technologies are are changing and evolving over time because because the industries is is is is Finding ways to go off and and to meet the needs of consumers and to create more dynamic inclusive technologies The I wanted to highlight the the web Area standard the rich the accessible rich internet Applications this was a standard that we were looking at in Drupal 7 So when Drupal 7 was was was released I forget exactly when that was but we you know area wasn't a formalized standard at that point So when we were looking at building Drupal 7 and the Core of 7 we couldn't really include that much area Because we weren't sure where it was going to change and how those those standards are going to be modified but when it was implemented as a final recommendation in 2014 we felt that it was was fine to go from a bring the area into the Drupal 8 core and have that be something that that we try and build in by default into the practices of Core development is everyone here familiar with what area is? And how it works Okay, so area is it's essentially a way of adding additional semantics to a To the website to give meaning about what that that piece of functionality is intended to do it has a bunch of information like Landmarks that allow you to define different regions of the text that Are useful to go off and to say if you want to get to the search engine or if you want to get to navigation Or you want to get down to the footer It's broken down that way. It's also Structured in a way that allows you to deal with with changes in the text. So if there's Area live was was implemented that allows it if there's if there's content that's dynamically changed on the page That it alerts you to say that this content is dynamically being updated We also had the implementation of You know HTML 5 and most recently HTML 5.1 is being being worked on as well. So there's You know all of these standards are being updated and changed over time So in the US a lot of the legislation around section 5 5 away came out of the the rehabilitation act and an effort to try and support veterans It's it's a you know again going back to the very beginning of this. This is looking at at efforts to support People who are veterans who returning from World War one? And and trying to go off and support people who I mean certainly they weren't using the web in in 1917 but But we're having people who are injured through war who needed to be able to try and find a way to live make their living back in the US after after serving their country and It's come all of the language and whatnot has come from that and and section 508 was was implemented When the when the web was still quite young and they used a lot of technical they had a technical elements that made it very Specific for the the technology of the day. It wasn't a very future proof Set of regulations because they were looking at and what what the screen readers could do and what was available back in Well, probably was initially drafted in 95 96 97 But actually came into implementation in 98 as I said and You know section 508 is really important for any organization that is receiving federal funds or is under contract of the federal agency So that's a lot of different organizations Whereas the Americans with disability act really comes from a perspective of of civil rights So it's a similar perspective, but it's slightly different language and slightly different history in terms of how this this came about So we're not looking specifically at at the Americans with the disability act in this discussion, but but both the Both section 508 and the Americans with disability act are moving to to use the international standard of WK 2.0 AA as as the As the guideline for whether or not something is accessible or not. So if we're looking at You know section 504 actually is is is looking at at supporting civil rights for people with disabilities and trying to make sure that you Were allowing for reasonable accommodations The Americans with disability acts is broken down into a couple different sections And and it's it's trying to go off and to deal with anyone that's serving programs or services or activities for for people with disabilities the language like I'm not a lawyer and not a policy one, but But the I was nicely timed So the You know trying to go up and make sure that you're dealing with effective communication that that if you're communicating to somebody with a disability They're not getting a an inferior experience They're able to have an effective as effective communications as possible as you'd have with with others So yeah, if you're if you're looking at at most of you'll probably already know this But you're you're underneath section 508 if you receive federal funding or if you're under contract for the federal agency So anyone who's who's got contracts with the federal government as a agency Or if you get money from from a federal government agency You are probably responsible for for for meeting the section 508 guidelines, which will change in January So the the ADA on the other hand is is is broader and It includes most most places of lodging And recreation sports education stores restaurants Transportation there's a new bill that I didn't actually list this but there's a new bill about airline transportation and trying to go off and support more accessible airline transportation and that there's a part of that was looking at at the the websites And I'm trying to make sure that websites like the people who are we have disabilities can effectively book book flights on airlines a lot of websites Airline websites are particularly you're having particularly bad for accessibility So that's that's definitely something it basically includes almost every organization except for private clubs and religious organizations, so And you know, certainly religious organizations should be thinking about this if only to try and make sure that their members are able to go off and access the the resources Not the resources that you the to participate in the the community But they're not legally responsible to go off and take me the ADA requirements So as anyone here either being involved in a suit or a You know, yeah about accessibility is there's a few people Fortunately, I haven't actually been involved in any of those but anytime you're dealing with with a Yeah a conflict in court, it's a painful process for everyone involved And we all know that that web developers are even if you good web developers are not as expensive as lawyers so it's a It's something that that it's important to try and and think about when within organizations and hopefully Hopefully will be able to go off and have have more people be actively looking at at improving their sites web web accessibility as opposed to having having individuals go off and and and sue Organizations because their their organization isn't accessible Unfortunately, that's the US has chosen an enforcement mechanism, which is entirely based on personal lawsuits So whether it's the the NFB suing organizations like they did target the suit target a few years back For six million dollars and you know, it's interesting to see how target has really turned things around and they've they've Tried to go off and take a real leadership role and sort of own the mistakes that they've made I was at CSUN, which is a big accessibility conference in San Diego This was two or three years ago and there was a team of about I think it was almost 10 people from Target Who came down for that conference to both learn but also to present on on what they're doing on On to taking this message message to heart and finding ways to be able to To more effectively build their website to to to meet to be more inclusive and meet more more needs of citizens Not at the snow. I don't know. Unfortunately. Yeah, and it's this at this point There's probably archives somewhere with that that would be but but yeah, I don't know specifically what the problems were I do find it ridiculous that the the that it was George W. Bush went off and and Was it was the president who came down and was has actually he's quoted to saying Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down and he put forward a call to go off and to help You know encourage accessibility and to try and push ahead on web accessibility up until till Obama went off and and made made this this this proclamation Adopted the section five way refresh I think that George would be Bush had probably done the most to try and push push ahead web accessibility on a federal level of Well, yeah, if any It was the last president to make a big impact on this We'll see what happens with Trump, but he again is this there's this hopeful that there's been pushing on both Republican and Democrat sides on this so yeah, the Now the thing about private Legislature sorry about lawsuits is that? if your organization is sued by an individual because your website is not accessible the Department of Justice is being very clear that You can get sued more than one time for not having your website be Accessible so you're not just dealing with a single lawsuit and what you can settle with an individual because you've blocked their Their their ability to often engage their website. You're potentially dealing with multiple multiple lawsuits, which is A much more expensive thing to deal with So a couple of the differences between section 508 and in WK 2.0 Section 508 was was really focused on the technology So it was all built around HTML and you know the goal is you know, don't use JavaScript JavaScript is is bad and so there's still people who will say for accessibility You should go off and and be able to turn off the JavaScript I'm happy to say that that's no longer the case that that you don't need to disable your JavaScript for accessibility You might want to test your your website without JavaScript if you're worried about security issues That's something that that people who are particularly worried about security might want to be able to run your website without JavaScript But everyone else is it works on the document object model the DOM So there's no need to disable the the JavaScript for for screen readers WK 2.0 on the other hand was built on principles So it's perceivable operable understandable and robust Which are just very forward thinking elements to try and make sure you know Can't somebody read the material? Can they can they be able to engage with it and make changes and fill in a web form? Can they understand it? Is it written in a way that that makes sense to people and also? Is it something that is is is robust enough that that you can deal with older technology newer technology and look at it in different devices and even look at it in spaces that that Maybe you want to go up and look on your phone outside and trying to be able to to access the information in different contexts WK also includes aspirational elements. It's it's something that WK has three different levels. There's single a double a and triple a The single a is is is basically filled with fairly easy things to implement and and things that that are really really low-hanging Fruit double a is is is is definitely a harder standard to meet, but it's the standard that Everyone is putting into legislation and putting into their their goals for for accessibility It's the goal. We built Drupal 7 to not that we met it completely But where our goal was to try and implement Drupal 7 core with WK 2.0 double a standards and we carried that forward in Drupal 8 and found ways to improve improve on what we did in Drupal 7 and Make make Drupal 8 more robust and more accessible but there's there's aspirational elements to in the triple a is is designed for for for disabilities that are harder to go off and and to deal with so Cognitive disabilities are more difficult trying to go off and and if you have a particular community like if you're serving the The deaf-blind community or if you're serving seniors who might have multiple disabilities or Even if you're an organization like the Parkinson's Foundation that has a specific disability that are focused on But also know that their members have other disabilities as well as that and how do you try and deal with with with those those kinds of changes? dealing with people who are managing English as a second language is again something that that that's a bit of a challenge sometimes because it's it's People don't necessarily if things are not written in plain language Then things are are much harder to be able to to understand for for other people Now here's the the easy part of you know, what what if you how many people here are really familiar with section 508? Okay How many people are more familiar with WKG and WKG standards than 508? Okay, that's the the Sort of listed out some comparison items to say what is essentially equivalent? So I'm not going to go through this in any depth and there's a lot of text in these slides So I don't want to go off and and you know drill through each individual one But a lot of these these elements are everything of bolded is is a singly requirement and one of the ones that's that's actually one of the hardest is still dealing with non-text content, so is providing Text for images or for graphs or for maps trying to go up and provide a textual equivalent for everything that everything on your website and and that's that's a you know That yeah, it's a difficult one for organizations to do correctly one thing We've done in Drupal 8 that makes that a lot easier is that by default we're requiring that that websites are all text is required by by default in Drupal 8 not that it's the the The only place that you can disable that and there's some places where you don't actually want to have alt text But by default we wanted to make it easier to go off and add alt text for content editors Then to skip it and just sort of hope that somebody else will go off and address it later So changing those those patterns The use of color is another one trying to go off and make sure that you're not using colors the only way it can be symbols and You can you can take a look at these comparisons and there's a great table that I include at the at the end of the slide that this illustrates what what isn't and what isn't involved in in In these two different sets of guidelines You also don't have to worry about other things like keyboard navigation that should be you know largely taken care of the ability to pause and and Stop and play your video recordings the you're trying to make sure there's a page title on your website Making sure that the focus of your web page is visible so that if somebody is tapping to the website that they they know where they are Again, you know, there's there's a bunch of things that that are Are things that that you will have if you've already been looking at at building your website for section 508 You're going to know how to to do for WK 2.0 But it's not the same There's a bunch of items that are are going to be be new for you as well that that I'll try and Focus on it a bit more again There's lots and lots of documentation on this and the W3 webs W3 sees website And and lots of explanations about how these these different elements work But one of these is that's different is providing a meaningful sequence So being able to as you're tabbing through a website if you're using a keyboard to go off and navigate through the site Or using a screen reader to navigate to the site It should follow a logical order and a logical order that that a Sighted person would would be able to follow so in if you're dealing with with European base languages, you know going from from the top left to the bottom right In terms of order of priority and having things structured in a way that that allows people to consistently navigate them making sure that that You're you're providing information that that that's not just just textual to be able to convey Instructions that are to not convey instructions that are only done through through a shape that you're providing text as well That you have more audio controls They have a minimum color contrast between between your your your your web page or your your lightest color and your darkest color and I'm always amazed at how hard how hard it seems to be for organizations to get color contrast, right? It's Really not that difficult like there's all kinds of simple tools that allow you to go off and evaluate it and and you know so many times it's It's it goes up to the the organization style guide that they've they've you know hired some some Hot designer that went off and created this this style guide with lots of grays in it and and and it's like well Some of these issues just need to be fixed right up at the very top of the organizations to see that they can trickle down and make sure that those those initial Slate of colors are are are ones that that are are able to go off and and and really strongly meet those color contrast requirements and Resizing text is another one that's that's added in here You need to be able to increase the the size of your text 200% And that's that can be done either through one of those text resizing widgets or by using control plus Using control plus or minus to control the screen size is actually a better way than using the widgets because it it takes advantage of the the ability of the browser to go off and effectively manipulate the screen so But it's it requires you know education about the users and it's not necessarily as discoverable for for some some users In terms of operable We want to make sure that that there's no keyboard traps It's a game more as you're dealing with more complicated websites You're more likely to have spaces where where we are navigating through the site Your your information will get where you may not be able to get out of the the dialogue that you're in That that there's the ability to provide a You know an easy way to go off and then navigate Predictably through through web forms and manage that focus order The importance of link purpose How many people still have links on the bottom of their website that says read me Or click here like these are not particularly useful and something we've done in in Drupal is that for a lot of these forms where we've We have that text. We also have if you look at the page source We have it in an invisible span something that says read more about title of article So you can you don't see it visually But the if you're using the navigating the website through a screen reader or if you're Google or some other bot That that is trying to go off and scrape information You can get the full context of what that link is about Within within the context of the link without actually cluttering up the visual look of the the website 2.4.5 is looking at multiple ways to locate information So like having a search button and having a site map on the on your website as well as your site navigation That's a nice way to go off and to duplicate that And also having headings and labels on all of your content Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 have have come with with Headings and over the blocks and a lot of headings have been added into the structure a lot of times those headings are Again, they're listed as they're invisible headings. You can't actually see them but they're there to go up and provide screen readers context and Generally screen readers tend to to use headings Like stones to cross a river it's like you know abilities to get an understanding and to get a navigational sense of how how a site is constructed Understandable this is a big one. That's that's also missed from a lot of organizations Just trying to understand like even even language issues so trying to make sure that that you're exposing the language that the text is written in and In the the the US there's an assumption that that everything is in English and that's not a good assumption And so making sure that you've you've added a header that at the very beginning of the page states what what the page is Is is written in and what the default should be for the screen reader? Screen readers if they come across a phrase like je ne sais quoi are not quite Smart enough to realize that that's supposed to be French and try and do that in French They'll just instead garble it with an English version, but it'll sound nasty Whereas if you can if you can define what that small section of text is if you're switching languages And providing that that other context you can you can make it easier for for the screen readers to pronounce that text properly the error suggestions another one an error prevention trying to make sure that that the That it's that text is being if people are filling in a form that that Errors are caught earlier and that there's an easier way for people to know what the the problems are and to be able to Help guide users to the process of filling in forms and provide an information We worked really really hard to try and get inline form errors into core in Drupal 8 and an 8.0 release And it was briefly it was briefly in core for about Maybe a week before we realized that it affected so many other pieces of the API And it had to be brought out to be put in as an experimental module And it's really great to go off and see that that trees gave it so much cover cover and that that That there's people who are standing up to now be you know the inline form errors Maintainer, but but we you know errors are an important part of the process and part of making sure that that your websites are Accessible to people with disabilities and with the inline form errors module you can you can do that You can make it much easier for everyone to be able to understand what the problems are on the website Robust is another one that Is useful trying to go off and see that that your html is is formed properly and that that there aren't errors in the code The other one that I haven't actually seen in the the devi cake standards, but it's very much related to this and should fit in It's just spelling mistakes It's it's amazing how how like how do we expect screeners readers to be able to pronounce words that are misspells and Trying to make sure that somebody who's trying to go from navigate a website from with a If English is their second language, how do they do that if they if if words if they can't look up a word in the Dictionary because you know, it doesn't exist I remember one of the issues that was was involved in for a while Was actually fixing spelling errors in the the comments and the code in in Drupal Because there are a whole bunch of them that that had just sort of being brought into court people had overlooked the spelling spelling issues of various different problems and We wanted to try and make sure that Drupal was inclusive as inclusive as possible so that somebody who's blind can be a Developer as well as a an editor and a user and not not just just somebody that's stuck in a consumer role But really they have the possibility of a producer a producer opportunity to be a producer and the other thing is is is dealing with with the You know being with a range of technologies There's a there's a real problem with how screen readers are in support for screen readers is supported in And other assistive technologies as well in in most countries Generally what happens is that there's state-supported funding for people to buy products like Jaws And that there's actually disincentive for people to go off and buy Apples or even to use open-source tools like NVDA There's a lot of government money that goes to freedom scientific and other you know companies who are building proprietary products to serve serve people with with disabilities, but it means that often people only have screen readers that are Updated you know three or four years ago And if you're dealing with that old technology if you can't assume that the technology is being updated on a Regular basis and that that you can you can build to the last two releases It's a real challenge to try and how do you support such a broad range of of users I've included two links here one is is the alphabet of accessibility issues and it's too long a link to go off and to actually put it into the The screen there, but it's it's a nice sort of comparison to try and think about People who have disabilities in a number of different contexts We often think of people who are blind, but that's a very small my new use case It's much more useful to try and think about the 10 to 20 percent of the population who Might might have other disabilities, but also people who are temporarily disabled people who you know You've got a band-aid on your finger and you can no longer you're having trouble navigating Your phone with your left hand or something like that like there's there's all kinds of ways that that You know people have on medications or they're suddenly getting a new prescription and and things are Harder for them to see for a temporary period of time. They wouldn't call themselves disabled But they they're having the same Challenges or that we're reaching the same barriers that so many other people are So I want to say that the the Moving towards a Towards WK 2.0 AA is a really good thing It will actually save time and money for everyone because this is an international standard that everyone is dealing with and Many organizations like Drupal have already adopted the international standard and so How many organizations here are already have already adopted and embraced WK 2.0 standards? So it's a few I mean is there's a yeah, yeah It's it does take a bunch of Internal changes to go up and to modify the wording and try and make sure that people understand the differences between them But but there's A lawsuit would do it too. Yeah Yeah, hopefully there are not hopefully there aren't that many of those in this room who have been soothed a couple who are involved in lawsuits, but yeah WK will also go up and make sure that your websites are more feature compatible It's it's it's a move ahead and and as I tried to illustrate earlier These technologies are keeping to keeping changing and and the expectation that we accommodate other people is is is increasing Internationally it's not just here in the United States, but it's everywhere in every modern democracy So much of our society is being served up through electronic medium You can't just exclude, you know 10 to 20 percent of the population and expect to be a modern democracy or to be a To successfully to be a successful educational institution if you're if you're not building your site to be to be inclusive and It's also Because the US is is a late adopter to WK 2.0 It's also nice to go off and to remember that there's there's a lot of documentation that's available now that you can take advantage of And one of them that they've been coming up with recently is is some tutorials to try and make it easier to go off and learn and adopt these technologies so it's it's the the WK standards are in like any Standards driven policy is really boring and long and it's great. You know if it's great material to read if you need to go to sleep but I mean it's really important, but it's it's not written for readability and I think that the the understanding it understandability component of WK is lost on the the WK 2.0 Guidelines because they're they're really written for academics and policy geeks And and the tutorials have our way to try and bring that down bring that to a more more web developer friendly kind of Language, so there's a link to the W3 C's tutorials there Unfortunately, there's more to be done This is not an easy topic accessibility is a it's a real challenge to try and and to keep up with there's never going to be a Website that is a hundred percent accessible The the web is changing so quickly that we need to be able to keep Updating our tools and technology to keep up with that our expectations are changing Just little things like even even when WK 2.0 was was released in 2008 was was Google Docs even around then in 2008 like there's things that we sort of have Incorporated into our just way of working that that it's hard to imagine what what the world would be like without Google Docs Just in terms of collaboration and whatnot and yet these frameworks and policies didn't have that ability to go up from to have that Understanding of how we would operate and work with the web Mobile devices are definitely a problem and there's there's actually some increasing work to look at how to deal with virtual reality And if we're going to be Immersing ourselves in in virtual reality headsets. How do we try and make sure that that's as inclusive as possible particularly for people with visual impairments the It's a real challenge to deal with assistive technology because there's a whole bunch of different different technologies out there and they tend to to be like It's like the browser wars of the early the early 90s, you know best best viewed with with Mozilla or with sorry best use with Netscape and and whatnot So, you know, there's there's sites that are designed for particular Assistive technology devices are tested on certain assistive technology devices but you know voiceover and freedom of scientific and NBDA and And and there's this there's a whole bunch of other ones They don't necessarily follow the same patterns and expectations and and they change them from time to time In the Drupal 7 release cycle. We had a solution for CSS display none that that we had to change because Google went and sorry Apple went and changed how voiceover worked We had to respond to that and make those changes and modifications Likewise the CSS standards are changing and so now there's a move to try and remove clip Because clip is is no longer going to be supported in CSS officially So the solution where we're coming up with with CSS display none uses clip So we need to try and find a new solution that that isn't relying on this this CSS standard that's no longer supported So There's other challenges that you know people interpret wk differently. They're guidelines that that That are fairly clearly written, but there's different ways that they're interpreted in different spaces So the US is going to have to to determine how they're going to look at adopting this And what what are the elements that that are going to be sort of commonplace for that especially when it comes to? to lawsuits It's a it's a real challenge when When you're looking at web accessibility one of the other challenges how people claim that their websites are Claim that they're accessible like the the the claims that that web developer developers make about accessibility the ability to go off and to make websites accessible and The the claims that organizations make about the accessibility of their websites I mean it's a it's a real challenge and people people often forget that this is a journey and not a destination So it's not something you're ever going to be completely over it with and that there's there's so much to learn There's so much to to understand about how how we perceive and interact with with the world and with the with the internet The WKG only also deals with with part of the problem. So we have the authoring tools accessibility guideline Which I touched on briefly before but but so many organizations particularly larger institutions have people who are writing content Who don't necessarily have the expertise to be able to create accessible content? So a tag is all about trying to go off and build best practices that allow users to When they're creating content to follow best practices, how do we use this technology to help? Inform the users about how to make good decisions when they're creating new content And I'd like to see much more of that incorporated into to Drupal core and to have more modules that help support that There's things like acronyms acronyms are a real challenge in so many organizations because they they become They become it's hard to go from the end to put the time and effort into defining all of your acronyms for all of your web pages But screen readers have trouble with them and other people have trouble with them Sometimes organizations are so complicated that there are multiple uses for the same acronym And you need to be careful about which context you're using that particular acronym in so if there were easier ways to Help select and organize acronyms and make it easier for people to go off and when they're creating that content to be able to choose it That's something that that would would help. I think everyone When we've done it. It's already in Drupal 8 is the spell check. So we've Seekie editor now is is It is I think an 8.1 or 8.2 It's come out so that spell check is enabled. So when you're creating your content, you don't have to worry about your User sorry content editors will be informed about their their pages being being misspelled and Yeah, they think that in terms of things need to be done Web aim is this really great organization that that's been really a leader in accessibility and they did a survey just in January that looked at Website the surf top 100 websites and paired those top 100 websites to the to a survey that they did five years ago and They determine that web accessibility is despite the extra interest in accessibility and the increase in lawsuits or inaccessibility the the accessibility that the number of errors on on those those Top 100 websites has actually gone up over the last five years that that websites are generally not more accessible Despite the the interest in accessibility and the educational efforts that have gone on So I've already talked about a bunch of the stuff about the application with with Drupal But just to raise a couple other issues Drupal 7 is built. Sorry Drupal 8 is built on Drupal 7 Drupal 7 is being tested widely by by so many organizations the White House and and you know many disability organizations like the National Federation to buy it blind or ability net or the RNIB. There's a lot of organizations that are using this The the other great thing about Drupal is that that generally Things extend to core. So the accessibility defaults we've built in Core will often be just inherited by the modules and themes that that are being built with Drupal So some of the best practices are going to be Used in your website, even if you don't realize it there or there are things that that you may not be even aware of Because that we've made an effort to try and build those a good initial set of defaults Developers also tend to copy other examples So they'll go off and when you're building a module for Drupal 8 you look at Existing modules that that that are in core and find ways to go off into to build on that functionality And if you've got good accessibility defaults built into core, they're more likely to be extended and applied in in new applications or new new modules and themes as well and Yeah The for your own websites. I think that that it's important to try and end Just to keep in mind that if you've already done a section 508 review You're going to need to do another review and keep a special attention to those elements that have better not covered in section 508 You know this is this is an ongoing issue like making sure that you have regular reviews of your website on a At least a quarterly basis and the closer you can tie Content creation and an accessibility reviews together so that people who are creating the content can learn from it The better it is. Nobody likes to receive it up to see receive Information six months after they did work to say that they that there's errors in it It's much easier to go off and to give it give them that feedback immediately and get developers and and and content editors Using tools like the wave toolbar to help provide immediate feedback There's tools like tenon and wave which are really useful and there's so many free tools out there That that help with accessibility and checks with color contrast and it's They're tools that don't cost a lot and that they can provide you with a lot of insights into ways to make your site better The the accessibility the automated tools are really useful And you've got to build those into your your regular process of evaluating your website and don't just use one tool It's useful to try and get get used to a couple that you can sort of go back and forth on But don't rely on them because there's definitely stuff that is is regularly missed out and Learning to go off and do a basic navigation with your keyboard is really useful It's probably more useful to learn how to go off and do keyboard navigation well Then it is to learn how to use a screen reader That's learning how to use a screen reader is a really difficult and complicated thing Learning how to navigate your website without a mouse is something that that is takes very little time to demonstrate and to learn And to get very proficient at The the how many people have accessibility web pages on their their site So it's yeah a few I used to think that they were pretty useless because they didn't really do much because they're usually just like this boilerplate we are accessible blah blah blah blah blah we meet all requirements leave us alone but there's Yeah, don't sue us, but there's there's actually your potentially There's a lot of ways that you can use that accessibility page to be very beneficial One of them is that you can Explain to users what they've done to their there what you've done to try and make the set accessible and if you've done things like add area You can mention that You can also provide a feedback form to go try and encourage feedback from people with disabilities if they notice an error You how do you make sure that they know that it's a priority and you're going to take this as an important concern? But lately thank God was also said that that it's useful to link to the accessibility policy in your web page to make sure that you have a the To make sure that if you have an accessibility policy and that you're working with a procurement or we're working to try and Define what your goals are as organization that you state that publicly and you have a link on that website So the people can see that you're taking this quite seriously And lately has done some great work on work on trying to go off and and to to avoid the the lawsuits and encourage Structured negotiation about helping helping organizations improve accessibility of their sites Also look at the accessibility tag on Drupal dot org is quite useful generally tend to throw in a slide about free isn't kittens because People think about free isn't beer free isn't speech But I think free isn't kittens is more useful because it's sort of like you get a free kitten If you if you love it and you want it to go off into to not scratch out your eyes Then you feed it and you care for it and you nurture it And so finding ways to go off and engage in the community finding ways to try and improve accessibility There's there's one blind accessibility or one blind student who Vincentio Robano who in one summer before he started the university He's contributed more individually to Drupal core than all of the governments and educational institutions Well, yeah, almost all the governments and education institutions the world combined There's not that he's done You know in you know that much but just the the the organizational culture of most educational institutions and most government institutions Is not that of ways of participating in improving the the Drupal community? Oops, I want to say just before we get to the questions. There's a couple other accessibility events I wanted to highlight One at 1 p.m. Today. There's one about seniors and aging. There's the boff the accessibility boff at room 340 in room Sorry at 345 There's also tomorrow Beyond screen readers, which is actually being led by two of my prior or my previous staff Everett Zufeld and Aaron Marchak, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they they have to say And we're also having a accessibility sprint at the Hilton. So that'll be on Thursday at At 1045 So are there? Any questions any questions? Yes Yeah, it is definitely a challenge to deal with that and partly it's It's having that conversation in through the procurement process and discovery process to see what you're able to go off and to offer Certainly, we've seen RFPs where people have asked for triple a compliant websites And it's like, you know, there's no way that they have the budget for it Like you need to have like millions of dollars to have a triple a compliant content management system It's a it's not a trivial ask But again, it's trying to raise raise awareness about the complexities issues and also that that the the content management system Is just a tool ultimately you need to be able to have your content editors add information to that and you may We're doing a presentation with the ACLU And and they at in 10 last month and it was it was interesting that that did sort of think of it about What was how the developers and the the organization reflected on on what on some of their design decisions before it was launched? Versus after was launched because when you have content authors actually creating the content They often make different decisions and decide to add more Meaning particularly through images that that sometimes you're not necessarily seeing this as important when you're initially creating that that site They're just the same as they are for for For HTML the trouble is is that PDF is a I have friends who disagree with me on this But I think that PDFs are really They need to be be We need to move beyond PDF. They're they're not a mobile friendly format. They're not a format that's structured for To be text focus, it's very much presentation focused and I don't think that Updating the the PDF Ultimate organization should be looking at creating EPUBs and and creating EPUB as the format for for packaged documentation because PDFs are They have to have the same requirements for a perceivable operable understandable and robust but the cost that's required to go off and to create these these Electronic documents in it like which they're essentially like paper facsimiles like it's like let's take an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper and You know create an electronic version of that like we're going beyond paper in terms of our concepts and our information. So Anything that's dealing with with dynamic content should be sitting on a website or be done managed through an exposed API You shouldn't be using a people shouldn't be filling in forms on You know electronic You know PDFs it really should be geared towards towards other things and if you're looking to present Static content then then EPUB is a much better way to deal with that. That's that's just it's encapsulated HTML So it's much simpler and organized to test and to build towards standards that that screen readers and others can use There you go. That was an easy question The I mean there are efforts to try and do this the there was Jesse Beach and and and Kevin from Kevin's last name worked with the quail API to try and and Use that open source accessibility framework to try and test core on a regular basis And there were test swarms that that were actively evaluating the number of accessibility problems that were part of Core and I think that that's that's really an interesting way to go. I don't think that quail is being formally supported at the moment So there's questions about that, but I also know that it's being Incorporated into CK editor. So There might be some additional life afterwards within that particular library or another one but there there are Testing frameworks to go off and to incorporate tools like tenon is is built so that it can quite easily go and and crawl a website and manage that but it is a real challenge and it's something that that the That the one of the other core maintainers is definitely keen on trying to go off and into final ways to incorporate that in I don't have enough background to sort of drive that but I I definitely see that that would be a really critical piece Even just to count the number of errors that are available and to see if if with each individual patch are those those errors increasing or decreasing You know having having that automated structure would be helpful for both the for for Drupal core moving ahead But also for individual websites if there's ways to when you're creating your Drupal build to Have that as a part of your ongoing development testing That we said the arm the Government digital services in the you the UK went and did an evaluation of automated tests versus manual tests and and they They ran a bunch of different websites through through this and I think it was Automated tests only caught 40% of the errors the accessibility errors and in their websites that they were testing with so it's you know Automated testing is definitely critical, but it can't be relied on so you need to have that that broader understanding of manual testing to be able to resolve issues It is a real trick to go off and to set up all takes correctly So all text is not needed on decorative images But how do you define a decorative image and how do you define? Conveying images what meaning is conveyed through an image? so it's certainly really clear if you've got you a bullet that you're you're putting in the front of of Some bullet points if you've got some some nice little artistic CSS or a font icon or something that you're using That doesn't convey any meaning everyone knows what that that is However, there's other cases where that same image might be used for navigation or there might be Where it's where it's not clearly a space where you would would or what meaning is being conveyed And where people need to to click on that other areas like If you one of the ones we came up with in the issue queue is if you have multiple images that are repeated Let's say you you really really love something and you put like you find a heart image and you repeat it five times over You're not gonna write heart heart heart heart on each image You're gonna want to be able to say hearts and so that that you know that that is is clear And then to make sure that every other heart that beyond that first one is is done with a no art alt text So alt equals quote quote so that that screen readers know to ignore that text But there but there are other times where we're images do convey meaning or convey feeling and and I think that that Particularly if it's related to the context of the page or the context of the story sometimes there's hero messages especially that are that that have have weight to them that that provide that context that users are reading and often those are done with with background images that are Not easy to go off and provide alt text to if you're done If you've got a CSS background image that's being used to provide that full with image on the back in many cases those actually should have alt text because They they are providing meaning to other people because you know if you see Donald Trump on on the cover of a An article that that conveys something just as if you have a rainbow flag it conveys something right? It's not it's not just a it's not like a bullet point But but there are judgment calls that people need to you to make and and and be clear about what the distinction is within your organization Does that answer it in I would tend to go off and and to include it because it is providing some context about what is being Being included units go into a lot of depth and these are supposed to be short summaries of what what is the meaning that's conveyed So you know the reason that that image was was added was because it's maybe it's on a student page Or maybe it's on an application or admission page So just to give somebody who's blind some more context around around the page and what's being being seen Because they can see that there's an image there But it it's But it does come down to it to a judgment call in many cases as to whether or not this is You know if you have a firm in the corner of your page like that's not something that's going to be all that useful But if you have two firms then suddenly and if it's in in context to like the the show between two firms Like you might want to Like that that has has meaning where one firm might not right so it's it's contextual Yeah, any other questions I Think that that it does depend I think there are Organizations that are doing this for for sites where they do actually want to have change and that there's also you know Law firms that are seeing this is a great way to go out to make some money, right? and so it's it's a You know that there are the gold diggers out there that'll always Will always be present when there's an opportunity like this But I don't know that there's been any any sort of way to evaluate the the number of court cases and some of them aren't public So Carl Groves has a list of court cases that he knows about that's being maintained on github but that that really needs to have some more definition for for the for 2016 and 2017 so Last question that is right. There's a which that has a read more Right it it's a it is one of these things where we're You still sleep because because of how how blind users navigate the web if you have a link You should also include that that full title because they're going to be even if you're repeating the link to the same location If you have one link that says You know You know article about acts and then then you've got some other links in the blurb That's that's that's included in it and then you have a read more link without the context It's something that that you can you can't get lost in so I would say that it because they A lot of times when screen readers are trying to navigate through the web They will they will ask for a list of all of the links and just have that read out to them one after the other So it's not necessarily reading it in context as you and I would be reading the page They just get the links in in you know on their own So you know you might have three or four read more as you know right next to each other So depending how that's structured so Okay, thank you